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Play Flash movies on the Windows Desktop
A link that has been doing the rounds in the office is the rather impressive Polar Clock. There is a screensaver available, but what I really wanted was a way of showing the clock on my desktop. An image is simple but this is a flash movie and so can't be used with the normal Display Properties settings.
The solution is the Active Desktop, a technology loudly proclaimed in Windows 98 and then quietly forgotten even since. The idea of having a webpage as your desktop is not actually that bad, especially now that broadband is more common. Seven years ago, it was just not practical to have a live webpage on the desktop.
A lot also depends on the webpage itself and the number of icons you have on the desktop. A webpage with lots of links on a Desktop full of icons (I've only just spilled onto the second monitor) is messy and hard to use.
The Polar Clock is ideal because it sits in the background and does not interfere with anything else.
Here's how I did it....
Right-click on the Desktop and select Properties from the menu that appears. Click on the Desktop tab and then on the Customize Desktop button.
Click on the Web tab and then on New. Copy the address of the page you want to use, in this case http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/upload/polarclock/polarclock.html, and then paste it into the New Desktop Item box. Click on OK to save the change. No password is needed for this page so click on OK in the next window.
Windows then downloads the webpage and associated files such as pictures or the flash movie we want here. Click on OK in all the windows to save the changes. You may need to left click once on an empty part of the desktop and press F5 for the change to take place
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That clock is indeed very cool but if you need an alarm, you gotta check out this Online Alarm Clock:
http://onlineclock.net
posted-by Alarm Clock Webmaster | June 19, 2007 1:48 PM
Love the clock and saw this idea in the magazine and so rushed to my lap top to try it out. However once one the desktop, a grey box appears that tells me I need to update my flash player. It is the latest update so I can not figure it out. Any ideas?
posted-by Chris | July 14, 2007 5:12 PM