Active Desktop Wallpapers for Windows

Sometimes I found nice wallpapers for IBM notebooks called “World Time”. There were two versions: a static color foreground image and an active version in grayscale. As I was an IBM notebooks fan I decided to improve an active version of the wallpaper. So, you can try an updated “World Time” active wallpaper.

Download

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Version 2.14:

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world.time.wallpaper.zip (2.93 MB), including data pack #1 and image pack #1

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world.time.wallpaper.lenovo.edition.zip (3.5 MB), including data pack #1 and “Lenovo Vista” image pack #1

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Data packs:

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pack #1 (629 bytes), contains data of 9 cities: San Francisco, New York, Buenos-Aires, London, Paris, Moscow, Peking, Tokyo, Sydney.

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Image packs:

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pack #1 (2.71 MB)

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pack #2 (11.08 MB)

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pack #3 (12.23 MB)

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pack #4 (13.43 MB)

“World Time”

Description

“World Time”—an active desktop for Windows, based on JavaScript/DOM scripts. At the startup it determines current system language, desktop resolution and plots a dot for every city from data pack on a map with time zones. Currently 3 interface languages are supported: English, Russian, French.

Features

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Indicates a locale time for world cities (depends on installed data pack).

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Displays a daylight/shadow marker.

Installation

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Unpack an archive to a separate folder.

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Open “Display properties” dialog window.

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Push “Browse” button on a “Desktop” tab and change file type filter combobox to “Background Files” in “Open” dialog. Go to previously selected folder and select “worldtime.html”.

Compatibility

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MS Windows 2000/XP (MS IE 5.x or higher),

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Mozilla FireFox, Opera (for demonstration purpose),

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Screen resolutions: 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x768, 1280x800, 1280x1024, 1400x1050, 1680x1050, 1600x1200, 1920x1200.

Specifics

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MS WIndows 2000/XP shell enables “ActiveDesktop” mode when you start “World Time” wallpaper. So, all desktop icons drop caption transparency, and solid background rectangle appears behind icon labels.

Tuning

To add a desired city on the map open “worldtime.cities.js” file, add the following block into Cities array:

  {
    Name      : { 'en': '‹City name in English›', '‹locale name›': '‹city name in local language›' },
    OffsetX   : ‹X coordinate on the map›,
    OffsetY   : ‹Y coordinate on the map›,
    OffsetGMT : ‹GMT time offset (from -12 to 12)›,
    OffsetDLS : ‹Daylight saving offset (0 or -1)›,
  },

To adjust time format edit the following section in “worldtime.cities.js”:

var TimeFormat =
{  
  en: 12,  
  ru: 24,  
  fr: 24
};

To change the default background image you can download one of the image sets, then unpack and overwrite images from archive into “/opt” subfolder.

pack #1 (2.71 MB)

pack #2 (11.08 MB)

pack #3 (12.23 MB)

pack #4 (13.43 MB)

If you have any suggestions how to improve this wallpaper, please, email me on mNaOxS@PaAxMo!fNiObSePrA.Mo!rNgO.SrPuA.

Links

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Very detailed and cool wallpaper—Desktop Earth wallpaper by Márton Anka.

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Earth's City Lights (NASA sattelite images).

December 4, 2006—November 13, 2008

Maxim Proskrunya