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| The "Always on Bottom" Rant |
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posted by Editor on Thursday December 06, @10:35AM
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WorldMaker writes "Web advertisers have found that a new way to draw people's eyeballs to ads is by hiding their ad windows behind the web browser so that as you close the window you stare at their ad. This devious ads-on-exit technique has been employed by Windows Application developers for some time now (AOL being a prime example, but others included as well), especially those shareware developers dependent on the cash stream of in-application ads, so it is no surprise to see it happening on the web as well. What is interesting about the web-based technique v. the application technique (which some web sites use for Exit Surveys) is that in order to truly work for an ad (which is loaded near the top of the page and does not have access to the browser's script's onExit handlers), the ads have to keep themselves "Always on Bottom". Of course the question of the day... Is there some productive use of this technique?
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Applications on many operating systems have provided "Always on Top", but why not the Opposite? The one notable example of Always on Bottom is, of course, the Desktop. Although a failure in execution, Microsoft's Active Desktop asks us to think about what kinds of information we want in the perpetual background.
Stardock's DesktopX, a desktop replacement, provides (even in Beta) a slightly more stable attempt at the Active Desktop. (Although I have heard Windows 2000/XP's Active Desktop can compete with it much better than 9x's.) Some use it for "theme"-ing their desktop, but perhaps the more productive use is using Objects such as Computer Monitors, Network Monitors, News, Stocks, Reminders and Post-Its.
What types of "Always on Bottom" information do you prefer?
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by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06, @10:12PM EST (#1)
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>What types of "Always on Bottom" information do you prefer?
A really great looking walpaper. Try http://www.terradreams.de/MainIndex.htm
Other than that, since a person never really looks at the desktop but the windows above it, I think it could be useful for giving information through peripheral vision.
Heres a quote from lavaps man page, a lava lamp like top process-tracking program. "The idea is that you can run it in the background and get a rough idea of what's happening to your system without devoting much concentration to the task."
One idea thats completely infesible is to have your desktop be a 3d-rendered pool of water, that churned under high CPU load. You could be reading /. in a web browser and still have a feel for your cpu load.
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There will always be a lower level which you can call "the bottom" and whose only purpose is to contain interactive elements above it. Making the desktop interactive is just a half-hearted attempt at panes (i.e. superimposed workspaces). Personally I like ion, since it's functionally equivalent to having one big Active Desktop with all the different content you want. Forget about putting windows on top of it. (And if you miss your wallpaper like me, you can tweak it to allow transparency and then use aterm.)
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