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Small and simple desktop reminders Desktop
I often have small pieces of text on my desktop, such as phone numbers and reminders that I would like to have instant access to for a day or two. The usual way of putting small clippings on the desktop involves dragging the text to the desktop and making a text clipping. However, these take up a lot of space on the desktop and the text gets cut-off after a certain length. There is a better way to do this.

First, go into an icon editor such as Iconographer (the free trial will work fine), and draw a short horizontal line at the bottom of the drawing space. Then set the mask (opacity) of this line to about 12%. Anything lower and the Finder will not recognize the icon. Save this icon and paste it onto a blank folder. You will only have to do this once.

It will appear as if the folder has no icon, and clicking in the area above the text will not select the folder as usual, therefore saving a lot of desktop space, if you use larger icons. Then simply paste your short note into the folder name. If you want to have more than two lines, just duplicate the folder and position it right under the other. In Panther, you can make it stand out more by giving it a color label (or even color code to-do items by priortiy), as seen in the screenshot at left. And there you go. Space saving, colored notes on your desktop without third-party applications.
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Small and simple desktop reminders | 11 comments | Create New Account
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Small and simple desktop reminders
Authored by: DougAdams on Nov 11, '04 10:52:38AM

Not for nothin' but what's wrong with Stickies?



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Small and simple desktop reminders
Authored by: arosen on Nov 11, '04 11:07:18AM
How about using Stickies? I think it's a great app and you have the option of creating it as a floating window and changing it's transparence.

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Small and simple desktop reminders
Authored by: biscuit on Nov 11, '04 12:15:17PM

I suppose one advantage over stickies is that these notes won't fly off the screen when you hit F11.

biscuit



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Small and simple desktop reminders
Authored by: sdk22 on Nov 11, '04 12:22:30PM

Great idea. I have actually been doing this with whole folders(with the icons) on my desktop for awhile. I have tried stickies, but it isnt quite the same because you can close or hide stickies. If I have the notes on my desktop then they continually bug me and make me get the tasks done faster. :)



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Small and simple desktop reminders
Authored by: kaolgal on Nov 11, '04 02:10:41PM

A creative idea. However, an easier tool to use for this very task is a widget. If you download Konfabulator you can select a widget that puts these "to do" type notes on your desk in a similar but easier way. They are also color coded.



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Small and simple desktop reminders
Authored by: taxi on Nov 12, '04 02:45:16AM

Ugh! Konfabulator was something that looks extremely pretty, but caused my system (a 1.25GHz iMac G4) to behave like, well, crap.

It uses up heaps of resources, both memorywise and processor cycles. The engine itself is rather hungry, and some widgets take up 10Mb or more of RAM.

I've recently come to the conclusion that adding lots of stuff to the system is a Very Bad Thing (tm), and have even turned off mysqld & httpd, and everything else I can. (Having used a friend's powerbook that was snappier than my desktop was embarrasing!)



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Small and simple desktop reminders
Authored by: thaigan on Nov 12, '04 11:49:01AM

Maybe you should try closing all the widgets but the ToDo List. I use Konfabulator and never see much of a performance drain on my 800 Mhz iMac(768 MB)



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Small and simple desktop reminders
Authored by: MarcoVW on Nov 12, '04 05:34:07PM

Can someone please explain me how to change the opacity.
I've downloader Iconographer, drawn a line and then I'm stuck.
By the way, does the color depth of the icon matter? It's not explained in the original hint.

Thanx in advance.



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Small and simple desktop reminders
Authored by: cudaboy_71 on Nov 15, '04 07:40:58PM

when you open the app for the first time, there are thumbnail representations of the icon to the right, a "huge icon" / "huge mask", etc.

select the huge icon's preview. you are now creating the 'huge icon'. draw a black line at the bottom of the icon (as suggested in the hint). then click on the mask preview and your drawing area will now be a representation of the mask.

select your color picker and change your black to about 12%. there's no numerical entry --at least that i found. but, half way would be 50%, half of that, 25%, and half of that about 12%.

now draw that grey line in the same location of the mask that you drew the black line in the icon view.

when you hit save, you will be prompted that the other views do not have masks. you should let the app generate them for you.

done.

---
if it aint broke, break it!



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Small and simple desktop reminders
Authored by: MarcoVW on Nov 16, '04 05:26:42AM

Thanx a lot. It works!



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Small and simple desktop reminders
Authored by: Bytesmiths on Nov 12, '04 09:43:28PM

Interesting idea! Or you can wait for Tiger and its Konfabulator rip-off, or be nice to small developers and buy Konfabulator today. I've seen at least a half-dozen "to do" widgets for Konfabulator.

---
: Jan Steinman, Bytesmiths



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