Controlling the Desktop Appearance in Windows Vista - Something Cool About Vista Desktop Backgrounds
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Here’s something that makes the preceding a little more worthwhile, an interesting nugget that can help you take even more control over the desktop environment—particularly when it comes to setting desktop backgrounds.
The list of Windows wallpapers you see when clicking the desktop background link in the Personalization Control Panel application is divided into sections such as black and white, light auras, paintings, textures, and so on. Where do these divisions come from, and can we add our own little Windows wallpaper grouping?
They come from the metadata tags associated with the pictures. To see what I mean, open a Vista Explorer window, look in the %WinDir%\Web\Wallpaper folder, and then look at the pictures there.
Select the painting of the carp image, for example, and then note the image properties in the Details pane (if the Details pane isn’t showing, click Organize -> Layout in Vista Explorer and make sure the Details pane is turned on). There, you should see that the tag associated with the painting of the carp is called Paintings. Vista uses this tag information when grouping the Vista wallpapers in the Desktop Background dialog box.
So, how can you put this to use? If you add a picture to this directory, you can edit the metadata tag associated with this picture to either add your own custom Windows wallpaper groups, or just add pictures to existing groups.
Note, however, that you need to grant yourself special permission to perform this action. Because this folder lives in the Windows directory, not even administrators have permission to edit metadata tags by default.
And no law says you have to add a metadata tag. If you just want the convenience of having all possible Windows wallpapers in one place, simply copy or move the pictures to the \Web folder. If no tag is specified, there will merely be an “Unspecified” wallpaper grouping in the Desktop Background dialog box, as seen in Figure 4-22.
Now that you understand how to manipulate elements of the Vista desktop to your liking and then save these changes as part of a desktop theme, surely there must be a way to undo things. There is, as we explore in the next couple of brief sections.
Restoring the Default Theme
You can easily reset the theme to what it was during the “out-of-box” experience. To restore Vista to the default theme, just follow these three steps:
- Access the Control Panel’s Personalization application by right-clicking the desktop and choosing Personalize.
- Click the Theme link to open the Theme Settings dialog box.
- From the drop-down menu, choose the Windows Vista theme and click OK to complete the change.
If you don’t want to keep a saved theme around any longer, there’s a way to get rid of it.
Figure 4-22. Creating your own wallpaper categories
Please check back next week for the continuation of this article.
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 This article is excerpted from chapter four of the book Windows Vista Administration: The Definitive Guide, written by Brian Culp (O'Reilly; ISBN: 0596529597). Check it out today at your favorite bookstore. Buy this book now.
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