Expand the Calendar preset

This tutorial will show you step-by-step how to expand the Calendar preset with a Picture Player and several Online Search Plugins. These are the steps necessary:

1. Load the Calendar preset
2. Add the Picture Player Plugin and change its settings
3. Add the Online Search Plugins and change their settings
4. Placement on the screen
5. Save the layout

Load the Calendar preset

To start a new own layout you can use two methods: You load an existing layout or preset and use that as a starting point or you create your new layout completely from scratch using an empty layout. In this tutorial you will use the first method. First, load the Calendar preset.

• Start DeskoverX now in case it is not already running.
• Locate the DeskoverX icon in the system-tray and click on it to open the program menu
• Select Load layout... This will open the Load layout window.

  
  DeskoverX Menu with highlighted Load layout

• Select Calendar from the presets on the left side.

  
  Load layout window with selected Calendar preset

• Click the Load button to load this preset.

Add the Picture Player Plugin and change its settings

Now that you have begun the new layout by loading the Calendar preset, you need to add the Picture Player Plugin to the layout. In order to do that you must first switch into layoutmode and then add the plugin.

• Click the DeskoverX icon in the system-tray to open the program menu.
• Select Layoutmode. DeskoverX will now switch into layoutmode and the Layout-Manager will open in the lower right corner of the screen.

  Select Layoutmode in the DeskoverX menu

  Layout-Manager containing Calendar Plugins.

• Locate the Add Button inside the Layout-Manager and click it with your mouse. This will open the Plugins Window which lets you select and add plugins.
• Select the Picture Player Plugin and click the Add Button to add the plugin to the layout.

  
  Plugins Window with selected Picture Player Plugin

Now that the plugin has been added to the layout, you need to change its settings. The Picture Player needs a playlist to know which pictures it should display. You can either create you own playlist with the Playlist Editor or load an existing playlist. For this tutorial you can simply load the All playlist that is installed with DeskoverX. Now set the switching interval to 30 seconds and activate the Shuffle Option.

Picture Player settings window

Add the Online Search Plugins and change their settings

After you have configured the Picture Player it is time to add several Online Search Plugins to the layout. The Plugins Window should still be open, so you can simply select the Online Search Plugin and add it to the layout.

• Select the Online Search Plugin and click the Add Button to add the plugin to the layout.

  
  Plugins Window with selected Online Search Plugin

Now that an Online Search Plugin has been added to the layout, you need to configure its settings. Select a search engine, for example Google, Yahoo, MSN... maybe a language for the search results and change the caption if you don't like the automatically created caption

Now add another Online Search Plugin, this time select a different search engine, for example Wikipedia.

Add another Online Search Plugin, again select a different search engine, for example Ebay.

Online Search settings window

Placement on the screen

The three Calendar Plugins are already placed where we want them, so there are no changes needed here. However, the Picture Player and the Online Search Plugins still are all located in the top left corner of your screen, where they have been placed initially. One after the other select the different Online Search Plugins in the layout manager and place them next to each other along the bottom of the screen. Adjust the width of each plugin so that they all together fill the space from the left edge of the screen up to the Calendar Plugin. Now select the Picture Player in the layout manager. Leave the Picture Player in the top left corner, but adjust its width and height to fill the top left corner of the screen, leaving out the area of the Online Search and the Calendar Plugins. The result should look similar to this screenshot:

Resulting layout

Save the layouts

Now you successfully expanded the original layout from the preset by adding and configuring several other plugins. You can exit the layoutmode and start using your new inside-desktop tools. If you like you can also Save the layout.