Active Desktop

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Active Desktop is a feature of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0's optional Windows Desktop Update that allows the user to add HTML content to the desktop, along with some other features. It is also included in Windows 98 and higher operating systems.

Users can add HTML both in place of the regular wallpaper and as independent resizable desktop items. Items available on-line can be regularly updated and synchronized so users can stay updated without visiting the website in their browser.

Active Desktop works much like desktop widget technology in that it allows users to place customized information on their desktop.

Turning Active Desktop off saves a bit of memory and improves the performance of low-memory PCs. There is a checkbox in Window's Display Properties dialog box to do this. Two TweakUI settings can disable Active Desktop completely or disallow changes to it.

1 History
2 Current usage
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History

The introduction of the Active Desktop marked Microsoft's attempt to capitalize on the short-lived push technology trend lead by PointCast. Active Desktop placed a number of "channels" on the user's computer desktop that provided continually-updated information like news headlines and stock quotes without requiring the user to open a Web browser.

Active Desktop debuted during the 1997 release of Internet Explorer 4.0 for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 as a feature of the optional Windows Desktop Update offered to users during the upgrade install. While the Windows Desktop Update is commonly referred to (improperly) as Active Desktop itself, it is actually an entire Windows shell upgrade from v4.0 to v4.71 or v4.72 providing numerous changes to the Windows interface, resulting in an appearance and functionality level nearly indistinguishable from the then yet-to-be-released Windows 98. Features include the option to allow uppercase filenames (the old v4.0 desktop would forcibly display uppercase filenames in title case), configurable one-click hot-tracking file selection, customizable per-folder HTML display settings, QuickLaunch mini-buttons on the Task Bar next to the Start button, upgraded Start Menu allowing drag and drop item reordering and allowing right-click context menus for item renaming, etc. With the update, Windows Explorer now features an Address bar in which Internet addresses can be entered and seamlessly browsed.

[edit] Current usage

Current versions of Windows, including Windows XP, still provide the option to display Web pages and channels built with Microsoft's Channel Definition Framework (CDF) format on the desktop, but the latter functionality has been deprecated for several years.

The HTML displaying capabilities are now mainly used for creating original wallpapers and adding search boxes to the desktop. For example one could copy the following code from the Wikipedia site to display Wikipedia's search-box on one's desktop:

<form
    name="searchform"
    action="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search"
    id="searchform">
  <input
      id="searchInput"
      name="search"
      type="text"
      accesskey="f"
      value="" />
  <input
      type='submit'
      name="go"
      id="searchGoButton"
      value="Go" />
</form>