Animated Desktop Backgrounds?

stuartwood89 · 08-22-2006, 02:28 PM

I just got a new phone (Sony Ericsson D750i) and it has this amazing red animated background. I was just wondering if it is possible to have an animated background for my Windows XP Desktop.

If you can, where do you get them from, how do you make then and how do you apply them?

Help much appreciated.....

Geschpooklichkeit · 08-22-2006, 03:08 PM

I wouldn't try to. Your computer would experience significant lag, unless the animated part is very small.

stuartwood89 · 08-22-2006, 03:12 PM

but is it actually possible?

t('' ) · 08-22-2006, 03:39 PM

Yes.

On digg.com there was a super mario brothers 3 animated wallpaper. It didn't lag my computer too much, but wasn't really useful. One thing that was cool with it was that it was interactive. That meant goombas could become crushed and the koopas could be crushed into shells and the shells could be kicked (or whatever).

Zanate · 08-22-2006, 05:46 PM

its possible..any gif image is possible to post as a wallpaper..but be warned!! expect a lot of loading times and lag and everything a neride hates...

t('' ) · 08-22-2006, 06:35 PM

Haha I found it!
Go here.
http://overdrawn.net/mario/#

It's actually pretty cool. It uses html and javascript so it's relatively light.

eepiccolo · 08-23-2006, 10:20 AM

I believe you need to have the feature called "Active Desktop" enabled to have an animated desktop. At least, I think that's what it was called in Win98. Yeah, you've been able to have an animated desktop since Win98. And it has been about 8 years since I actually looked into things like that. Now I've got Distributed Computing running on my computer, so I really don't want the overhead, and for many other reasons, also.

stuartwood89 · 08-23-2006, 03:31 PM

Ok, i figured out how to do it....

You need a gif animator and you need to make the separate frames in paint/photoshop etc... Then you just piece it all together using the software and save it as a gif, then right-click on the gif and select "set as desktop background"

The one i'm making at the moment is the size of the whole desktop so it might lag a bit, although i have previewed it and it doesn't seem to make a big difference. although it isn't finished yet and is only about 6 frames long.

I'll see if i can post it up when i've finished.

Irobeth · 08-23-2006, 10:09 PM

publish your local flash animation and target the resulting html as your desktop background.