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My Desktop was really mess and participating in some threads about desktop i start thinking on put some order there

I found Dexpot (freeware) that let me not only have 4 virtual desktops but let me 'virtually' have different things on each one.

I promise myself keep it organized, not sure if i will acomplish my promise

How did you deal with this?

I've never really had any problem with mess on the desktop. I just make sure to delete icons I don't really need, if there's some program I want to keep but not use often, I put it in the start menu.

For windows, I just make sure I close the programs I don't need.

A nice trick I discovered lately was to let the icon text have the same colour as the background (in other words; it's invisible) and that is great, much cleaner look. (Here's how it looks)

Disabling themes is also good, old-style title bars and the old-style taskbar are thinner than the skinned versions.

I just did it by hand isn´t that hard
I also oranized my Bookmarks and Start Menu. Spend an hour or so but I think its really worth it. Its so much easier to find thinks and it looks much better. The Style you can see in the Picture is Apple like and really nice and clean but i can´t use it so often because (I think you all know this problem)
I need to know how my Applications look on a normal XP install. here is my Desktop:
http://www.komani.de/desktop-nik.JPG

Mines, using DexPot are this 4

Just got DexPot today didnt know it before i read this thread.!
its great!

I never keep icons on my desktop. Just a pretty picture and the icons disabled. More serene and helps me get into the "zen" of coding.

> I never keep icons on my desktop

Same. Everything I want to launch is on the Taskbar as a 16x16 icon.

BTW, has anyone tried using the CreateDesktop/SwitchDesktop APIs?

omg my taskbar would fill 80% of the screen then!

well i try to keep my desktop clean. Maybe some shortcuts, only a few.

I got much much much stuff installed, so i have chosen to split my start menu. Organise it. Like having main menu's and submenus underneath them..

Like:

Programming -> purebasic, freebasic, ms vs.net, bloodshed c++ and much
more

Utilities -> Total commander, Winrar, Graphcalc

Multimedia -> Games, paint shop pro, flstudio, rebirth

you get the idea.

[edit: all the samples i posted here was either freeware or stuff i have bought legally.! ]

May I recommend DesktopRightMenu?

http://www.dracsoft.com/viewdownload.php?id=42

PB wrote:BTW, has anyone tried using the CreateDesktop/SwitchDesktop APIs?

Nope.

Can you show us some example?

I use Dexpot - but the only thing I dont like of it is the mouse switch (in linux its much better - I have similar config of time, etc.. ) but its still not the same thing. plus, you cant drop a program to another desktop with the mouse, can you ? ahh I miss linux for that...

I also used MS power toys.. it has a desktop management system (which isnt very good but when dexpot didnt exist, this one did, and I used to work with it). its not good at all though.

By the way... Dexpot is quite buggy you might find that a program will appear twice (once in a desktop and another instance on another desktop) I dont know why is this but its not nice - it happens mostly with jaPBe and some others. Say firefox.. when its loading a page, and you move to another desktop once firefox loaded that page, it will appear on the current desktop as well (and on the previous)... lame.

I am guilty of having too many shortcuts on the desktop because I like to have the programs and folders that i use frequently readily available, somehow the start menu does not appeal to me because it's also cluttered and full of longwinded submenus, neither does having virtual desktops seem appealing though have not tried it.
I seem to recall reading about a utility that would add functionality to the right-click button, where you have a virtual customized “start-button” by right clicking on the desktop, now if only I could find it.

I have an auto-hiding menu docked to the top of the screen with all my programs categorised in it. It is a feature of Directory Opus but there are bound to be free programs that do something similar.

Dexpot looks quite good, thanks for pointing it out!

Same. Everything I want to launch is on the Taskbar as a 16x16 icon.

I use the quicklaunch on the taskbar, too. But what I do is have a couple of icons for my main programs, and then I have a folder icon for like: "2D" that has my graphics programs, a folder icon for "utilities" that has my programming utilities like installers, compressors, etc in it. That way it doesn't hog the whole taskbar.

And the picture I have on my desktop has been XPs "Autumn" ever since I got XP. (I love fall so much (especially after living places that did not have "seasons"))

found it. http://www.stardock.com/products/rightclick/