Keep a Clean Desktop

Boy, is this a subtle hint to get off my butt and do a tut!

Some of this won't apply to other operating systems. This is my XP taming tut.

You can download a set of Folder Icons here. They are in rar format. If you don't have a working copy of WinRar, you can download a free copy of this file compression program - Izarc here. It has not failed to work on any rar or zip files I've encountered.

Unzip the icons into its own folder and move it to My Documents. (This may be the last time you ever hear me say to move something to My Documents.)

The tutorial is not necessarily a PSP tut, but on cleaning your desktop and organizing your snagged and working files. This is also a workaround for XP's default setting to save and open everything in MY DOCUMENTS or MY PICTURES. Windows is notorious for bogging down over the least little thing. Having a cluttered desktop eventually confuses Windows and makes your computer slow down.

The more is not the merrier for Windows. The more is usually confusing to an already bungled GUI.



Defaulting to save everything in My Documents is the worst things XP could have done to a snagger. I am notoriously disorganized. Converting to XP from Win 98 was a nightmare for me as XP defaults everything to its way of doing things.

The plus side of XP is the ability to browse thumbnails and especially PSP files. I set Explorer's default view to Thumbnails so I can find the tube or brush I'm looking for. But it's murder for speed when you open a directory with a hundred psp files loading as thumbnails. Explorer defaults to open in My Documents. Everything defaults to save in My Documents. You end up with chaos and it takes forever to load before you can change directories. Unless My Documents looks like this:

The most recent workaround I've found is for Outlook Express default to saving all attachments in My Documents. I won't go into my annoyance when I clean out an OE folder, saving a few hundred attachments to any folder besides My Documents. I used to have a registry hack that would make OE save to the last folder I saved to, but it quit working. Sigh. Recently, I noticed a glitch in OE. If I attach a file and send it, OE will revert to save all attached files in the folder I sent the attachment from until I reboot or attach a file from a different folder. When I open OE with the intent of snagging and saving multiple files, I open a new email, browse to my daily folder (I'll explain it later) on my desktop and attach a tiny file such as the diamond.gif that's used to block Yahoo's ads. I send an myself an email before I start the cleanup and as long as I don't close OE, it will automatically open that folder to save attachments to.

I created a snagger's file system that works around my issues with My Documents. If you value your files enough to save them and your time enough to upgrade your computer, you will never use My Documents as a file store. Desktop isn't much better but the workaround is to use XP's new features and keep those files hidden behind an icon on your desktop.

With XP, I started saving and exporting working files to my desktop so I could find them fast to include them in an email or pull them back up to work on later - always thinking I would organize the files when I found the time. Desktop is the easiest directory to click to inside the save window because its at the top of the directory list. To clear the clutter, I made a folder on my desktop & drag&drop the files over the new folder icon. I left it there for awhile. Anything I saved or downloaded or unzipped or wanted to put in an email went to my desktop first, drug to the "catchall folder" second. That folder got full fast. Like a sink full of dirty dishes stacking up for a week, it takes twice as long to organize files from a bulging folder than from several small ones. It was a better but not good solution.

Today, I keep 5 icons on my desktop. Four of them are folder shortcuts. I finally found a good working system for my saves, my working files and my shortcuts. Remember, I said it doesn't take much to confuse Windows and make it doggy? Too many icons on your desktop can mess up XP as fast as a corrupt font. Using this system,Windows doesn't look for a cache full of icons on startup. It looks for 4 or 5 icons and I still have access to all my files and folders in one or two clicks, vs the dozen clicks to get thru a directory or wade thru the start menu.

First: To make a new folder on your desktop, right click anywhere on your desktop... New > Folder Name it. Click OK.

Second: Changing icons on your desktop. XP makes this easy.

System icons are found by right clicking on your desktop.

Properties > Desktop Tab > Customize Desktop. I have unchecked all the desktop icons because I do not need them. They are at the top of my start menu and when I have a full screen, why return to my desktop when a button opens the menu to access them?

I have changed my recycle bin to match my love for hillbilly themes. If you create your own icons, you need two similar but different icons so you can tell at a glance if it's full or empty. I did this easily by using the PSP colorize feature on the outhouses.

I don't trust the Desktop Cleanup feature not to wipe out something I want to keep, so I disabled it. I don't need it because there are no unused icons on my desktop. The less you give Windows to remember, the better off you will be. Each scheduled activity has to startup and run behind your interface, so it's using system resources that could be going into PSP.

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To make a shortcut to a folder on your harddrive: Right click on your desktop. New > Shortcut > Browse thru the directory til you find the folder you want linked to and choose it. Give it a name that is useful to you. Click OK.

To change a folder's icon, right click on the folder. Properties ... at the bottom of the window is a Change Icons button. You will have to browse to the new icon folder you've made and stored in an easy location. Choose the icon you want to use and click ok back to your desktop.

To change the name of a folder or file on your desktop, press F2 and change the name only. Do not change the extension, unless you know what you are doing... ie... from pspimage to pspframe.

Starting with the 4th icon to the right in the above example - The mask - Vetch is a resident desktop folder. I made it on the desktop and left it there! I drag all my software icons that I want fast access to into this folder. Instead of cluttering my desktop, they are all tucked neatly into one folder. I can open the folder and access my shortcuts in an Explorer view to organize them. That is a hassle every time I want to open a program so I drug the folder onto to my taskbar next to my clock to make it into a popup toolbar. It stays there so I can access the software or files I need without multiple clicks.

The third icon to the right is a shortcut to a WORKING FILES directory.



This was the original desktop folder that I kept dumping files into. I eventually renamed the folder and moved it from my desktop to C:\Working Files. I left the shortcut on my desktop for easy access to my working files.

I store files in this directory that I use often but not daily. Recent tubes/mists I've made, tags, my photos & tuts, graphics and snagged photos to work from. You can see by the directory list that there are several folders beneath Working Files. (Before you ask, pissmeoff is a reference to some tubes I downloaded and took offense over the tuber's attached terms of use. That folder is there to remind me to write the tut for making the tubes she was so rude about... they take five minutes to make in PSP using preset shapes that came with the software.)

On January 1, I started a new folder and a new system of saving files and projects daily. I made a folder C:\2006 with a shortcut on my desktop to this folder. It is a "containing folder" for daily work and downloaded files.

Then I made a folder on my desktop named Jan 1. As I played and saved and emailed and downloaded that day, I saved everything I work on to my desktop then drug the files into the daily folder when my desktop got cluttered.

My daily computing routine starts with opening Outlook Express to download my email. It takes a minute or two to start downloading, so while I wait, I click to my desktop and create a new folder for the day. This is when I change the folder icon to something more attractive. I keep all my icons in one folder so they're easy to browse to. I also copy the diamond.gif file to the new folder.

I use Winrar to unzip my downloaded zips into individual folders, delete the zip file and move the new manilla folder into the daily folder on my desktop.

At the end of the day, I drag & drop the daily folder onto my 2006 icon. It moves the desktop folder into the 2006 directory and tucks everything neatly away, off of my desktop. Here's what my 2006 folder looks like when I open it. In effect, I have a running journal of every PSP project I've done - plugins I recently installed, help files I've saved.

I don't use this view's setting often. My preference is the Thumbnail option so I can see what files I have in the folders. The steamy-nights folder is the download for this week's tag tut. It will remain in the Jan 16 folder until I use it. Then I will move its files to my tubes/mask/brushes archives and delete the containing folder.

At the end of the month, all of the daily folders will go into a new containing folder: 01 January

(Notice that I often use numbers in my file names? XP reads numbers before it does alphas, so 01 January, 02 February, etc will put them in chronological order, instead of alphabetizing the folders.) In February, I will leave all the daily folders in the 2006 folder until the next month.

Now and then, I need to move files from my daily folder (like the stash of photographs I took last week.) It's easy to do with this system. I open Working files and one of the daily folders in separate windows and drag and drop the folders and files onto the folder I want to move them to in Working Files.

In this case, I am dragging a background tile into the background tile folder.

I hope something in this tut was helpful. It's taken me a year to find these workarounds and begin to get organized. I hope I may have saved you some time.

vetch