I’ve decided that it’d be really snazzy if I could ditch the standard Windows desktop setup in favor of something of my own design. My idea is basically to replace traditional icons with an image map in a full-screen HTML active desktop wallpaper. The advantage is mainly aesthetic, as I’d have greater control over the “icons” themselves and could include things like image rollovers for extra spiffiness value. For some added functionality, I plan to include an input line for searches, with radio buttons determining where the query is directed.
One hurdle that I’ve come across in my early attempts is that when clicking on a link to an exe (i.e. the programs I want to access from the desktop) file, even one on the hard disk, IE gives a warning and confirmation prompt. While this is obviously a useful feature and something I shouldn’t disable completely, I’d like to be able to adjust the “permissions” of my html files to prevent the prompt from appearing on locally-stored pages. Is there any way to do this? Something in the registry I can alter, perhaps? If simple HTML and Javascript can’t do the trick, can ActiveX or Shockwave or something along those lines do it? I’d hate to have to learn a new language just for this pet project if I can avoid it.
Any ideas? Have any of you seen anything like this before? If so, where? Questions, comments, and advice are all more than welcome.