Note: This is for Windows 7 users only.

In Windows XP and Vista, when you use the Windows Live Mail client, you can right-click the icon at the bottom so that it only appears as such when the app is minimized:

When using the Windows Live Messenger, by default it will also have a small icon:

However the problem is that these Windows Live applications do not do this by default in Windows 7. Instead they show as large icons to the left.

The way to get them to minimize to small taskbar icons is to set the compatibility mode to Windows Vista for each. This is easy, and once done they will act as they did in XP/Vista concerning how they look in the taskbar.

See video below for details.

Two web sites that are all about eye candy for for Linux are KDE-Look and GNOME-Look.

You get your pick of the litter when it comes to.. well.. everything in a desktop environment using Linux. Wallpapers, themes, styles, window decorations, icons, cliparts, system sounds, splash screens, bootsplash, VLC themes, Xine themes.. the list goes on and on and on.

So if your KDE or GNOME is a bit on the boring side, not to worry, those two sites have you covered. And I mean really covered.

If you ever wanted to know where people get the super-cool stuff for Linux that makes it look so modern, sleek and so on – said people probably got it all (or at least a good chunk of it) from one of those two sites.

The little orange guy in Google Maps as most people know is the character you see in the Street Views function. The recent update to the Google Maps service definitely puts greater emphasis on this.

For example:

The Street Views icon (i.e. the orange guy) is now directly on top of the zoom slider…

…and yes it’s functional.

While zoomed in on a map you can click the orange guy, drag and drop and you’ll get the Street View. While dragging a thumbnail appears before you drop (nice touch).

Where’s the "Street Views" button?

Gone. You have to know to click on the orange guy above the zoom slider now. Yes that’s one step backwards usability-wise. However, being the orange-guy icon is so obvious it shouldn’t be a big deal for most people to find it.

Think the floppy disk is dead technology?

OpenOffice 3… floppy disk!

Google Docs.. floppy disk again!

Windows Live Writer… FLOPPY DISK!

ThinkFree.. ACK! FLOPPY DISK AGAIN!

You cannot escape the floppy..

I think it’s about time to.. oh, I dunno.. change the save icon to something besides a 3.5-inch floppy diskette.

My Ubuntu desktop looks like this (click any image for full size):

When I have an app open it looks like this:

The way to get Ubuntu to look like this is fairly simple.

1. Download Microsoft core fonts to get Arial

Like it or not, the Arial font looks good on Windows just as Helvetica looks good on a Mac (unless you’re some typography nerd that insists on arguing which looks better/worse/etc.)

Arial looks even better when used in Ubuntu.

To get it, we need to go to Add/Remove, select "All available applications" from Show, then search for core and you’ll find it. Once you do, install it.

It looks like this:

2. Change fonts to Arial

In the Appearance section of Ubuntu is where the fonts are changed.

It looks like this:

3. Change font rendering to "Slight"

The standard font rendering in Ubuntu looks a bit "computery", so to soften it up we change the way fonts are rendered.

From the above screen, click the Details button at the bottom right, set "Smoothing" to Subpixel (LCDs) and "Hinting" to Slight. Then click close.

It looks like this:

4. Set toolbar button labels to Text besides items

While it’s true this takes up a bit more screen area width-wise, it saves screen space height-wise.

This is optional. I prefer text-beside-item because text-under-icon looks very "old".

It looks like this:

5. Increase the size of your mouse pointer

For whatever reason the mouse pointer is very tiny in Ubuntu by default and difficult to see even on lower resolution monitors.

You can adjust this by going to Appearance Preferences, select your theme and then click Customize, then the Pointer tab.

It looks like this (note the bottom – drag the slider to increase/decrease pointer size):

6. Set transparency on your panel(s)

Transparency = modern-looking. By default the panels are solid in Ubuntu. You can change this over to transparent by right-clicking an empty area of the panel, selecting Properties, click the Background tab, choose Solid color then drag the slider next to Style to set your desired transparency.

It looks like this:

6a. Go 100% transparent, bump up panel size for big icons

If using the standard "24" panel size doesn’t float your boat and you want something with larger icons, set the transparency to 100% and your panel size to 48.

When you do it will look like this:

Some may like this, others may not. Whether this works for you or not greatly depends on the wallpaper you choose (some wallpaper may "blank out" the text altogether).

7. Get a cool wallpaper

The wallpaper I use was formerly a standard image bundled with Ubuntu but they got rid of it for whatever reason.

The image is called Dawn of Ubuntu and it’s easily found via a Google image search. So if you like that Ubuntu wallpaper, go for it. I personally think it looks great.

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By doing the above steps you can turn a plain Ubuntu desktop into something much more modern looking in just a few minutes.