Icon’t See My Desktop, Must Be Time For Spring Cleaning

When the first computers were introduced for home consumers, they were text-driven monsters that required a road-map to navigate. The target audience for these first PCs were people who already used them at work and were used to hunting for files by looking through directories and file cabinets. Mainstream consumers didn’t really catch on to the allure of a home computer until graphical interfaces with icons and pictures were introduced to the market. Now, as technology moves forward, is it time to finally dump the icons? It’s a concept that is long overdue and software companies seem to think the time has come, if you look at the way both Apple and the latest Windows systems are designed, with icons anchored away from the screen. Add the rise of the app, and you can see why you might want to keep your desktop as clutter-free as possible.

First, let’s take a look at design. Apple’s OS has kept a clean appearance for several years, fixing program icons to the bottom of the screen in a handy toolbar. With Vista, Microsoft experimented with a similar bar and now on Windows 7, has gone all the way with an Apple-like taskbar to house all of your icons in one place, finally setting your desktop free. Both Apple and Microsoft add in the ability to link to folders, making it easier to dock your docs in a handy spot. The clip below shows a Windows 7 taskbar with the libraries icon (middle) for fast access to documents, pictures and music.

But what about all those documents that are saved to your desktop? Move ‘em! Many people save a ton of stuff to their desktop for quick reference. This isn’t a bad idea for something you need to complete work on in a short time period, but is actually inefficient and risky for documents that have a long shelf-life or need to be archived. The inefficiency is on two levels – one, it makes it just as difficult to find a document if they litter the desktop as it is to find one in a crowded documents folder; and two, the computer’s visual memory slows down if you make it draw all those icons. As for the risk, you always risk deleting something on the desktop since it isn’t as easy to organize and view the files by date, title, or type like you can in the documents folder. Some programs (like clean-up utilities) actually remove unused icons, and you can see how something can get lost in a few clicks of the mouse. Plus, don’t forget how much easier it is to copy and paste a folder instead of multiple documents if you want to make a quick back-up of your files to a flash drive or CD. Fortunately, Windows 7 adds in a jump list feature so you can right-click any taskbar (but not desktop) icon and get a list of your ten most recent documents. You can also pin favorites to the jump list if you want to keep certain documents handy, so there is no reason not to banish documents from the desktop. Here’s an example of how you can pin with Word, note the pushpin icon to the right of the highlighted document, use it to pin the document to your jump list.

So if the desktop is clean, what is its purpose? Some icons, particularly legacy programs, just won’t let you move them to the taskbar, so they can stay. Plus, you can also view your background image of your prized puppy without a big W over his eye. But the real appeal is to keep it clean so it can do it’s real job, which is to display your Windows. The desktop was invented so you could collect open Windows on it and switch between them, particularly on wider screens that let you float a few e-mail around at the same time. In addition, you can run gadgets and apps on the desktop. These are little programs that run entirely on the desktop and let you see live data (stocks, news or weather) or access information quickly without having to open programs first (e-mail preview or search boxes). To the right is an example of one gadget, the All Search box for Windows 7 that lets you search a variety of websites from your desktop. We’ll take a look at apps in a later post, so check back once you’ve tidied up your desktop.

- Laura N.