Thursday, November 15, 2007

Desktop

Desktop has many interpretations. Here I refer to the graphical home page when every operating system boots up. Literally, its the first screen from which the users starts using the system and will the last screen from where the user stops using the system. A desktop would contain a background, few icons, taskbar and few widgets (occasionally). Have a look at what one of my colleague's desktop.

Its an art to maintain a Desktop. Just ask your friends to send their desktop snapshots, you can keep on enjoying it for hours. There are so many different kind of desktops that are around us, some I have observed are, Default desktops are ones those have their default wallpaper and settings when they are shipped. There would be icons flooding around the screen. Many project managers and HR's would be having this (You can wonder why... :)). Default - but changed desktops they are those where the wallpaper of the desktop would be changed but set to some of the default set provided already. I guess managers would have this kind of desktop. Plain desktops are those with a plain background (may be a selected color is filled, usually would be a dark color) and few set of icons will be are present. This gives a clear visibility of the icons that are present. I guess technical lead would have such desktops. Next would be some self portrait desktop where a picture of yourself that came around good in the last picnic or last family party would be seen. Come on no guesses, only a girls desktop would look like this. Some times they keep flower occupying the screen, cute puppies and kittens also get a place. A guys desktop would have a cool sports car or a freighting bike poster else a sports person or some latest bollywood heroine. Mr.Organized desktop, this is some kind of professional desktop that has things organized. Like similar icons are grouped and pushed to one end of the screen. Recycle bin in bottom right corner and few set of application launches are at one corner. These kind of desktops can be seen with some experienced software engineers who are slight geeks who doesn't want to waste time in searching. Also many are launched using keyboard shortcuts, since mouse clicks are costly. What a mess desktop, ah ahh here is the famous category of desktops. They can be spotted at developers pc's. :)

There are lot of tools available to organize them and give a new look and feel often. But only a few are using them. Finally if at all these 2D desktops are bored, try looking at future desktops like bumptop

You got some more interesting desktops, write back to me!

5 comments:

Puthali said...

wow, tht bumptop thing was so freakin' cool!

Anonymous said...

Cool, but I fail to understand the concept

Vijesh said...

I would have been very happy to explain on what you din understand Mr.Anonymous.

Revathi said...

Thanks for writing about desktop. What are more interesting and rewarding is that we have to experiment it with the pictures which we took, with our camera, on different occasions especially the beautiful natural scenery. This certainly gives one a sense of good feeling and satisfaction and enables to know the sublities of photography and appreciate the nature's beauty. Instead of trying, already created, to organize desktop, it would be better to do with our own efforts to enhance the beauty of the desktop. Meanwhile, I could not understand your comment on that one should use key board shortcut instead of mouse click. What that means? You said Mouse click is costly? Why? Could you explain?

Vijesh said...

I'm a developer in linux, hence I have this perspective. Say you are working with some 5-6 windows open on your desktop. The situation is you often want to switch windows. Keys like Alt+Space+N will help you to minimize the window. Alt+tab or Alt+shift+tab to go fwd and backwards between windows.

You can try it by yourself, say you are working with a word processing application like MS Word. Just take time to learn the short cuts. Create a 2 page formated document. Make sure you don use the mouse! You can even appreciate the power of keyboard. :)