Back in 2009 I used to have a cool desktop that I still miss today.
I created it all animated, using DesktopX, Photoshop and Visual Styles.
I had to learn how to script and code a little to be able to do this.
It was in Windows XP and back then I already customized everything.
Nowadays I go for a modern space art, minimalist and monochrome kind of style.
But I do miss it.
The desktop had a song in Sindarin called The Passing of the Elves.
A song to Varda. You can listen to the song here with translation.
Every 2 lines of the song would transform into a menu item,
where icons would appear on the top of the book.
These icons were separated into the categories of the stuff I used.
They would remain hidden until mouse hover and
only hard drives, recycle bin and quick lunch would be on screen all the time.
Sometimes I get inspired to do this again... a new version for my Windows 10.
It takes a lot of work, tho I do still have all the customized icons and backgrounds...
It was the coolest desktop customization I have ever created to this day.
The following images show the sequence of the animated song menu.
These images are in fact from 2009 and back then I wrote on them
all the contents of the style.
You can see an animation of a previous version of that style and how it worked with the mouse.
So here they are.
The main desktop, and how it looked before the menu was activated by mouse hover.
a new icon was added after an update.
Then the menu hidden in the song.
It opened a new category of icons.
I still use a more evolved version of these categories today.
Office
then added an icon after an update
Image Editing and Skinning.
Web Mastering.
Chat.
Audio.
Video.
Art.
Game.
Below I posted the credits of the stuff I used back then, although
all of them were modified by me in a way so I am pretty much the only
one with the version you see on my desktop.
Skin: Muku by ~326MICHIRU, mod by me
Icons: Buuf by =mattahan, and others from all over DeviantArt, The Icon Factory, Material Note, InterfaceLIFT and Mikworks, some mod by me.
Wallpaper: Fae Princess by *Indigo-Summers , the rest is by me...
Novaër