Deranged Coder's DeskMate v1.0

What is it?

This application displays a floating image on your desktop.

How do I use it?

To start it, in Windows Explorer double-click on DeskMate.exe or from a command prompt, change directory into the directory that contains the DeskMate files and type DeskMate.exe.

Keyboard shortcuts:

Mouse shortcuts

Note that if "click through" is enabled, then the application will no longer respond to mouse or keyboard input and the only way to gain access to these commands is through the popup menu of the system tray icon. The system tray icon will only be shown if "click through" is active, unless AlwaysShowTrayIcon is set to True in the .ini file.

Can I create/use my own images?

To load an image, either drag-drop it from Windows explorer, or bring up the Open Picture dialog to select an image to load by double-clicking on the application, entering Ctrl + O from the keyboard or right-clicking and selecting 'Open Image' from the popup menu.

When creating an image for use with DeskMate, be aware that the application uses the color of the upper-left most pixel of the image and selects that as the 'transparent' color so for best results, make sure that the selected image has a solid color background and the background color is distinct from the rest of the image. For maximum compatibility, the 'transparent' color (i.e. background color) should be a basic color. A color is considered a "basic" color if the R, G and B values are either 0x00 or 0xFF. Thus, the colors recommended for use for the background are:

Bitmap (*.bmp) and Portable Network Graphics (*.png) images are supported.

What other settings can I modify?

The default settings for this application can be changed going to the Settings page from the popup menu or by directly modifying the accompanying .ini file.

Supported Operating Systems

This program is designed to run on Windows 2000 and higher. On older versions of Windows operating systems, the program will still run but transparency will not be supported.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How can I move the image if 'click-through' is enabled?

A. Disable 'click-through', drag the image to the new location on screen, then re-enable 'click-through'.

Q. Will you add GIF support? JPEG support?

A. I don't want to add GIF support due to licensing issues associated with the LZW compression that is used in GIF images. I have no plans to add JPEG support due to the inherent lossy compression found in JPEG images that causes some ugly looking artifacting and wreaks havoc on transparency.

Disclaimer

The author makes no claims as to the stability and reliability of this program. In short, use this program at your own risk. :-)

Credits

Revision history