These settings allow you to define some defaults which affect all objects and their manipulation. These settings will take effect unless they are manually overwritten for each object.

Start Command on
This defines what action must be performed to activate objects. You can choose a single or double click of the mouse. The other options for activation such as 'mouse over' aren't available becuase they would be dangerous if applied to all objects by default. Objects would be activating everywhere!

Snap
To make object placement easier you can make objects click to the nearest point on an imaginary grid. By doing this you will lose some precision of placement through dragging but you can always fine turn position through keyboard settings or entering the coordinates in the summary tab.

If you enable the grid, you can specify wither the top left corner or the centre of the object clicks to the grid.

You specify the size of the grid in the X and Y parameters. In the example displayed the top left corner of the objects will snap to imaginary points placed every 20 pixels on the X and Y axis of the desktop.

Keyboard movement
Instead of moving objects using the mouse you can, once they are selected, move them using the arrow keys on your keyboard. Every time you click an arrow the object will move the specified number of pixels in the direction of the arrow. You can also set a second option which will move an object a larger distance when the CTRL key is held and an arrow is clicked.

On the 'Advanced' tab you can fine tune the way DesktopX works to your liking.

1) You can run DesktopX automatically when Windows starts
2) You can make all labels you create transparent instead of the colour specified in the labels settings.
3) You can stop any sounds that are assigned to objects
4) DesktopX can compress images to work more effectively. You should only disable this if you have specific graphics problems and are advised to do so.
5) DesktopX can advise objects of the time. The setting of this checkbox determine whether these will be based on the 12 hour or 24 hour clock.
6) Normally when you load a new theme you are asked if you want to save the current one. You can disable this prompt if you want.
7) DesktopX will place an icon in the system tray. Click here if you do not want to display this, but make sure you can access the configurations options either by right-clicking on the desktop, running the DesktopX executable again, or an object configured to display the configuration dialogue.

8) Objects can be configured to display tooltips. Checking this option will stop these from being displayed.
9) With DesktopX you can create objects that display the contents of the System Tray. Checking this box will disable these objects.
10) Debug mode is a special mode, and should only be run if you have been asked to do so.

Sticking objects
If you move an object near another within the number of pixels specified here, it will stick to the nearest edge of that object to make positioning easier.

Dragged objects
You can create objects from files in on your computer, by dragging them from Explorer onto the desktop. An image will be created based on the file's icon. Here you can specify the size of that object in pixels. You can also choose to add a label which will display the file name.

Security
If you want to use DesktopX as an interface you may want to add some security to stop users moving or editing objects.

To switch to User mode either right click the icon on your taskbar, or select the option shown on the left from the desktop right-click menu.

Once in User mode, you can switch back to edit mode by doing the reverse.

 

You can specify which options will be available in User mode.

You can permit right clicking on the desktop which will allow access to menus, though the options on the DesktopX menu will be restricted.

You can allow specify if you want to allow users to restart DesktopX.

To provide security, and prevent users switching back to Edit mode you can specify a password which must be entered to switch modes.