Transparency Problems

A note about transparency problems. Some people experience transparency problems with DeskFolders 2 in which the background is corrupted. As of beta 3 there is now an option to enable a hack to workaround this. Adding a "DeskFolderPaintHack" item to your step.rc will cause DeskFolders to use an alternate method for transparency. This will (should) fix transparency but adds a problem of it's own: if a window is on top of a desk folder when DeskFolders is loaded or recycled that window become a part of the desk folder's background. I'm working to try and find a more effective workaround, until then I hope this is sufficient.

What is DeskFolders?

DeskFolders is a Litestep desktop module which allows you place embeded folders ("desk folders") onto your desktop. Desk folders can display the contents of any directory or shell folder, such as the Desktop folder or My Computer. You can create multiple desk folders with any position or size and in a variety of styles and colors. Desk folders are designed to be highly customizable and to blend in well with your existing LS desktop. DeskFolders is great for providing quick access to files and directories or for allowing you to drag and drop files between Explorer and the LS desktop.

Configuration

Once you've downloaded DeskFolders, place the DLL into your Litestep directory and add a LoadModule line for it into your step.rc. Note: If desktop.dll is also used, it must be loaded before deskfolders.dll.

  LoadModule C:\Litestep\DeskFolders.dll

DeskFolders uses a named parameter system for configuration which is different from most Litestep modules. The reason I chose this type of system is due to its flexibility: parameters can by given in any order and any parameter can be omitted independently of the others. Parameter-value pairs take on the form of "parameter(value)". Here is typical line for a desk folder:

  *DeskFolder folder(desktop) position(100, 100) size(300, 200) view(icon)

This creates a desk folder at screen coordinates 100, 100 with a width and height of 300 and 200 pixels respectively. The desk folder show the contents of the desktop folder in icon view. The position and size parameters are just x,y value pairs, negative values can be used to indicate values relative to the bottom right corner of the screen.

Parameters

Color values can be either an RGB value (in HTML #RRGGBB format) or a predefined color name: black, blue, cyan, green, red, violet, white, or yellow.

Bang Commands

The bang command interface allows you modify the desk folder's properties from hotkeys, shortcuts, etc. The Litestep bang command for all commands is "!DeskFolder". The format of a DeskFolder bang command is:

  !DeskFolder <command> <parameter-list>

Examples:

  *Hotkey Win D !DeskFolder browse name(main) folder(desktop)
  *Hotkey Win U !DeskFolder browse up
  *Hotkey Win H !DeskFolder hide name(someFolder)

The command name specifies the action to be taken. The parameter lists have the same form as the parameters to *DeskFolder. All bang commands take an optional "name" parameter, which uniquely identifies the desk folder object to act on (if there is more than one desk folder). If name is omitted, the action is performed on the first desk folder; if name is "all", the action effects all desk folders. Here is the table of commands and their parameters.