Stardock has released DesktopX 1.2 to the general public. DesktopX is a program that allows users to build their own desktops. It does so by extending the user's existing shell (Explorer, Litestep, etc.) to support true objects.

With DesktopX, you can easily create objects by having an object point to a .PNG file or .BMP and telling it what image to show with different states such as mouse over, mouse down, mouse away, etc. Additionally, users and themers can add their own states. So for instance, an object could change the way it looked depending on the time of day by having the object have time related states.

DesktopX doesn't require any programming to do some incredibly cool stuff. All objects can be fully alpha blended (anti-aliased - no one else can do this), any size, and fully animated.

However, developers who know VBScript or Javascript can extend DesktopX's functionality by having scripts send messages to different objects. One example object is a ball that the user can pick up and throw around the screen. Also, because DesktopX can access COM objects, all embedded features of Windows become accessible. So a user could create their own web browser in a matter of minutes. A user could create a real time Excel graph that's part of their desktop that responds to input from the Internet (for example, Stardock's internal bandwidth monitor is a DesktopX object).

Version 1.2 is a major upgrade that delivers a brand new animation engine, enhanced in-memory compression so that themes use less memory, and a great deal of under the hood changes to give it a more internally object oriented design. The net result is that it should be a LOT faster than version 1.1.

Download it for free at http://www.desktopx.net

DesktopX is part of Stardock's Object Desktop.