Rainmeter 2.5

Customising your Windows desktop can be as simple or as complicated as you like. For most people, the options provided by Windows itself are often sufficient, while others want to push the envelope further. One way in which your desktop can be made to work harder is by using it to display all kinds of useful information – in Vista and Windows 7, there are specific gadgets that perform this function, but they’re limited and a little clunky to implement, while XP users are left completely in the cold.

This is where Rainmeter comes in: this desktop customisation tool works on the assumption that the desktop is yours to do with as you see fit. It offers an alternative platform to the Sidebar used in later versions of Windows, offering a wide variety of customisable “skins” (Rainmeter’s rather confusing term for gadgets) that allow you to pretty much cover the desktop with your choice of information, tools and shortcuts.

These skins can act as simple information portals – giving you access to system information, favoured RSS feeds or the latest email count in your inbox, for example. They can also be developed further to provide interactive functionality, such as skins that record notes or let you tweet direct from your desktop. You can also use skins to serve as a panel containing shortcuts to all your favourite programs, allowing you to banish the taskbar or clean up the desktop.

Skins can be developed by hand – they’re open-source, so widely available – or you can download packages known as “themes”. You’ll be prompted to download additional themes after installation, although a basic “illustro” is provided to give you an idea of what’s available. Rainmeter will launch with a selection of skins pre-loaded, such as date/time, disk information, a Lifehacker RSS feed and a Google search box, enabling you to launch web searches direct from the desktop. There’s also a welcome panel with links to articles helping you familiarise yourself with the program.

Edit skin settings by right-clicking the skin itself – this opens a .ini file in Notepad where you can tweak settings by hand. You can also configure the program from its icon in the Notification area of the Taskbar.

New in version 2.x: an integrated installer covering both 32- and 64-bit builds as well as a portable application for more experienced users. Featured skins are now separated from the main build, replaced by a starter package to get people up and running quickly, while skin developers will be pleased to see a number of new plugins are available that will greatly extend the functionality of future skins that are developed.

The latest 2.5 ships with these improvements/changes:

- New FileView plugin. This powerful new plugin will index and gather information about all files and folders in a defined path.
- Added new ClipString=2 setting and new ClipStringW / ClipStringH options.
- Added new Mouse Actions to support the scroll wheel. 
- Added new Mouse Variables. These are "macro" variables used in the context of a mouse click action to provide the current X and Y position of the mouse cursor relative to the meter or skin in pixels or a percentage.
- Added new OnUpdateAction command to Skins, Meters and Measures. This will allow an action to take place when the element is updated normally or by any bang.
- Added new OnChangeAction command to Measures. This will allow an action to take place when the value of a measure changes.
Added new OnFocusAction and OnUnFocusAction options to the [Rainmeter] section of the skin, to execute actions when a skin gains or loses focus (by clicking it) in Windows.
Added "*" as a wildcard parameter to the !UpdateMeasure and !UpdateMeter bangs to immediately update all measures and meters.
Changed the behavior of the WebParser ProxyServer option to better handle how WebParser interacts with Internet Explorer for proxy management.

Transform your desktop from simple wallpaper to something more functional and useful with this powerful customisation tool - albeit one less suited to novices.