anyone use Active Desktop? (1 Viewer)

[Ted Lee]

what exactly is the point of using an active desktop? does it make navigating the desktop easier in some way, or is just one of those "neato" kinda things?

just curious....

 

[Jeff Jacobson]

I assume you're talking about Windows 98 or ME. It lets you use JPEGs images as wallpaper. (Without it, you can only use BMP files.) That is the only thing that I can think of that you need Active Desktop for.

 

[Ken Chan]

I thought the idea was that you can have a web page on your desktop. So you could have ActiveX and Java applets running on the desktop, instead of just static wallpaper. Calendars, push content, live TV, etc.

Perhaps it never caught on because (a) it introduced instability with stuff running all the time and (b) lots of times most of the desktop is covered anyway.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

(c) It crashed constantly.

 

[Ted Lee]

heh...guess that's why i don't know anyone who uses it. thx guys!

 

[Christ Reynolds]

hey vince, you left out this one...

(d) it crashed constantly.

CJ

 

[Matt`G]

So true. Not one of the better features offered by MS... I believe you are correct with your "neato" assessment, Ted! "Hey, look at the pretty blue screen this active desktop makes!"

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

Well it is perminently on in XP, they just dropped the name. So they did get the kinks out.