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| How To . . . Make A Web Site Or Image Your Wallpaper |
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Step-By-Step January 2000 • Vol.6 Issue 1 |
 How To . . . Make A Web Site Or Image Your Wallpaper | ||
 Even though changing the wallpaper in your kitchen will take all weekend and several trips to Home Depot, changing the wallpaper in Windows is quick and easy. Better still, it is free. The first task is to find a suitable image. A larger image works better. You want to avoid an image that is so busy or dark that it makes it hard to see your icons. In addition, if your computer is at work or in a public place, you want choose your image carefully. Because of the wide variety of images available on the Internet, it is a great place to find the perfect wallpaper. No matter what your interests, you will probably find many Web pages devoted to them that include interesting images. Once you find the perfect image, you must place a copy of it on your hard drive before you can turn it into wallpaper. You must also configure Windows to use that image as your wallpaper.  The Easy Way. In either Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer, right-click the image you want to use and select Set As Wallpaper from the pop-up menu. Enjoy your new wallpaper. No really, that is all there is to it! Both programs automatically save the image to your hard drive in the Windows subdirectory. Navigator uses the name Netscape Wallpaper.bmp; Internet Explorer uses Internet Explorer Wallpaper.bmp. Then the programs configure Windows to use that image as the wallpaper. This approach has two minor drawbacks. First, it can put the image only in the center of the screen. If you want the image to repeat, you have to change that setting manually in the Properties dialog box (see below). Second, if you repeat the process to change your wallpaper, the new image overwrites the old image without making a backup copy so you cannot use this approach to cycle between images.
The Windows 98 Way. This second approach to creating your wallpaper has much more flexibility and overcomes the drawbacks of the first approach. It requires Windows 98. First, transfer the image from the Web site to your hard disk. First, right-click the image. In Navigator, select the Save Image As command; in Internet Explorer, select Save Picture As from the pop-up menu. You will then receive a prompt for a name and a folder for the file. The image will be saved as either a Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) or Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG) file, depending on the format used on the Web page. This approach does not work under Windows 95 because Win95 can use only a bit-mapped (BMP) file as wallpaper. (The browsers convert the files to BMP under the first approach.) Once the file is stored on your hard drive, right-click the Desktop and select Properties. In the Properties dialog box, select the Background tab and click the Browse button. Find the image to display on the Desktop. Once you have selected the image, click OK. You will see a preview of the image in the dialog box. You can use the drop-down Display menu to tile the image or to stretch it to fit the screen. Click OK to apply the selection. That is all there is to it! Note that displaying a GIF or JPG image requires you to use Active Desktop. If you are not already doing so, a warning will appear giving you the opportunity to activate it. Displaying A Web Page On Your Desktop. If you are using Win98 and Active Desktop, you have two options for displaying a Web page on your Desktop. The first is to use the entire Desktop to display the Web page. First, right-click the screen and select Properties. Click the Background tab and then the Browse button. Then, point to the Web page to display. This approach is typically used for local Web pages or pages on your network. Using this option, you may also want to click the Effects tab and tell Windows to hide icons while viewing a Web page. Otherwise, the icons on top of the Web page will make it unreadable. The links work, but they load into your browser rather than onto the Desktop. You can also add any active content, such as a stock ticker or weather map, you want from the Web to your Desktop. These typically come from the Web rather than locally. This is shown on only a small portion of your screen. To do this, right-click the Desktop and select Properties. Click the Web tab and then the New button. Enter the universal resource locator (URL, Web address) to display and then click OK.  by Ronny Richardson |
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