Iconoid Help

Iconoid is a small program that helps reduce the clutter and confusion of the Windows® desktop.  With Iconoid you can:

• Automatically hide and display desktop icons
• Remove the colored box behind icon text
• Automatically set the colored box behind the text to an optimal color for your desktop picture
• Quickly and easily minimize all of the windows on your screen
• Save and restore the positions of icons
• Insure that icons do not move when you change screen resolutions
• Save icon locations for each screen resolution individually

To see the details, click on the picture.

More information is available in the Readme file and the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).

Iconoid can place a small icon in the system tray, or it can be hidden completely using a hot key combination.  Any and all of the features of Iconoid can be switched off using the various tabs in the main window.

Listed below is some additional information that is not specific to any tab.

• Hiding and showing the Iconoid window
  

  Hiding and showing the Iconoid window

  Iconoid has a main window which can be hidden by any of the following methods:
   

  • Click the Hide or minimize buttons on the window to hide the window.
     
  • Click on the tray icon (if enabled) :
    • Single Click to show the Iconoid window.
    • Double Click to hide the Iconoid window.
    
     
  • Use the Show/Hide key combination (if enabled). You can change the hot keys if you need to on the Options tab. The default is Ctrl-Shift-A.
     
  • Right click on the desktop and use the "Manage Desktop Icons" menu item to show the window.
• How to select colors for text or text backgrounds

  How to select colors for text or text backgrounds

  Iconoid has three ways of selecting colors:

  1. Left click on either of the color boxes in the Colors tab. This will bring up the standard Windows color selection dialog (window).  From there you can choose a new color.  The current color for your selection is shown in the first box at the bottom of that dialog.
  2. Right click on either of the color boxes in the Colors tab. This will show the desktop with some text in the middle.  You will notice that as you move the pointer around, the color in the center changes to show you the color under the mouse.  When you see a color you want, press the left mouse button.  If you don't want to select a new color, press the right mouse button.
  3. For backgrounds only, you can press the Resample Background Now button on the Colors tab. Resampling looks at the colors around each icon (8 pixels above, below and to the sides of the text) and determines an average color.  This is very useful when you have busy wallpaper and some icon text gets lost in the picture.  By choosing a color which is an average of the colors around the text, you will get the least disruptive choice for a text background color.

  You can, of course, also choose to have a transparent background by selecting that choice on the Colors tab.

  Iconoid checks every two seconds to see if the wallpaper or other settings have changed.  If so, it forces the colors to your choices.  If you have selected Automatically Resample Background on the Colors tab then the optimal background color is automatically calculated whenever the wallpaper changes also. 

• Icon Hiding

  Icon Hiding

  OK... This is a little weird, so hold on...

  You can choose to never show the desktop icons, always show the icons, or show them based on the position of your mouse pointer.  The first two options are pretty obvious, but the last one may be a little confusing.  So lets explain...

  If you choose to hide the icons based on the cursor position, you can get to see your pretty wallpaper whenever you don't need to see the icons.  You have three settings:

  1. Hide when off desktop

  This determines how long Iconoid will wait after your mouse moves from the desktop to another window until it hides the desktop icons.  In other words, how long after the cursor moves over a window should Iconoid hide the icons?

  2. Hide when on desktop

  When the mouse pointer is on the desktop, this slider specifies the amount of time the pointer must remain stationary before Iconoid hides the desktop icons.  The assumption here is that if you aren't moving the cursor, it is OK to hide the icons after a certain period of time. <

  3. Delay show on desktop

  When the cursor moves from a window to the desktop, you may not want the icons to be displayed immediately because this causes an annoying flashing effect when the cursor passes over the desktop while you are moving it between windows.  Use this slider to determine how long the mouse pointer must be over the desktop before hidden icons are displayed.

• Window Hiding

  Window Hiding

  You can select a 'Hot corner' for hiding windows from the Hiding tab.  If your cursor moves to the hot corner, all windows which have a minimize button (except for Iconoid itself) will be minimized.  If you find that you are always hiding windows by mistake when you go for a menu item in the upper left, the close button in the upper right, the Start button (usually in the lower left) or the system tray (usually in the lower right), you can check the '1 Second wait' box.  When '1 Second wait' is checked the cursor must be in the hot corner for about 1.5 seconds before the windows are minimized.

  There is also an option called'Use Windows 'Show Desktop'.  Don't use it unless you have problems with the built in minimizing mechanism.  When it is checked, Iconoid calls windows 'Show Desktop' function which is usually found in the tray of Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP systems.  Unfortunately, however, when Show Desktop is active, most of Iconoids functions do not work.  See Problems with Show Desktop for more information on that.

• Icon Positioning

  Icon Positioning

  Iconoid saves the name and position of icons in the registry when you click the Save button on the Positions tab and when Iconoid sees a screen resolution for the first time (if saving by screen resolution is enabled).  It also saves the positions the first time it is run.

  The way it works is to 'subclass' the desktop, which means that it injects a small bit of code into the code that handles the messages that Windows sends to the desktop handlers.  This is all done through standard Windows calls - no funny business here.  But doing such things always involves a very small amount of risk that the desktop can crash.  If it does, the desktop will restart on its own.

  One thing to note is that the Icon positions may, in some cases, revert to the positions they were in before Iconoid reset them.  If this happens, go to the Positions tab and restore them, then simply move one icon slightly.  This causes Windows to remember the position of all the icons from then on.

• Dealing with conflicts with Active Desktop

  Problems with Active Desktop

  Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP allow you to show web pages, jpeg pictures, Java applications, and other items on the desktop using something called "Active Desktop".   Unfortunately, the way that it does this causes most of the Iconoid functions to fail.   This is because it changes the internal relationship between the parts of the desktop that hold the icons and the parts that you see by actually using Internet Explorer to display the desktop.  Therefore, when Active Desktop is enabled, Iconoid has to disable many of its functions.  The disabled functions will return when Active Desktop is no longer in the way.  XP users are most likely to experience these problems because Microsoft, in their omniscient benevolence, turns on Active Desktop by default.

  To turn off Active desktop:

  Windows XP:	Right click the desktop Select "Properties" Select the "Desktop" tab Press the\"Customize Desktop" button Select the "Web" tab Uncheck all listed items. Also insure that Right Click > Arrange Icons By > Lock Web Items on Desktop is not checked.
  Windows 2000:	Right click the desktop Select "Active Desktop" Uncheck "Show Web Content".
  Windows 98:	Right click the desktop Select "Active Desktop" Uncheck "View as Web Page".
  Windows ME or Windows 2003:	??? Probably similar to one the above.

• Contact Information

  Contact information

  Iconoid web page: http://www.sillysot.com

  Email: sillysotsoftware@yahoo.com

  This is where you can send your SillyWare donations (a bad but clean joke, a strange picture or song, or any utterly useless fact, like how may grapes fit in your favorite tea cup or often your dumb sister unnecessarily uses the word 'like' in an average sentence).

  You can also make a cash donation to help fund Iconoid developmment and distribution by clickong on the donate button on the 'About' tab.

• License and warranty information

  License and warranty information

  No warranty is provided for Iconoid.
  
  SILLYSOT SOFTWARE (DOUG NADEL) PROVIDES THIS PROGRAM AND SOURCE CODE ON AN "AS IS" BASIS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
  
  Iconoid and its source code are provided free of charge. You may redistribute Iconoid as long as this license agreement is included and attribution is made to SillySot Software.  You may also use the code for any purpose as long as your documentation and comments within the code provide attribution to SillySot Software for the parts you use. You are not licensed to redistribute the Iconoid program, or minor modifications of the program as a whole if a fee will be charged and that fee is over and above the combined costs of the physical distribution medium and shipping without written permission of the author.  Permission to redistribute Iconoid without the written consent of SillySot Software is granted three (3) years after the date of release of the latest available release of Iconoid as determined in the About tab of the program.