Desktop Icons, Changing Color of Text and Background

I wrote:

----------------
What's Next?

Version 5: (??-??-99) Will allow you to interactively set the icon
text color to any color you want!
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Hmmm..

I see in the readme file for version 4.2:

-----------
Starting with version 4, you can also change the icon text color!
-----------

The two statements are contradictory...

98 Guy wrote in :

The OP was looking for a way to change to font color of the
desktop icons, not necessarily make the text background
transparent.

It does both. I even posted how..

The author does not (or did not) indicate that his "transparent42"
enabled the user to set the text color.

In fact, he even acknowledged that it did NOT have that ability, because
he hints of that functionality in a future release:


Wrong. How do you think I know? Because I SEE IT. Stop throwing manuals and
dockets around and pay attention to a basic post when you see it in front of
you!


I quote:
Transparent v4.2
Freeware by Jay Guerette
Released September 15, 1998
www.pobox.com/~jayguerette/transparent


This utility will turn your Windows 95 or NT desktop icon text
backgrounds transparent; allowing your wallpaper to show through.
Starting with version 4, you can also change the icon text color!

================================================== ===================

This is straight from the text file for v4.2. Which part of thew above is not
clear and direct enough for you?

98 Guy wrote in :

It's strange that Micro$oft clearly has a font-color control
on the user-interface for icon text, but has it greyed out for
some reason.

Not really. There's a whole list of stuff there, the appropriate
controls for each entry become enabled as required when it is
selected. If they'd had native controls built to handle icon text
colours and backgrounds, enabling those GUI controls would have been
done. As it is they'd be as useful as dummy knobs on a dashboard so
they greyed them to avoid setting false hopes as much as anything
else.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say in that paragraph.

I pointed out that there is a font-color control on the user-interface
for the icon-text object, but that the control is in-operative (ie -
it's greyed out). Why would Microsoft not want the user to set the
desktop icon's text-color? I'm not sure if you're trying to answer that
question in your paragraph above.


Just saying that each entry in that drop down list box has varying degrees of
internal control. The GUI controls we see are a superset, so as not every
entry has meaning for all the visible controls, some of those are greyed out.
They either had to do this, or create a far more complex tabbed page that
changed layout with every choice of item to edit. Given that there aren't
that many GUI controls, they wouldn't have done that.

I'm not saying they wouldn't want a user to change it, I'm just saying that
they didn't provide the means. This is common knowledge. It's why Jay
Guerette made Transparent, to do it. Other people did it too, but his is
likely the simplest and best, it's why it survives all over the web even now.

98 Guy wrote in :

I wrote:

----------------
What's Next?

Version 5: (??-??-99) Will allow you to interactively set the icon
text color to any color you want!
----------------

Hmmm..

I see in the readme file for version 4.2:

-----------
Starting with version 4, you can also change the icon text color!
-----------

The two statements are contradictory...


Not really, I think he means that v5 lets you do it without needing to set it
in a commandline and restart it, is all.

But how often do we really want to mess with icon text colours? Changing
the command in a shortcut, and firing it up again is enough. I thought I once
caught it allowing this without being shut down first but I'm not convinced,
I can't repeat that now. Might have been a shell restart or some other glitch
that made it appear so at some time.

If there were some tiny widget that could shut down a running process by name
the way task managers do it, it might be easier to chanmge it often. As it
is, it's just a tad awkward testing for best colours but once they're done,
that's it, so I imagine he decided no more elaborate control was needed.