I’m taking a little detour off from my more serious security series to discuss a fun little project I worked on last night.
Due to most of my Information Technology experience involving servers and network infrastructure, I’ve always viewed my desktop machine as simply a means to do the things I really need to do. As such, my desktop always ended up cluttered, unorganized, and an embarrassment if I ever needed to show someone my computer.
Recently, however, I had to rebuild my laptop and decided that this would no longer be the case. I wanted to have a desktop that, when people saw it, got the reaction that I didn’t just know what I was doing… I loved working on computers. I didn’t just want it to be aesthetically pleasing; I wanted it to be useful, with all of my regularly used programs and system information in plain view, but in a clean, minimalist setup.
This is the result:
Now, anyone familiar with desktop customization will immediately recognize several of the pieces of this puzzle. Here’s the breakdown and then I’ll get to the How To / Description:
Summary:
HUD/Desktop: Rainmeter
Theme: Enigma
Big Clock: Arcs
Windows Theme: Soft7 2.0
Windows Orb: Win8 Orb ‘black edition’ (small arrow)
Desktop Background: Moraine Lake
The Breakdown:
Now, this is my first attempt at customization with Windows 7. Way back when I was a wee-little-geek with hours to kill in my Air Force barracks I used to tweak and mess around with customization for Windows XP… but this is a whole new game. So, as I stated before, anyone familiar with desktop customization will notice that I haven’t really gone into too much customization so much as I just found some commonly used themes and styles and adjusted them to my liking. For example, if you look at the picture on the Enigma page (link) you’ll see that it looks very similar.
However, I’d like to think that this is just the start. The more and more I mess around with it, the more ideas I get on other changes I can make.
Rainmeter:
The first thing I did was download and install Rainmeter. This little tool provides the means for all those neat things you see above my taskbar where your desktop icons normally are. It allows you to see system information (like you see in the lower left of my screenshot) and basically gives the framework for an infinite number of possibilities for displaying information right on your desktop. By default, Rainmeter comes with a simple theme that is meant to show you the things that you can customize, etc… but, you can do some searching around and find a pre-built theme that you like. That’s how I stumbled across Enigma.
Enigma:
Enigma is one of the most popular themes for Rainmeter, not just because it looks super cool without even much tweaking, but because it comes with a ton of skins (all the little apps and things you see) all completely customizable, with multiple different styles for each skin, and, if you really want to dig into it, excellent documentation on how to make changes to their .ini files. Provided you have Rainmeter installed, installing Enigma is incredibly simple. Then it’s just a matter of switching your theme over to Enigma and get tweaking.
Arcs:
Now, the first thing I noticed was when looking at the Enigma screenshot was that big clock thing in the middle. That thing is awesome looking, and I wanted it. I dug and dug through the Enigma skins but just couldn’t find it. Finally, after some quick Google searching I was able to find what I was looking for. It’s called Arcs and was created by the same brilliant designer that made the Enigma theme. As with Enigma, the install for this is incredibly simple, provided that you have Rainmeter installed. Then all you have to do is add the skin to your desktop and bam, you’ve got that really cool clock (which is actually way more than just a clock, each one of the those arcs is actually displaying system information, the skin comes with a legend to explain it all). Now that my desktop was looking spiffy, it was time to do something about that awful looking taskbar.
Soft7 2.0:
Anyone familiar with customization in Windows XP remembers that you used to be able to install custom themes (known as XPthemes), and with a little hacking you could even install themes that weren’t provided by Microsoft. Well, with Windows Vista and 7 you can still do that… but it takes a little more hacking trickery. Please keep in mind that this is not for the computer timid and requires a little risk taking. As such, the Soft7 2.0 page has a tutorial on what you’ll need to do to install custom themes for Windows 7, and that’s where I’m going to leave it. It’s not that I don’t want to explain the process here, it’s just that it would end up making this blog way longer than I’d really like it to be. So, if you’re feeling courageous, just follow the steps listed there and you’ll have the theme installed in no time (it’s really not all that hard, but I, personally, don’t want to take any responsibility if something goes wrong with your machine in the process).
There are a few other tweaks that I made after installing the theme to make it look a little more slick.
First, was adjusting the color scheme. This was a simple process using the Windows “Personalization”. Simply right click on your desktop and click “Personalize”. From there I clicked on “Window Color” at the bottom of the page, expanded “Show color mixer” and then dropped all the levels down to zero. This gave the windows and taskbar a look that blended in nicely with the Enigma theme.
Then, to make the Windows taskbar a little more subtle I switched to “Small Icons”. To do this, simply right click on the taskbar, click properties, and then, under the “Taskbar” tab, select “Use small icons” and hit “Ok”. This will reduce the size of your taskbar and make it look a lot sleaker.
However, that Windows “Orb” (formerly known as the start button) is really obnoxious looking and really clashes with the subtlety of the rest of the desktop. It was time to do something about that.
Win8 Orb ‘black edition’:
Like the Windows theme, there is no easy way to change the Windows Orb. It requires a little more hacking, but this time, fortunately, there’s a little application that can handle it for you. There’s a really simply tutorial over at How-to Geek that will walk you through the steps of changing the Windows Orb. Download the Win8 Orb ‘black edition’ and find the BMP file that you’re looking for. I chose the Small Arrow (6801.bmp so that it was flush with the bottom of the screen) because of it’s minimalist style and the Windows logo blends very nicely with the Enigma theme.
No more nasty Windows Orb! The only thing that this desktop customization needs is a really cool wallpaper.
Moraine Lake:
Nothing special about this step. Just find a wallpaper you really like and make it happen. I found Moraine Lake over at Interfacelift.com, a really cool site that can determine your desktop resolution and find ideal wallpapers.
The Future:
There are a lot of things that I’d still like to do on here.
For example, the Enigma theme comes with a really cool Music skin that can pair up with a number of different media players to allow you to control you music right from your desktop. I, personally, don’t keep much of a music collection and use streaming media like Pandora for my listening pleasure. The theme comes is compatible with OpenPandora, which is an application that’s supposed to connect to your Pandora account and play your stations. But, with Pandora’s recent move to their new HTML5 layout, OpenPandora no longer works, and, since it hasn’t been updated since ’09, it’s likely that it won’t be working anytime soon. Getting some sort of media control on my desktop is something I’d really like to figure out.
Also, before I settled on the Soft7 2.0 theme, I had wanted to get rid of the Windows taskbar and switch to a Mac OSX style “Dock” instead. Problems were rampant with this idea and I wasted probably 2 hours trying to make them work like a new taskbar. However, I haven’t completely ruled out the option of having a dock on my desktop. You’ll notice the 5 icons on the top middle of my screenshot, I’m thinking of turning that into a dock, allowing me to drag and drop application right onto there. Rocketdock is a good option for this. It’s very customizable and, with some tweaking, will blend in nicely with the Enigma theme.
Thanks!
For reading, I mean. I had a really good time diving into this and probably gave Google half of their total traffic yesterday trying to make it all work. With a little creativity, and a lot of time, there are some really awesome ways to escape from the boring, ordinary desktop.
Partner & Senior Technical Advisor