Organizing your Desktop with file wells

This idea struck me months ago, and I've been doing it ever since! Admitedly, being a designer, it's a little easier going on the eye. The desktop is the centre of everything I do on the mac, it's amazing how just a few faint, labelled boxes drawn onto your desktop can make work flow easier!

I see you guys are hiding behind the internet again. As usual the people on the web are showing their age. You're like a bunch a babies. Whilst this is not the Murph's best screecast he does some amazing work. 5 minutes over at his site would prove you that. I'm glad to call him a friend, he's a very talanted guy. If ye'd all take your head out of your arses and try and do somthing better then I'd say something - until that day comes shut your pieholes.

Heh heh, I remember when this was a big trend years and years ago, on old ResExcellence.

This technique could actually be expanded to ANY folder, not just your desktop. Create your image, open up the folder that you want to add the background to, choose View->Show View Options (Cmd-J), tick the radio button up top that says 'this window only' (unless you devise something REALLY crafty that fits every folder) then select your background image at the bottom of the view options window. Voila!

I remember doing this back in OS 8, but lately I've been too busy to bother. Now I just let my desktop be my inbox, saving the day's work to it (staying alphabetical, so I can put high-priority items in the top corner using the underscore). Each night, I clean my desktop! ... in theory.

Or you could not organize/download/abandon files on your desktop which is a big no-no as far as I'm concerned. No self-respecting mac user uses the desktop as a placeholder for files. That's why they created folders. The above example has an "incoming" well and a "needs filing" well. Why? Just create a folder, drop it in there, and be done with it. Who doesn't have an incoming folder? If you have a really really complicated scheme, then you could use colors, but folders were created to hold files.. and should be used accordingly...

Or, you could use or remix my so much sexier Layered Desktop, previously talked about on TUAW :-)

http://www.tuaw.com/2006/09/10/tuaw-desktops-of-the-week-for-9-10-06/

Get it from here http://flickr.com/photos/gr/sets/72157594188036656/detail/

you could try out Label X from Unsanity.
http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/labels
you can try it for 15 days before you have to actually purchase it. It costs 10 dollars, which I don't think is really worth it for a little "haxie", but that's coming from a broke college kid

I don't like the way Macs do file color coding. It's hard to tell what's selected and what's labeled.

Been there done that too. On Windows as well as on Mac OS 8 and 9.
Of course is was still in my early twenties back then.