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StarfishX - A desktop pattern generator Pick of the Week
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Hey, so it's an early Wednesday morning Pick of the Week instead of Monday morning ... better late than never, right?

Tired of the included desktop patterns? Don't like using photos instead? Try StarfishX, the desktop pattern generator. The easy to use GUI features options galore for creating cool desktop patterns. Start by picking a desired size and make a selection from the 15 pre-defined starting color palettes ("Spring," "Summer," "Autumn," or create your own), and decide whether you want the pattern to fill, center, tile, or stretch on your desktop. Click the New Pattern button, and StarfishX goes to work with your settings and some random numbers to create some truly amazing destkop backgrounds. You can optionally control the seeding of the random numbers that create your image, and StarfishX will remember any number (up to 500!) of your recent patterns for easy re-use.

Depending on what you're asking it to do (and what else you might be doing in the foreground), it can take a while to generate the patterns, as there's a lot of number crunching going on behind the scenes. One nice touch in StarfishX is that its dock icon changes when it's creating patterns -- instead of the full-size icon you see here, you get a very small icon along with a constantly updated miniature version of the pattern being generated. This makes it easy to keep an eye on the process, and you can quickly tell if the random pattern will be to your liking or not (there's a Cancel button to halt processing and start over if you don't like what you see).

Given my limited graphics skills, I've also found StarfishX useful as a starting point for web background images, Keynote presentations, etc. The GUI is easy to understand and I've never had a problem with a crash, and it's free and open source!
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StarfishX - A desktop pattern generator
Authored by: heehorse on Apr 16, '03 02:18:39AM

I don't know about other people, but I very rarely see anything
but about at most 10% of my desktop. This is indicative of a
change of the way I interact with my OS from my Windows days
before I switched a year ago. With Win9x, I would regularly
"minimize all ([Windows]-M)", esp. when switching between the
different tasks/functions that I was doing on my comptuer. Now
with OSX, I find myself just layering window on top of window.
Maybe this is because of the subtle difference in the windowing
metaphore between Mac and Win, or maybe it's because it's not
as easy to "minimize all". Indeed, the only way I can see my
desktop is if I switch to the Finder, Hide Others, and then close
all my open finder windows.

Random Question - does it improve performance/memory
footprint to close or hide windows? I heard that QE allocates a
bug chunk of memory for each window you have open, so after
a certain point, you get serious performance degradation if you
have too many windows open...



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StarfishX - A desktop pattern generator
Authored by: demental on Apr 16, '03 03:07:40AM

Try this :
http://www.everydaysoftware.net/showdesktop/



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StarfishX - A desktop pattern generator
Authored by: truhe on Apr 16, '03 07:55:24AM

command-option-m should minimize all windows. i don't know whether this is just for the current app or for all apps. i saw it yesterday as a tip in a printmag and had not the time to check this :)



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StarfishX - A desktop pattern generator
Authored by: ma2t on Apr 16, '03 08:11:27AM

If you hold Cmd+option and click once on the finder icon in the
dock, you will hide all applications except the finder.



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StarfishX - A desktop pattern generator
Authored by: osx_4me on Apr 17, '03 08:10:51AM
From any give application, hold the option key while clicking on another app's window - or, the Finder's Desktop. This will hide the first app.

If you hold command (or, the "Apple" key), and option while clicking on another app (including the Finder, via clicking on the Desktop), you will hide all but the app you are switching to.

To switch between app's, press command & tab. This switches between your current app & the last one you were using . Press command and "~" (the key to the left of "1") to cycle between open windows of your current application.

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StarfishX - A desktop pattern generator
Authored by: Wayne_S on Apr 16, '03 06:35:07PM

This just became my favorite app. Maybe it is just me, but I need different backgrounds to reduce some of the eyestrain (boredom?) of looking at the same desktop patterns. I find that many of the ones included with the OS (and most pictures) are great graphically, but not so great functionally serving as a desktop background. Starfish seems to strike a great balance between interesting designs and necessary contrast with desktop icons.



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StarfishX - A desktop pattern generator
Authored by: bhippel on Apr 17, '03 03:38:03AM

Dude, it's not just you! I love this app. It's my new fav app too.
It generates awesome patterns, and runs in the background. I
have it generating a new pattern every hour, and when it does
generate the pattern, it winds up minimizing (rather than hiding)
the application after the pattern is generated. Well, that results
in me having to bring StarFishX up, and hide it again.

I'm running 10.2.5, and was wondering if anyone else was
experiencing this minor glitch.



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Hiding/Minimizing
Authored by: AMacAddict on Apr 17, '03 07:12:15AM

I hide Starfish on launch, and leave the Minimize while
generating unchecked. Starfish does all of its processing in the
background, and never comes forward on its own.



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Hiding/Minimizing
Authored by: heehorse on Apr 17, '03 11:35:18PM

... and if you "Show Package Contents" -> Contents -> Edit
"Info.plist" -> Root
and add the "LSUI Element; 1" key/value pair, then it doesn't
even show up on your dock, and it's effectively a "background
service".



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