Home / Web Building Tutorials / Creating an Active Desktop (HTML 4) |
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This tutorial is written and contributed by Matthew Clemente, professional web designer and owner of FlamingoLingo.com See footnote for more info. I'm sure most Windows 95 users are familiar with the term "desktop". It is the screen you see when your computer is finished booting. By default, it is a turquoise color. The desktop hosts icons titled My Computer, Recycle Bin, My Briefcase, etc. You may have more or less icons depending on the configuration of your computer. It is also possible to place shortcuts on your desktop that point to different files or programs.If you have Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher installed, or
are running Windows 98, you don't have just a plain old desktop, you have an Active
Desktop (lucky you)! Instead of just hosting icons and shortcuts, your Active Desktop can
host any HTML item, such as Web pages, Java applets, ActiveX controls, images and the
works. Instead of that turquoise background, you can change your background to an HTML
document. To set an HTML document as your background, right-click your desktop and choose
Properties. Click the It doesn't end there. You can place Active Desktop Items on your desktop.
An Active Desktop Item is a small Web page that sits onyour Active Desktop. You subscribe
to Active Desktop Items through Web sites. I have one for my site, FlamingoLingo (http://www.flamingolingo.com).
Other sites that have desktop items are New York Times and Microsoft. Microsoft has a
directory of Active Desktop Items that can be found at http://www.iechannelguide.com. You A desktop item is a great way to send information to your visitors. You tell the desktop item how often it should update itself. This is a great way to keep your visitors informed of what's going on at your site. This way, you can keep your visitor coming back for more. There are four steps to creating a desktop item: |
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