Accelaware® Cool MC™

Create your own custom COOL My Computer active desktop wallpaper!

Created using FIREWORKS and PAINT. You put your mouse over the icon with the drive name/letter and click it and it opens up the drive. It helps so you don't have to click that My Computer icon every time you want to check your drives, loading faster too. And it is a cool alternative to just putting plain icon links on the desktop.

I can either:

• Give you this example,

• make you a custom designed one,

• or tell you how to make your own.

If you want to see this baby in action, just click on the picture to the left. That will the show "active" desktop version. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THIS EXAMPLE FILE.

If you want me to make you a design, just e-mail me at [email protected]. We will have to exchange addresses and then you must send me $10 plus shipping and handling for me to make it for you. As soon as I am finished, I will ship it out to you on a floppy disk.

If you want me just to show you how to do it at this website, just read on. But let me warn you, if you are not at least an intermediate to expert at computers, don't try this because it will only cause you pain and wasted effort (because this takes a long time and SOFTWARE).

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN 'COOL MC' ACTIVE DESKTOP

1. First, note all the drives on your computer. My computer has a floppy drive, a hard drive, a CD-ROM, a 100MB external zip drive, and a 650MB ZIP CD Burner. That is 5 drives. So you must have 5 drives all together if you have 5 drive letters in "My Computer".

2. You must get all the drive ICONS. The best way to do this is to press "Print Screen" while in MY COMPUTER and then go into PAINT and press CTRL-V (paste). This will show you the whole screen you made a snapshot of. So, no, if you took the shot at 5:30pm, it will always say 5:30pm; the clock will NOT still tick on! :)

3. Make a selection box around the icons and press CTRL-C (copy).

4. Click File>New and when you are asked to save the file, say no. Then press CTRL-V. You should have something like this:
   
   
   

5. Then afterwards, you can change the icon or text labels to another icon or change the font and/or font size.

6. Then line up the icons VERTICALLY.

7. Change the background color if you want. Then save the file as coolmc1.jpg. Make sure you stored these files in a folder named coolmc or something like that.

8. Keep the file open. Put boxes around each icon with the color white. Or you can do it the way I did: make it look like a bevel or a button. Save the file again as coolmc2.jpg.

9. Keep the file open. Change the color of the boxes or make the bevel colors the opposite for each side. Save the file as coolmc3.jpg. You should have something like this (3 separate files):
   
                                                                  
   

10. This is the part where you need Fireworks or a program that can do frames and states for webpages. Load Fireworks now.

11. For frame 1, have coolmc1.jpg, and for frame 2, coolmc2.jpg, and so on. To add the images to the file, click Insert>Image.

12. Make sure each image is lined up for each frame in the same spot on the canvas.

13. Put the hotspots in a square that covers the square around each drive (you should be on frame 2 or 3 so you can see the square). Try not to over lap the hot spots.

14. Go to frame 1. Then click WIndow>Behaviours for each one and click the + arrow on the little window that pops up and select "Simple Rollover".

15. Then, go to frame 2. Double click the hotspot. Then click the + and select "Nav Bar Down". Then make sure "frame 3" is selected from the drop down box (where it says "Frame No.").

16. Do this for all of them. If you have 5 drives, you should have 5 hotspots that all look like this when you click "Behaviors":
    
    
    

17. You can see that I have a "My Computer" graphic sideways there. I made that in a cool program called Xara 3D. You should download it, it's great. Those greenish colored boxes are the hotspots. When you put your mouse over those areas where the hotspot is, the "onMouseOver" command refers to frame 2 to show the part of the coolmc2.gif. And the "onClick" one refers to frame 3 to show the part  of the coolmc3.gif.

18. After all this is done, you can add any other images to it, but make sure they do not overlap the hotspots. That would cut some of the images out of their hotspots. See the section "OTHER COOL STUFF" for more things you can do with the Cool MC.

19. Save your work.

20. Export the file to the directory (coolmc) and make sure you have it in the FrontPage format. All the images that the file needs will be stored there. The main file will be stored as coolmc.htm. The workfile will be saved as coolmc.png, which is the file you open in Fireworks to edit it.

21. Once you have finished all that, exit the program and make a new active desktop item. Select the file coolmc.htm.

22. Adjust the file to only take up part of the screen, or just do it however you like it. To make sure you don't accidently close it or see the adjustable bars and things like that, right click on the desktop and click Active Desktop>Lock Desktop Items. Then you are done!!!!

OTHER COOL STUFF

• You can also take the My Computer icon, make it 2x the size, and put it in the COOL MC file as the title, like I did on my example. Click here to see my example. All you have to do to get this is:

1. Copy the desktop (with print screen). Make sure the My Computer icon is not selected.

2. Go into paint and paste it there. Then select the icon (and the text if you wish) and copy that.

3. Click File>New and say NO when it asks if you want to save the file.

4. Press CTRL-C.

5. Make sure the image is selected. Click Image>Stretch/Skew.

6. Change the Stretch properties for both horizontal and vertical to 200.

7. Now the icon (and/or text) is twice the original size.

8. Now you can add this to the Fireworks file if you want.

9. Hint: for better quality, you should redo the text for the My Computer icon using the text button in paint and typing in the title at a larger font.

• You can also, using the Xara 3D program, add cool 3D text to the active desktop too. Just load the program, choose any style you want, and then type in "My Computer". Save the file as a JPG. Then in paint, just rotate the image 90 degrees and save it. Then insert it into the Fireworks file.

I hope you like it! For any questions, e-mail me at [email protected]