Desktop tweaking app idea...

from WinCustomize Forums
I was recently thinking about creating a new desktop tweaking app...

It would have all the usual desktop icon/wallpaper tweaks & options, except it would also have 'colour-tinting' feature which would be able to tint all your icons on your desktop in 1 click... to match your wallpaper, basically you could 'tint' them any colour you liked (or greyscale them).

Also, if you were running XP you could alter the transparency of your desktop icons to see through to the wallpaper underneath, and other cool effects.

Anyone know of an app that can currently do this?

... and is anyone out there interested in something that could do this?
5,202 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Sounds similar to Desktop Architec. That was a nice piece of freeware. I haven't tried it on XP.

I think that FX in Object Desktop is doing some of that. I don't think they are looking at tinting icons though.

Sounds interesting.
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I checked out Desktop Architect... and it does some cool stuff, but mostly fairly standard icon replacement and tweaks... but loads of features.

I tried WindowFX a while ago... so I'm not sure if any more features have been added since I last tried it. I seem to remember it was mainly about animating dialogs, and window transparency etc... nothing to do with icons as far as I can remember.

Is anyone actually interested in my idea?

Basically, it would take several weeks of coding at least to get it to a decent Beta stage, so I need to know if anyone out there would use it.
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
My only thought is that you'd need to design icons specifically for this app. Most (well, many) icons already available would start looking really squirrely if you changed their tint or transparency.

Just a thought.
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Glen Eric Reed: Yeah... I thought about that.

I tried tinting a few icons manually... just to see, and it often looks better if you greyscale then tint. They looked pretty cool, but in a weird only-one-shade (colourized) sort of way.

Although I guess I could do selective tinting based on hue, to tweak it further.

As for the XP transparency idea, that _would_ be cool... basically it would automatically make all the desktop icons see-through from 0 to 100%. That would look good with any icons as far as I can see, it's up to the user how transparent they want their icons so it's down to taste in the end.

Other cool XP effects like: Automatically creating drop-shadows, adding 'glows' and re-sampling & smoothing the icons at larger sizes could also be a possibility.
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
You can apply transparency to shortcuts in DesktopX, but then you'd need to create the shortcut objects to start with. Wouldn't be too hard though, but would take longer to set up than your app. The one thing I'm not 100% sure of is that the transparency in 2k/XP is done by setting the window style to WS_LAYERED (or something like that), and desktop icons aren't treated as windows. If you can figure it out though, it would be pretty neat.

AJ
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Found this: http://www.aha-soft.com/cicons/index.htm a second ago...

It pretty much does what I was thinking of doing (i.e. the icon colour-tinting) It doesn't do the XP effects I was thinking of though.

Needless to say, I'll probably not bother anymore... I'm just a little too busy and it's too much work, for something someone's already made