Active Desktop

Categories: Microsoft Windows stubs

Active Desktop is a feature of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and Windows 98 and higher that allows the user to add HTML content to the desktop.

Users can add HTML both in place of the regular wallpaper and as independent resizable desktop items. Items available on-line can be regularly updated and synchronized so users can stay updated without visiting the website in their browser.

Active Desktop works much like desktop widget technology in that it allows users to place customized information on their desktop.

Turning Active Desktop off saves a bit of memory and improves the performance of low-memory PCs. There is a checkbox in Window's Display Properties dialog box to do this. Two TweakUI settings can disable Active Desktop completely or disallow changes to it.

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History

The introduction of the Active Desktop marked Microsoft's attempt to capitalize on the short-lived push technology fad spawned by PointCast and its imitators. Active Desktop placed a number of "channels" on the user's computer desktop that provided continually-updated information like news headlines and stock quotes without requiring the user to open a Web browser.

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Current usage

Current versions of Windows, including Windows XP, still provide the option to display Web pages and channels built with Microsoft's Channel Definition Framework (CDF) format on the desktop, but the latter functionality has been deprecated for several years.

The HTML displaying capabilities are now mainly used for creating original wallpapers and adding search boxes to the desktop. For example one could copy the following code from the Wikipedia site to display Wikipedia's search-box on your desktop: 

<form
    name="searchform"
    action="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search"
    id="searchform">
  <input
      id="searchInput"
      name="search"
      type="text"
      accesskey="f"
      value="" />
  <input
      type='submit'
      name="go"
      id="searchGoButton"
      value="Go" />
</form>
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External links

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