1st time setup: starting with clean desktops 2-4

[billermo]

I think my situation for setting up the first time must be the most common scenario.

I'm beginning with a cluttered desktop that I want to break out into multiple cleaner desktops.

When I install, now ALL the desktops 1-4 have all those files and shortcuts on them. Of course I don't want all of these icons on desktops 2-4, that's why I installed Dexpot, to get rid of that problem.

In terms of efficiency, it would be best if I could have desktops 2-4 cleared for now, except for the icons I want on them, so that I could next start to build them up to the kinds of desktops I want. In my case, I would like to have one desktop that's for school work, another for website development, another for entertainment. I would want standardly useful icons like My Computer, My Documents, Trash, etc. to be on all of them, but the 4 desktops should be unique otherwise -- each with their own unique set of icons.

I see in the FAQ (and from trying) that just copying and pasting icons from desktop 1 to the others isn't possible, it must be done through menus one icon at a time. (in terms of UI, this is clunky -- much more intuitive to copy and paste - but this kind of copy paste is blocked in Dexpot).

Now I see if I delete any icon from Desktop 4, it also gets deleted from Desktops 1-3. Likewise if I delete an icon from Desktop 1, it also gets deleted from all the others. There must be some way to delete icons from one single desktop only without affectng the others, or else this whole program would be pointless. So there must be a way to do it that I'm just not finding.

If the solution is to go through a menu process one by one for every new icon I want to appear on any desktop, rather than (for example) just rightclicking and selecting Create New Folder or Create Shortcut, then this program is going to be more trouble than it's worth.

Also I noticed in the Quick Start guide (notice that last sentence!):

To move a desktop icon to a different virtual desktop, drag & drop it to the Desktop Manager,
right on the particular virtual desktop of your choice. In this concrete example, we
drag & drop the “Mozilla Firefox”-desktop icon to the second virtual desktop.
Switch to “Desktop 2”. The second virtual desktop contains simply one desktop icon,
namely: “Mozilla Firefox”. In order to copy the same desktop icon to “Desktop 3”, drag &
drop it to the Desktop Manager again while pressing the Ctrl key.
Proceed accordingly for the other virtual desktops. Since version 1.5.1: Dexpot restores the
standard desktop icon distribution (like they were before Dexpot was launched) on exit.

That can't be right. If this is correct, it means I would need to recreate my desktops every time I reboot?

I hope someone has some good news for me about this issue.

Thanks!

[selden]

When a new desktop is created "manually", it contains no icons.
You might try deleting three of the auto-created desktops and then create new desktops one at a time. I've never actually deleted desktops, but I think this procedure should do what you want.

+ Open the Dexpot configuration window named "Setup".
+ Select the "General" item in the left pane. (It's the default.)

In the region titled "Variable Desktops"
+ reduce the "Number of Desktops" to 1.
+ Select "OK" (or Apply). All but the first Desktop should go away. You might exit from Dexpot and then restart it at this point to make sure it does what you want.
+ Open the Setup window again
+ set "Number of Desktops" to the number of Desktops that you want
+ select Apply or OK.

While you are rearranging icons, take occasional "snapshots" of the arrangement using the "save as" option in the Profiles field in the bottom of the General window. Use the "Load" option to restore a previous icon arrangement.

I suggest also UN-checking the box "save profile on exit." I've found that it often causes icons to get scrambled. Hopefully this bug will be fixed in the next release of Dexpot.

Alternatively, you can work with the list of all icons instead of making the changes on each Desktop individually. This I have done.

Open the Dexpot configuration window named "Dexpot Windows"
In the area at the bottom left, below where the individual Desktops are listed, select the item "Overview"
In the area at the top, select the tab "Icons"
The main window will be populated with an alphabetical list of all of the icons and shows which Desktops they're on. (It may take a few seconds to be populated if you have many icons.) You then can do a shift-select to select multiple icons, then right-click on them to get a popup menu of options -- delete, move, etc.

I hope this helps a little.

[billermo]

OK thanks, I think I follow so far. It seems as if I must use the menus to start off the desktops and populate them.

One thing: for this to be practical (for me at least) I would need to be able to go to one of those desktops after they're set up, and be able to create a shortcut on that desktop that will only appear on that desktop, not on the others. Is that not going to be possible?

For me, for a desktop to function as a workspace, quickly adding/deleting files, shortcuts and folders is key -- that's a more efficient way for me to work -- only being able to put them on the desktop via the menus is going to be awkward and needlessly time consuming.

And also, if I do create shortcuts and folders on one desktop, but then they spill over and appear on the other desktops by defaut, then that also is not going to work, since I'll end up with messes on all my other desktops. If I"m going to need to click down into folders to be able to view shortcuts and folders that are mostly temporary, then that is something I can already do with one single desktop.

Thanks!

[selden]

Creating shortcut icons on specific desktops seems to work fine for me.

You also can use "Dexpot Windows" --> Overview --> Icons to explicitly specify which desktop(s) a particular icon appears on. I found it easiest to keep the original icon layout and delete unwanted icons from the various desktops, not changing their actual positions on the screen. This reduces the scrambling of icon positions when Dexpot is turned off.

I suggest playing with the features to get a feel for how they work. Be prepared to have to rearrange icons on the original desktop when you exit form Dexpot, though.

[billermo]

After seeing some strange behavior on one of my desktops (icons appearing/disappearing for no reason) I closed the program and gave up on it. I still have a desire to make this work though, if it can work for me.

Right now I use a program called Fences that works on a single desktop but creates partitioned areas with a title at the top of each one, so I have one "box" for "School" and another for "Websites", another for "Movies" etc. I have around 70 icons total (folders and shortcuts) on my desktop, all arranged inside these categorized boxes.

So to get Dexpot up and running, I think it might be better to shut down Fences, clear out almost all of those 70 icons, and then start over building up Dexpot desktops. (It also occurred to me that Fences might be conflicting with Dexpot, causing the flickery strange behavior on desktop #3)

I think I'm just asking for trouble starting out with 70 icons. One recommendation above was to delete all the extra desktops and start with only one in Dexpot, then build back up from there one by one -- from what I can see, that's not possible. It seems to only allow selection of 2 or more desktops in Configure Desktops, there's no option for only having 1.

Your mention of how I need to be prepared to rearrange icons on my main desktop worries me. It might depend on how much -- like do you mean that all the icons from the other desktops are going to then appear in a big mess on my main desktop? That would be terrible.

Also what do you mean exactly by "exit Dexpot"? Do you mean if I close the program and go back to just one desktop? (I don't intend to work that way -- if I set it up, I want it to be my default setup, what I see every time I boot up) Or do you mean whenever I reboot? (that would be unavoidable, so it would mean I must rearrange icons every time I reboot -- which of course wouldn't be acceptable)

So if I set up all these multiple desktops, are they going to be stable? Like if I set Dexpot to startup when the computer starts, am I going to need to spend some minutes (or more) resetting the different desktops to what they should be? If so, I should stick with Fences.

[selden]

Your mention of how I need to be prepared to rearrange icons on my main desktop worries me. It might depend on how much -- like do you mean that all the icons from the other desktops are going to then appear in a big mess on my main desktop? That would be terrible.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. When you exit from Dexpot, all of the icons are drawn on the screen. If different icons from different Desktops would occupy the same position, they'll get rearranged.

Also what do you mean exactly by "exit Dexpot"? Do you mean if I close the program and go back to just one desktop?

Yes.

(I don't intend to work that way -- if I set it up, I want it to be my default setup, what I see every time I boot up) Or do you mean whenever I reboot? (that would be unavoidable, so it would mean I must rearrange icons every time I reboot -- which of course wouldn't be acceptable)

I mean when you quit from Dexpot and revert to using a single desktop without rebooting. I do not have Dexpot start when I reboot, so I can't comment on how well that works. I always start Dexpot manually. (I like to have a Win7 backdrop slideshow running while I work. Dexpot does not yet integrate with that very well.)

The current "stable" version of Dexpot sometimes did not place icons in the desired locations when I switched Desktops. Sometimes this was frustrating enough that I had to exit from Dexpot entirely in order to get useful work done. (Icon placement is very much improved when switching Desktops in the current beta-test version, but the beta has other problems.)

So if I set up all these multiple desktops, are they going to be stable? Like if I set Dexpot to startup when the computer starts, am I going to need to spend some minutes (or more) resetting the different desktops to what they should be? If so, I should stick with Fences.

If you save a new profile frequently while you are developing your icon placements, you should be able to recall the most recent profile to restore the icon placement whenever their positions get messed up. That's relatively quick:

Dexpot Settings --> general tab --> Choose profile --> Load

I've never used Fences, so I don't know if it might be interfering. I suspect running it at the same time as Dexpot would cause problems, though.