The software described in this guide is furnished under a license agreement and may be used only in accordance with the terms of the agreement.

Information in this document is subject to change without notice. The names of companies, products, people, characters, and/or data mentioned herein are fictitious and are in no way intended to represent any real individual, company, product, or event, unless otherwise noted. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without the express written permission of WinAbility Software Corporation. WinAbility Software Corporation may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from WinAbility Software Corporation, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.

NO WARRANTY

The technical information in this document is provided AS-IS and WinAbility Software Corporation makes no warranty as to its accuracy or use. Any use of the information contained herein is at the risk of the user. This document may include technical or other inaccuracies or typographical errors.

Copyright Notice

© 2008 WinAbility Software Corporation. All rights reserved.

Trademarks

WinAbility, WinAbility.Com, Desktoplet, and "The Way Software Should Be!" are either registered trademarks or trademarks of WinAbility Software Corporation and/or its suppliers in the U.S.A. and/or other countries. Other product and company names mentioned in this document may be the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners and are hereby acknowledged.

Desktoplet is currently available in the following editions:

Desktoplet 32-bit Edition
for Windows Vista, XP, 2000 (32-bit)

This edition is for the 32-bit versions of Windows such as Vista, XP, Server (all 32-bit editions). It is also backward compatible with Windows 2000. This edition cannot be used with Windows 95, 98, Me, or Windows NT 4.0 or any other older version of Windows.

Desktoplet x64 Edition
for Windows Vista, XP x64 (64-bit)

This edition is for the 64-bit versions of Windows such as Windows Vista or XP x64 (all 64-bit editions). This edition cannot be used with any of the 32-bit versions of Windows.

Desktoplet 32-bit Edition is designed for the 32-bit versions of Windows XP, Vista and similar versions of Windows (such as Windows Server, Windows Media Center Edition, etc.). It is also backward compatible with Windows 2000. Desktoplet XP is NOT compatible with Windows 95, 98, Me, Windows NT 4.0 or any older version of Windows.

Desktoplet x64 Edition is for the x64 (64-bit) versions of Windows Vista and XP. Desktoplet x64 is NOT compatible with the 32-bit versions of Windows.

There are no special requirements or recommendations except the obvious one: the better processor and more RAM your computer has, the better Desktoplet will perform.

To completely uninstall Desktoplet, it's not enough to simply delete its program files from the installation folder. To completely remove Desktoplet from your computer, follow the instructions below.

IMPORTANT: If your computer is configured for several user accounts, login as the same user as the user you were logged in when you installed Desktoplet. If you use Windows XP Fast User Switching, log off from all other accounts before trying to uninstall Desktoplet.

Method 1

Click on the Start button at the bottom of your screen, choose Programs - Desktoplet - Uninstall from the menu, and follow the instructions.

Method 2

Open Windows Control Panel, open the Add/Remove Programs item and use it to uninstall Desktoplet.

Desktoplet is very easy to use: the only thing you need to do is click on its taskbar icon with the mouse once:

If there is no Desktoplet icon shown on the taskbar, you can display it by choosing the All Programs - Desktoplet command from Windows Start Menu:

As long as the Desktoplet icon is displayed on the taskbar, you can click it any time with the mouse to display the Desktoplet window:

Once Desktoplet is displayed, you can click the icons it contains to run the programs, or open the files and folders represented by the icons, just like with the icons on the "real" desktop. You can also right-click on an icon to display Windows shortcut menu specific to that icon, and choose commands from that menu. If you don't want to open any icon, simply close Desktoplet by clicking anywhere outside of its window, and it will disappear, until you click on the Desktoplet taskbar icon again.

You can also click on the Desktoplet taskbar icon with the right button of the mouse. In this case, Desktoplet is not displayed; instead, a Desktoplet shortcut menu is shown on the screen, giving you access to several commands that let you configure Desktoplet.

You can change several options that affect the behavior of Desktoplet window by right-clicking on its icon in the taskbar and choosing the commans on the Options menu displayed:

The following options are available:

• Auto-hide

  Select this option if you want the Desktoplet window to automatically disappear after you select a desktop item to open or click away from it with the mouse. If, however, you want the window to remain on the screen after you use it, clear this option. In the latter case, you will need close the Desktoplet window manually, by clicking on the X button in its title bar, or by pressing the Escape key.

• Keep on top of other windows

  Select this option if you want the Desktoplet window to remain above all other windows. (Note that this option has effect only if the Auto-hide option above is cleared.)

• Show taskbar button

  Select this option if you want a separate button to appear on the taskbar when the Desktoplet window is displayed. You may want to select this option if you have selected the Auto-hide option above, and you also want to be able to use the Alt+Tab key to navigate to the Desktoplet window. If you clear the Show taskbar button option, then Desktoplet window will not appear in the Alt-Tab window list.

• Show primary display only

  (This option appears only if your desktop expands to more than one display). Select this option if you want Desktoplet to show the contents of the primary display only. If you would rather it display the whole desktop area, clear this option.

You can also choose the More options command to display the Desktoplet Properties widndow that lets you customize other aspects of the the behavior and appearance of Desktoplet:

Remember that if you make changes to the properties, you must press the OK or Apply button in order for them to take effect!

This dialog box contains the following areas:

• Taskbar icon

  Use this area to choose the icon that you want Desktoplet to display in the taskbar. (Note that this option does not change the icons of the shortcuts to Desktoplet that you might have on your desktop or on the Start menu. To change such an icon, right-click on the shortcut and select the Properties command from the shortcut menu).

• Display the icon at Windows startup

  Select this option to automatically display the Desktoplet taskbar icon every time you start Windows (This is the recommended option). You can also select whether the icon should be displayed for the current user account only (that is, the account with the login name and password you used to start the current Windows session), or for all user accounts of your computer. Note that the For all users option supercedes the For the current user option.

• Hot key

  Select this option if want to be able to open the Desktoplet window by pressing a key combination of your choice.

• Window background

  This option lets you specify how the background of Desktoplet should be painted:

  • Color

    Select this option to paint the background of the window with a single color. To change the color, click on the colored bar with the mouse and select the color you prefer. You can also select the gradient options, to make the color gradually change to a different color, horizontally (from left to right) or vertically (from top to bottom). You can also use the Selection area to change the color of the rectangle that appears around the selected items.

  • Image

    Select this option to display an image from a file that you have on your hard disk. (To browse for the image file, click on the ellipsis button). Note that the supported graphics formats depend on your version of Windows. Basically, if your version of Internet Explorer can display a graphics file, you can use it as a background image for Desktoplet, too.

• Window border

  This option lets you select the kind of the border you want to be displayed around the Desktoplet window.

• Window margins

  These options allow you to specify extra amounts by which to increase the size of Desktoplet window (measured in pixels). You may find this useful if you want to display the background image which proportions are different from those of Desktoplet. In such a case, you can increase the margins to make the proportions of the Desktoplet window to match the proportions of the graphics image. Note that you can determine the current size of Desktoplet by right-clicking on its title bar and choosing the Show window size command from the menu.