He's baaaaack! Sorry for my absence; I've been rearranging my life, scrambling for a new and better job, negotiating with SitePoint.com to publish some work, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, getting married to the most wonderful lady in the wide, wide world. Yes, I'm a lucky man. You can understand that lately I've had other fish to fry, and as a result, this newsletter went on temporary hiatus. I'll try to stick to the monthly schedule from here on out.

By the way, I've done a bit of site redesign, mostly on the opening page. Let me know how it strikes you -- more helpful or too busy?

On to today's topic. Two things about Windows, and Windows users, never fail to amaze me. The first is just how many ways you can customize the blasted thing to appear just about any way you want it to, and the second is how few people actually do so. Gobs of Windows users never bother to change their display appearances from the plain, boring Windows default color schemes and backgrounds. Hell, half the people I know haven't even changed their display wallpaper from whatever corporate logo their machine's manufacturer put up there. There are innumerable ways to customize Windows' appearance -- changing the desktop background, using desktop themes, activating the aggravating but enticing Active Desktop, using custom schemes for their title bars, using animated cursors, using sounds, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum. All of these of course come with a price, in that they drain extra system resources that could otherwise be used to speed up productivity. But hey, we're not corporate drones. If we've got a few extra dribs and drabs of system resources to burn, we can spiff things up quite a bit. I may discuss the above modifications in future newsletters, but today I've got a goodie for Win ME users (I think Win 98 users can do this too, but I'm not sure -- somebody let me know, okay?) that involves using "folder templates" to customize the way folders appear in Windows Explorer. Hmph, didn't think you could change that particular display, didja? Well, you can.

Instead of giving you a general outline of how it works, I'm presenting an example and walkthrough that will give you a shiny, new, boldly customized folder in My Documents. Not only do you get to see how it works and will be able to apply it to folders that you actually use (if you so desire), but you can practice it on a folder that's created just for this purpose. Credit Where Credit is Due: I'm cribbing this from the excellent manual Dan Gookin Teaches Windows ME. Very good book, somewhere between the Dummies manuals and the really esoteric, hard-to-understand technical manuals.

Here goes. First, create a new Personal folder by going into My Documents, choosing File, New, Folder, and rename the folder Personal. Nothing is in this folder, and that's the idea -- you want to practice this stuff on something innocuous right now. Now choose View, Customize This Folder. Click Next. Now check everything in the Customization Wizard, and chant "boom-swatti-whoosh!" while Windows does its thing. Here's what happened:

• Adding a Folder Template: a folder template is an HTML file plus a script that controls the appearance of the folder. The wizard gives you four templates to choose from. Standard is a good default choice, while Image Preview works well for folders containing graphics. You can preview all four choices.
• Background Image: you can choose a background image to serve as the backdrop for your folder display. The selection is automatically tiled, so don't use something too large or overly complex. You may want to change the text color also, depending on your background image choice (under Filename Appearance).
• Comment: you can enter a comment that appears when information is gathered about this folder. For this example, type "Personal Stuff, Keep Out!" in the comment area. If you know HTML commands, you can add HTML tags to this comment.

Other folder display options can be accessed under Tools, Folder Options. You can choose from Active Desktop (annoying unless you want Web material butting into your work all the time), Web View (another annoyance in my opinion, but some people like the left-side information display), Browse Folders (decides whether windows open in their own display windows or not), and File-Clicking (single or double). In this same dialog box you've got a View tab which gives you further options. You can force all the folders in Explorer to appear "Like Current Folder," which entails mass changes. If you press "Reset All Folders," you change everything back to the way Windows originally had them. Now go through the menu options. A few of note: you can choose to display Hidden files (my recommendation, unless there are people with access to your computer who don't need to have access to these files), you can choose whether or not to display file extensions (I like mine displayed; you may not), you can choose to have Windows remember each individual window setting every time you open that window, and you can choose whether or not to hide protected system files (a very good idea unless you know what you're doing). The button at the bottom, "Restore Defaults," resets the menu options to the factory defaults. Wasn't this fun?