Review: DesktopX

DesktopX Pro, $69.95
Stardock Corporation
http://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/

There have been times when I spent quite a bit of time and effort on customizing my Windows desktop to be just so. Nowadays, I'm mostly too busy reformatting to drift too far away from the defaults, but when the time comes that I feel like obsessively customizing again, this is one of the products that I'm going to turn to. DesktopX lets you put objects directly on your WIndows desktop, from a single analog clock to an entire new user interface. This leads to a level of control over the interface that Windows itself doesn't offer you by a long shot. Better yet, you don't even have to do all the work yourself: cruise on over to WinCustomize and you'll find thousands of objects and themes for DesktopX that others have created already, from silly to sublime.

DesktopX is priced at several levels, starting at $14.95 for an end user version that can just load objects create dby others. The $69.95 Pro version is the one you want if you're a developer, though: it lets you create your own objects and themes, and program them using VBScript or JScript, and export them as standalone programs (incorporating a runtime version of the DesktopX engine). The programming interface is quite simple to deal with; it's largely based in setting properties in dialog boxes. A color-coded script editor lets you deal with customizing behavior. I installed a copy on my Windows XP text box, and it wasn't long before I was happily creating popup menus, mucking around with transparent animating icons, and otherwise drifting away from the Windows user interface standards.

Although one thinks of utilities like DesktopX as being "just for fun," I can see a couple of possibilities for using it in commercial settings. Its ability to effectively hide and completely customize the Windows user interface means that it would be a very nice way to build sexy-looking kiosk applications, for example. I also think there might be a niche for catering to power users who want a bit more at their fingertips than Windows provides out of the box - though here you're competing with the thousands of free themes available on WinCustomize. There's also the possibility of providing simple applications as DesktopX widgets (precompiled applications with the runtime included). In any case, DesktopX combines a smooth engine for customizing Windows (I didn't see any glitches at all in my testing) with a simple and easy programming interface. And heck, in the end it's fun too.

  Click for larger screenshot

Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics.