Windows Explorer Background Images

re: Windows Explorer Background Images

vincem — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 09:46:00 GMT

Very cool, thanks! Any way to get a higher resolution pix saved? e.g. When I saved as .gif the picture became very grainy.

re: Windows Explorer Background Images

John Roller — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 02:30:00 GMT

You can change the filetype to JPG if you wish.

re: Windows Explorer Background Images

vincem — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 08:11:00 GMT

that worked much better, thanks again! It was well worth the two minutes!

re: Windows Explorer Background Images

Antony — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 18:56:00 GMT

As soon as I move to a subfolder, the picture disappears. Am I supposed to copy these files to each subfolder or is there a way to make it work with all subfolders automatically?

re: Windows Explorer Background Images

John Roller — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 19:20:00 GMT

It only works at the root of the drive. I haven't figured out how to do it in subfolders yet.

Windows Explorer Background Images

"follow me" — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 14:41:00 GMT

A handy hint, courtesy of John Roller.
 
http://weblogs.asp.net/jroller/archive/2005/02/27/381414.asp...

re: Windows Explorer Background Images

Lonnie — Sat, 19 Mar 2005 07:54:00 GMT

Thanks for this tip; I've been trying to figure out how to do it without a 3rd party app for quite a while.

I did figure out a way to do the same in sub-folders, but (by this method) it must be done 1 folder at a time:

Right click the folder to which you want to apply the image and choose Properties-->Customize-->Change Icon

Pick an icon from the choices if given or navigate to an .ico file. You must change the icon to make this work, although you can change it back to the original when finished.

This creates a desktop.ini file in the folder which you can then open and modify. When you do open it in a text editor, you will see something like this:

[.ShellClassInfo]
IconFile=%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Icons\XP Folders\My PDFs XP.ico
IconIndex=0

Now you can copy the very useful info that John provided and follow his instructions.

I have found that any system-supported image type works as long as the filename in desktop.ini matches the image filename.

I found that if I use a small picture, it is tiled (repeated throughout the window). I don't like that effect, so I created a blank .jpg file the size of my desktop and saved it as folder_template.jpg which I gave a read-only attribute so I wouldn't accidentally over write it.

The background color can be set to anything as long as it's light. Now open an image file and resize it to what you want to see in the right-hand explorer pane. Now cut and paste it into your template.jpg. For me, a nice effect was to use photoshop to "lasso" a section of a pic using a 30 pixel "feather" and copy / paste it into folder_template.jpg. Save it in the same folder as desktop.ini, making sure the folder name and text in the .ini file match.

My explanation may be too long, but after you have done it a couple of times, you can do other folders in just a minute or two if you already have your image files selected.

I do have a question, though:

How can we customize the left-hand explorer pane ?

Still a mystery to a non-tech professional like me, but I surely do appreciate forums (and blogs) like this. Thanks.

Windows Explorer Background Images

Qvestchun — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 00:21:00 GMT

I think that Explorer will ignore the desktop.ini file in the folder if that folder's attributes aren't set as "read-only" or "system". I haven't figured out how to set this for a batch of folders at once though, since the attrib command in xp's command line won't do just folders to my knowledge. It will only do 'all files' or 'all files and folders', there's no 'all folders' option that I can see.