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No, I don’t mean the kind of bookmaking that involves gambling! This post discusses techniques you can use to make or assemble your own ebooks that can be read on your Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle or other eBook reader you might own. You might be wondering why someone would want to do this. After all, there are many ebooks available for sale or downloadable from libraries (provided you have a Sony Reader) and many web sites that provide free ebooks for download or reading online.

But there are a number of reasons to do this. One is the cost factor. Recently I assembled a programming text for a somewhat obscure computer programming language. This book is a late model text that retails for about US$65. How ever, the author maintains a website for the book where he allows readers to read or download the chapters. His purpose in doing so, he states, is that he hopes the book will serve as a useful introduction to those who are curious, but who are not curious enough to shell out big bucks for a dead-tree book. Hey! It works for me. I’m not monetarily profiting from reading it, and I consider it a very useful introduction. He does go on to remind us that the book is available for purchase. Anyway, this book is over 500 pages long, and I am well into it reading it using my Sony eBook Reader. I won’t disclose the book for legal reasons. But so far as I know, Amazon nor any place else sells a digital version of this book. That’s a good reason in itself.

And another reason is that some of these free ebooks available from places like Project Gutenberg may be freely available, but not in a format that your reader understands. While another reason is that there are many, many books available online as web pages. For example, http://www.freetechbooks.com/, http://2020ok.com/index.html, http://www.baen.com/library/ or a whole list of them found here: http://www.freeonlinereading.com/links.htm plus many more. These online books might already be in the correct format or they might be hypertexts, and as such, some digital readers won’t understand them in that format. Many places do provide formats for most every kind of reader. So it just depends on where you go. There are probably a lot more reasons too. But I’ll keep this short.

So, to start I’ll list the tools that I use to assemble these ebooks:

1. Internet Explorer (recent versions preferred)
2. Microsoft Word (however, a compatible alternative might work)
3. A PDF virtual printer (Word 2007 and Word 2010 have these as part of their feature set. If you use an alternative for Word then this is probably required.)
4. PDF editing tools – optional (The one I use only edits  meta data properties such as the title and author and is freeware.)

And now to describe the process. This process calls for Internet Explorer because it has a “Save As…” format that most (any?) other browsers do not. But if there are some that do, then those  may work as well. The “Web Archive, single file (*.mht)” format defaults when you perform a “Save As…” in Internet Explorer versions 7 and 8. In version 6, as I recall, you must change from the default format of as a web page, complete to this *.mht format. It may be possible to install a plug in for other browsers also to add this functionality or to download a stand alone program. I’ll leave it to you to explore those possibilities.

So, what’s the big deal with the *.mht format anyway? Firstly, it’s a archive format. It creates a single file, but the contents can be many files. Think of it as a Zip file, but without the compression, and you’ll get the idea. This is important with web pages because web pages can contain other parts, such as images, that are normally stored separately from the file or directory on the web server that contains the text and formatting of the document. With this file format, those images are all in the same file as the text, formatting and layout, and this makes the job of constructing the ebook a lot simpler.

This file format has a rich history, by the way, and I have extensively used it in the past at my places of employment for other reasons such a software technique called round tripping. This versatile file format is a pure text file, but can encode binary data, such as pictures, and as such, it is easy to edit and alter files with this format with tools that have no awareness of or have limited utility toward binary formatted files. This is the case, for example, with many Unix utilities or programming languages that don’t manipulate binary data very well. This format is well documented. I have read several of the RFC’s on it, but you don’t need to understand anything more about it other than it works. However, the Microsoft Office binary file formats are not very well understood by most and typically require a great deal of effort to modify without specific applications. Internet Explorer does not save as any of those binary formats.

Incidentally, many of us use this file format on a daily basis. This format is the MIME encoded format that email uses. Have you ever dragged an email out of Windows Live Mail (the desktop version - not the web based one) onto your desktop or into a folder? It creates a file named with the subject of the email and a file extension of *.eml. (Note: You have to have file extensions set to show in order to see them!) This format *.eml is the same MIME format as the *.mht files. If you do this, and then open the file with a text editor, (using “Open With” or “Send to” for example) you can see the internal structure, the guts – so to speak, of an email. There is no binary data in there. You can see the text of the email, but you’ll likely see a bunch of other stuff that looks interesting, but you may not understand it. This stuff textually encodes the binary data and the structure of the document – in this case as an email. And it’s all text. This is key. Because of this, it satisfies a “lowest common denominator” scenario allowing emails to be sent over multiple diverse systems and remain intact. But it also allows emails to have attachments. And those are encoded within the single file.

What else is important about this format? The next big reason is that the Microsoft Office suite of applications understands and can edit this *.mht file format. And because it does, we can easily get multiple web pages saved in this format into a single Word document - complete with all the pictures, diagrams and images. And it retains the original formatting and layout. If you try this with another application instead of Word, you may or may not be able to do this. Let us know your results.

So far, we have explained why we’re using Internet Explorer and Word. Now we’ll cover the PDF part next. PDF files are a binary format that is, for the most part, a universally understood document encoding. Most people have Adobe Reader installed on their computer and can open these files and read them. Also, most eBook readers can load them and display them.

My personal eBook reader is a Sony variety. And while all eBook readers have their pros and cons, I chose this one for several reasons. One reason is because I can load documents – ebooks – directly from my PC to the reader. Many ebook readers can do this, but as was recently discovered, Amazon can remotely remove items from your Kindle device without your consent as was done, ironically, in a “big brother” fashion with the “Nineteen Eighty-Four”ebook by George Orwell. This doesn’t happen on my device because it does not have the wireless WhisperNet connection. One final reason I chose Sony is that Sony is the only reader on the market that can display a digitally encrypted PDF documents. And my online library, OverDrive, lends just such ebooks. This allows a digital return date on borrows which makes the ebook unavailable after the loan period expires. This satisfies publishers and authors who would otherwise not allow libraries to lend digital ebooks by only allow a certain number to be checked out at a given time. The Kindle and all other brands currently are not able to achieve this. Oh, then there was the cost.

So, I chose the Sony eBook Reader, and will describe the process specifically for it. But, the process should be generic enough for other reader devices that have similar features. OK – enough with the disclaimers…

The process is rather simple. I would advise you to install the PDF virtual printer software regardless of what application you use to edit Word documents. You’d be surprised how much you’ll use it for other unanticipated things such as keeping a digital copy of a receipt for an online purchase. When I print them out – I lose them promptly. I PDF them, and I also lose them, but Windows has a wonderful search engine that finds them again fast for me. Anyway, I use the freeware Bullzip virtual printer, but have used others. There are many free choices out there.

This approach provides additional advantages beyond what Word provides as it works with almost any application. For example, if you were to download a purely text document from Project Gutenberg you might be able to load it directly to your device if your device understands text files. I imagine most do. But if not, you could just print it from Notepad, for example, directly to a PDF file on your computer. This new “printout” will be a PDF file. It works with any application that can (or has permission to) print – with the exception of applications capable of opening encrypted PDF’s. So you cannot open an encrypted or protected borrowed library ebook then print it out as a PDF from Adobe Reader or Adobe Digital Editions. That’s bad and illegal. And it won’t work. And if it isn’t encrypted, well, it’s already a PDF! So, you can save any single web page as a PDF just by printing it. But many eBooks come in parts. And combining those parts becomes the issue.

And that is where Word comes in handy. For example, the eBook I described at the beginning of this post about the Lisp programming language actually is thirty-three different web pages. Each one is a different chapter. I suspect that the author intentionally did this to prevent people from just downloading a single file and never buying the book. And that’s why I left out the title of the text. But since both Word and Internet Explorer understand the *.mht file format in common we can use Word to open the web page files we save from Internet Explorer.

We should note at this point that there are many ways to accomplish these various tasks. For example, you could cut and paste the contents of individual web pages into Word. Now, I’ve not had good luck with the formatting doing that, but you might have better luck or wish to manually control all the formatting regardless.

So here’s the process I use:

1. For each web page of the online text – open it in Internet Explorer – this may entail clicking a “Next Page” link or something like that.
2. Save the web page by choosing Tools>”Save As…” and give is a usable name if one does not already appear by default and use the single page web archive format *.mht that has been discussed and save each of them - all in the same directory.
3. When you are done with that, then make a backup copy of that directory as later parts of the process can alter the original files.

You now have the data that your ebook will be built from. One other thing to note about this technique is that if the ebook has a “one web page per page of book” layout, then this process can become tedious. In those cases, if the book is several hundred pages long, another technique can be used to “mirror” the book on your local computer using other software and then stitch it all back into a single document. I plan to discuss that in a later post provided it isn’t a rocket science endeavor.

The next part of the process combines all those *.mht files you’ve already created. And again, be sure you backed up that directory. If you have to start over for some reason you’ll avoid having to resave all the original pages again.  This is very easy to do. In Windows just right click on your folder then select copy. Find where you want to save the backup and right click in a white area and select paste. It’ll backup all the parts of your ebook.

Next open Microsoft Office Word or a compatible alternate. What ever you use, it must be able to create master documents. Using the “Create a master document and subdocuments” process described on this Microsoft Office Online website located here:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HP051870021033.aspx

we’ll create a document outline. This will be the master document. The process described by the link above is specifically for the 2003 version of Word, but the same instructions work for 2007. I named each top level of the outline the same as the chapter name. I then added each *.mht file as a subdocument to the outline. You’ll be prompted about editing the original files. If you made a back up, it won’t matter how you answer. I let it update the originals. Otherwise it will create it’s own copies. But this is up to you.

The process to “Create a master document and subdocuments” is straight forward so I won’t detail it. You can alter the original subdocuments in Word at this point. I usually add page numbers in the footer, but you can change the fonts making them bigger or a different typeface. Use your imagination.

Next you’ll probably want to set the document properties. These are things like the title and author. These are inherited into the PDF document you’ll create, and they are used by your eBook reader to organize your ebooks. In Word 2007 these are set using the Office Button> Prepare>Properties. They can be set in the 2003 version as well, but I can’t document that. I don’t have a Word 2003 handy at the moment.

If you forget to set these, then you can use a property editor to fix the resulting PDF file later. I have used the freeware BeCyPDFMetaEdit for this purpose. Most PDF editors that can actually create or edit a PDF will cost you. If you have on, such as Adobe Creator, then you can use it to do a lot of this work instead of using Word. But it is very expensive. BeCyPDFMetaEdit does the job, and it’s freeware, but it doesn’t do much to edit the ebook content. Do that in Word before you make the PDF.

Once you have created your ebook in Word all that is left is to make it into a PDF. Word 2007 originally required you to download an add-in for this. But if you have the most recent service pack, then it’ll already be there. Just click the Office button>Save As>PDF or XPS. Fill in the name you want to give it, make sure you select the PDF format, and click Save. You will now have a PDF file of all those web pages, but all in one PDF file that is easy to read on most any reader device. If you’re using an earlier version of Office, then install the freeware Bullzip PDF virtual printer. The process is the same except that you now “Print” the document to a file location.

You can now load this document on your reader using whatever means are required to accomplish that task. With my eBook Reader it is simply connecting the reader to the PC with standard USB cable and dragging the new file to the folder on the device where I want it. With a Kindle, they might actually look at what you are doing. I don’t know, but I would expect that they might figure out that the book I just created is one they also sell. In such case, they might prevent it from loading or delete it later. But I am speculating and don’t know that for a fact. There may actually be no such issues. But you need to decide these things before you  purchase an ebook reader. None that I have seen are perfect, and many leave a lot to be desired. And I am not a big fan of Sony, but I made an exception in this case. Also, rumor has it that Apple will be releasing an iPad ebook reader sometime soon. We will have to wait and see.

In conclusion, a few things should be noted. Firstly, most, but not all web pages can be saved as a *.mht file. Ironically, the pages I have the most trouble with are those on Microsoft web properties. For example, the link for master/subdocuments documentation above will not save as a *.mht using this technique. This page uses scripts and has an ActiveX control which cause problems. Other times, a stray character out of the basic code set for the page will intentionally be used, and it’ll trip up the web archive encoding. These issues don’t stop me, but getting around that problem is another story for another post. But you can use another format should you run into this problem. A full “Web page, complete” format is also available, but it isn’t as friendly. Each page will become two parts. One is the basic page sans pictures, images, diagrams, etc., and the other is a folder containing the other parts. If the first method fails this one might work. In any case, I have never run into an online book that would not save as an *.mht format and required this other format. But saving in any format that both Internet Explorer and Word understands is key. It can even be plain text. Also, as I mentioned before, you can cut and paste the different parts into place from Internet Explorer into Word. This will likely require manual tweaking to look right in the end. Secondly, you may be lucky and find the entire book in a single file. If you have an application that can open that file, you can print it out directly to a PDF format file using a virtual PDF printer. Many ebooks are just single plain text files. In those cases, I would open them in Word or even WordPad and change the font to something more readable on your device, and then print out the PDF. Thirdly, there are a good number of ebooks that this process will be arduous to apply against. These eBooks tend to display only a single page of the ebook at a time. These ebooks can be converted using this process, but it is tedious to deal with hundreds or thousands of pages. I am working on a technique to automate this for this type of ebook because, as you probably surmised by now, there are some out there that I want myself. And finally, many ebooks are hypertexts. These ebooks will have embedded links to other pages. This tends to happen mostly with the ebooks in the last category, i.e., the ones that have one page at a time delivery. These links can be modified in Word to allow your reader to go to the correct place in the document, but it requires manual tweaking to do this – at least at this time. I am also working on automating these linkages. In the end, I am hoping that pages like a table of contents will have working links to the correct parts of the document. Currently, you have to set this up by hand, and it is beyond the scope of this post to describe that process.

And one final idea before I close: regardless of where you intend to read the eBook text, if you make it a PDF then it is a portable document. PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It can be read on a PC or a Mac or Linux or maybe your mobile phone or your eBook reader or… These can be emailed or stored in your online storage such as your SkyDrive. I use this technique to share articles from online publications that require you to log in to read them. This technique can also be used to make a document version of an entire (static) website. You are only limited by your imagination. So spread the joy!

Jeff Flynt

If you’ve used Windows Live for any period of time, then you’ve probably discovered that there are some things you can customize on your profile. There isn’t much. But there is one place that Windows Live grants you a great deal of creative control and freedom allowing you to express yourself in a plethora of ways. This is your Windows Live Space. And no matter what your opinions are about Spaces, there are many enthusiast that have created some outstanding works of art using the platform as a canvas to express themselves. Many others use their Spaces as a simple way to share their ideas and opinions by expressing themselves in the written word by maintaining a blog there. Others share photos or may do both. Still others fill there Space with gadgets and lists and all sorts of other eye candy. This is what your Space is for and is one aspect that makes Windows Live unique from many other social networks. As such, this post is about another way of expressing yourself on your Space - not about the merits of Spaces in general or where the data lives or who actually visits your Space or who the intended audience happens to be. 

Spaces are used for many things, but the common thread throughout is that your Windows Live Space is a microcosm of you. It’s not just your words or your photos or your music. It’s also your sense of style, your composition, a collection of the things you find interesting in life and want to share with the world - even if you are the only person who ever sees your Space. It may also contain some things that are only for your personal use. It’s your Space. Do with it whatever you want. It can be as ornate as you like or as simple as just a place for you to simply hang a weather gadget of a some place you find interesting.

So, if your Space is dedicated to a topic or theme or you would just like to share news items you find relevant and newsworthy of your specific interests, your Space is a great place to put a news tracker. This post will describe the process of making one using the new search and decision engine Bing from Microsoft.

Creating a news tracker is very easy. The basics, in a nutshell, are that you need a news feed and a module to display it. So, in this example, Bing will provide the feed, and we will add a feed module on your Space to display it.

Before we start, we need to determine the subject or topic of the track. This can be anything really. If you have a Space dedicated to scuba diving then you could track that or if you are into politics or comics or whatever that can be tracked too. You can have more than one, and you can change them whenever you want. I’m currently tracking stories on my blog regarding my new favorite gadget, the new Palm Pre smart phone. I chose this subject, but the stories change frequently based on whatever Bing finds relevant for the terms in the news at the moment you view my Space. The subject is static and only changes if I change the subject in the module, but the contents, links to news articles per se, are dynamic and update as frequently as the stories are published. This results in a running stream of focused news, and it’s all limited to just your topic.

We’ll use a news feed as opposed to a search feed because news feeds change frequently and are chronological in order while a search feed tends to always return the same results until Bing finds a new web page to return. Web searches don’t change nearly as frequently. For the purposes of this exercise I will use a subject or topic of “Windows Live” since it’s a relevant subject and I’m interested in following this news topic.

So, we’ll start by creating the feed using Bing. Begin by opening Bing. The Bing homepage has a place for you to enter your search terms for a basic web search. You can also use advanced options to limit searches to particular sites, countries or languages. And if you’re adept at using a search engine and know advanced syntax, you can do all sorts of creative things to define your search.

So, we will enter “Windows Live” in the search box. Often times, you’re told to not include the quotes, but in this case the quotes are actually part of the search syntax. So KEEP the quotes! The quotes force the search to not only look for news items that contain both words, but that the two words must appear together exactly as they are entered. Without the quotes you’ll may get false hits about Windows 7 or other topics containing either one or both words in any order. Even using the advanced search operator of “AND” will not enforce the order. So, if you’re looking for things that are a phrase, then use quotes.

In our case, a web search (as opposed to a news search) of Windows Live or “Windows Live” will return a lot of relevant items about the subject. There are so many that the search engine determines that the most relevant results are those with the terms on the page appearing exactly as they’re entered for the search, both words together in that order. News searches, however, retrieve results from a much smaller pool and will result in news stories with subjects that are off topic , if you don’t use the quotes. So, again, use the quotes to force what you want. This will force the search to use an “AND” operator for the terms an enforce the order and proximity of the search terms.

Now, after you entered the search terms, click the “News” link on the left to perform the search. The resulting page is a “News” search of this topic.

But this page isn’t any good for our purposes. We actually need the feed for this page. This is easy to get, and there are a couple ways to do it. Since there is a feed associated with the results page, your browser might have a feed button your can use. Internet Explorer has such a button in the upper right area of the browser. On Bing, it’ll show as the web slice icon because you can also save the results as a web slice to your favorites bar and see your updates on demand, but you won’t be sharing them there. So, if you open the drop down menu, you’ll see the RSS feed for the page:

You don’t actually need to subscribe to the feed for this to work. You just need to copy the feed URL. Select the entire feed URL and right click it and copy. Here is what you’ll see in Internet Explorer doing it this way:

If you’re using a browser that doesn’t have a RSS button or just want an easier method, then on the left hand side of the search pane is an area to refine your search. You’ll notice that I have further refined my News Search to include stories from “Sci/Tech sources.”

Now,  the method that’s a little easier, and will work in all browsers, is to right click on the RSS link in the panel on the left hand side and select the option to copy the link URL by selecting “Copy Shortcut” or “Copy Link Location.”

If that doesn’t make sense to you, then just go ahead and click the link. The page that opens should show the news feed allowing you to subscribe to the it. But we don’t need to actually do that. We just need the URL of this page. So, again, select the URL and copy it.

So now we have a copy of the RSS feed URL in hand we can proceed to the next step of adding a feed module to our Space and configuring it for this feed.

Remember, we will need the URL you just copied. So don’t copy anything else or you’ll lose it. If you do, just go back and copy it again or you could paste it into a notepad document or a Sticky Notes so you can easily get it back later.

OK, for the next step, we need to go to our Space. You should already know how to do that, so I won’t detail that out. Make sure you’re logged in as yourself because we are going to edit the Space.

You should see “Customize” over on the top right hand side of your of your Space. Click it to open the drop down menu. Then click on “Add modules” and wait for the page to open in Customize mode.

Once it opens in Customize mode, you should see the “Modules” menu open. It’s a scrollable menu. So, scroll it down to the the “Feeds” entry. We’re going to add a new feeds module to the page.

Click the “Add” across from the heading “Feed”. This will place a new module towards the top of your Space. We will move it later so don’t worry about the placement for now.

Click “Close tab” at the bottom of the menu and then click the “Save” button in the yellow Customize band. You’ve just added a feed module.

But the module has no idea of what the feed is yet. We’ll enter that information next. Your Space should have returned to it’s normal appearance and not be in Customize mode any longer.

There should be a new “Feed” module toward the top of your Space, and we are now ready to set it up.  Your new module will have an “Edit” link in it. Click it to open up the Feed parameters page. It’ll be preconfigured with a “Feed name:” of “Feed”. Change that to something you like representing the topic or subject of your news track. I changed mine to “Windows Live in the news…” Now, hopefully you still have that URL you copied earlier. If you don’t, then you’ll have to get it again. I make a habit of pasting these types of things into a Notepad session for easy retrieval later.

The “Feed web address:” should have “Http://” in there. Click in this field at the end. Then delete all that by repeatedly clicking the backspace. Once it’s cleared out paste the URL into this field.

The “Show this many items:” is preset to just one. Change that to what you would like. I set it to the maximum of ten.  I wish there were more, but I suppose there has to be a limit. So, why not 100? I know the feeds on Windows Live don’t return more than 20 or so, but really, we could use more both on Spaces and on the http://my.live.com page where I believe the limit is just five. Anyway…

Then click “Save” and you’ve just added and configured your new news feed for your news tracker. The new module is probably not placed where you want it. So, you’ll have to click the “Customize” button at the top again and select “Rearrange or hide modules” to fix this.

When the “Customize” mode page opens you’ll be able to drag the module to the final position you want. Once you’re done moving it click “Save” to save and exit the “Customize” mode and you’re done!

Now, when a visitor clicks one of the articles in the tracker, it’ll open the story in a new browser window where they can read it. I noticed in this example that the very first item “Windows Live – Softpedia” actually is opening a dead page. This is neither Bing’s fault nor mine. Softpedia has published something then possibly retracted it. I don’t know. It looks like it was an article on Messenger. But not to worry. Eventually, as the feed updates over time, this link will go away all by itself.

The techniques shown in this post can be applied to many other things. I  am using it to publish my recent twitter comments, and my recent blog posts, but I have used it in the past to show items in my Friendfeed feed, my Netflix feed, and updates from the Windows Live Taskforce.

Now, before someone points this out, I would like to say that the ability to do this is not limited to Bing nor to Spaces. This is one of the really nice things about feeds. You can so some really creative things with them. Some examples might be to add a feed to a friends blog on your Space instead of just a cross link. This allows your visitor to see what’s on your friend’s blog has posted without leaving your blog, and should they see something interesting, they can click it and go read it. Or you can try adding a FaceBook feed or one for digg stories. Some of you will laugh, but you can even add an RSS feed of your local weather. And we know, with the weather, there is always something to talk about.

Anyway, we used to have ready access to http://my.live.com where we could add all kinds of personal feeds. We can still add them there, but that’s a personal page and isn’t shared. So, if the feed is just something for you to track, you could also add it there. Unfortunately, that page has not been updated to the Wave 3 motif and, while still there, one could wonder for how long. I would like it if this page was updated and put back into the Windows Live fold. It has a lot of features I miss and that Windows Live needs. As it stands, if you don’t know about it, then you would never use it. There are no direct access links to it.

In closing I would like to mention that some people are not fond of feeds. But, I think, the primary issues they have with it are mostly that of being on the source end rather than the sink end of the feed. That is to say, they want to consume the feeds, but they don’t want to provide them. The idea is that with feeds you don’t actually need to go to the Space and see the work that was put into it.  But in this case, the module feed provides only a link and nothing more. Unfortunately, there isn’t even a description available as with most feeds. Clicking it will take you directly to the destination. And if that is your blog, then it’ll be your post. Another argument is that no one seems to know exactly how feeds affect your Space statistics. But feeds are not going away any time soon. And since they’re here we should use them and not turn them off. They provide a valuable service.

-Jeff

I decided to go ahead and respond to the Clubhouse Challenge: Show Off Your Windows 7 Desktop thinking it would be rather easy. But, because mine is a little different, it wasn’t just a simple screen capture. I ended up installing a demo of Camtasia which, I am happy to report, worked well on Windows 7. Camtasia is software that lets you make a movie of your computer screen as a screen recorder. And, if you’re not a member of the Clubhouse, you can apply at that link above.

One of the features that I dearly miss from Vista Ultimate is Dreamscene, and fortunately, almost as soon as Windows 7 was in beta, someone figured out how to add it to Windows 7 manually. I guess I’m not the only one who misses it! Dreamscene runs in both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of the desktops, but at this point in time all we can actually test it on is Windows 7 Ultimate RC1. So, I don’t know if it’ll work in any other versions once Windows 7 is launched on October 22, 2009. In fact, I can’t be certain it’ll even work in any future version of Windows 7 at all, whatever they end up calling it. But we do know that it was strictly a Vista Ultimate feature, and as such, many users have never seen it.

It’s an interesting thought to wonder if one could add it to any version of Vista, such as the Home Premium version, using the same techniques presented below. It basically involves just a couple files being in the correct place and running a registry update. Some daring sole will try this. I cannot. I only have Vista Ultimate which already has Dreamscene.

Anyway, installing it in the 32 bit desktop is a little easier than the 64 bit apparently. I don’t have a 32 bit version handy, but the 64 bit version was a snap. I had no difficulty installing the 64 bit setup myself, and I think anyone could do this easily. If you would like to try it out (at your own risk of course) the instructions can be found here:

How to enable Dreamscene or Video Wallpaper in Windows 7

Officially Dreamscene has been removed, and it appears that it won’t be supported in Windows 7. What a shame! Maybe they’ll revive the old Windows Plus! Packs and sell it in one.

I first saw Dreamscene at the Vista launch event here in Phoenix several years ago. For what one might consider a minor eye candy feature, the crowd loved it. Dreamscene was one of the added bonuses that helped me to decide to go with the Ultimate Edition, but there were many other reasons as well.  Unfortunately, it took Microsoft about a year to make good on the promise when it finally showed up as an Ultimate Extra; I impatiently waited.  I expect the delay was because of CPU demand problems and other issues. But when I got it, I always used it on both my laptop and desktop. I did this without fail.

So, it’s fitting that I show my Windows 7 desktop with the very same Dreamscene demo’d at the launch event. But because it’s Dreamscene, which is basically a movie itself, I  will, of course, have to make a movie of the screen. 

My Windows 7 Desktop

<<There should be a video above, but it’s missing click image below where you can watch it full screen>>

Jeff's Windows 7 Screen 

I switch the theme regularly so this is only one of the Dreamscene desktops that I use. One other that I wanted to demo, one I made myself from someone else's clip, and really like, is also of a waterfall that fills the entire screen. But, because of the rendering in smaller resolution a lot of the detail is lost, and it doesn’t look so excellent.

But the first one is good, and it really has special significance as the first Dreamscene I ever saw. I actually figured out which waterfall this was when I first started using it. Microsoft doesn’t tell you. But it’s been so long that I have forgotten. Oh well – maybe I can bing it.

Here is a static image of that other desktop I regularly use. This is the one that loses something when Camtasia makes a movie out of it. But you can visualize, right?

I’ve made the movie and image about as large as they’ll go. The small size makes seeing the details difficult, and I apologize for that. I’ll put some close ups of the task bar here. It may be wrong of me, but I use the terms “taskbar button” and “taskbar icon” sort of interchangeably. Old habits… In Windows 7 I think of it as an icon when it has no running instances and as a button when it does. Why? Well, because it looks like a button when it’s running. Anyway, don’t be confused. In this discussion they are the same thing. But I think icon is the correct term.

Wow – it’s still to small. If you’re using Windows 7, you can use the magnifier to see what’s in there – if you care… They are the small style icons so I can keep a lot of them on one row. The task bar is two rows high. The icons/buttons move around a lot, anyway, on my system. That’s one of the nice things about Windows 7. Taskbar position is no longer based on the order the application was opened. You can just drag them where you want them. You can also see my taskbar autohides.

Oh, you may have noticed a couple things in the video that don’t translate well. Once or twice in the video I held down the shift key while I right clicked an taskbar button and get this:

This presents the context menu that would appear when you just right clicked (no shifting) on an taskbar button in Vista and prior. If you just right click in Windows 7, you’ll get the jump list. 

Anyway, you should try playing around with the accelerator/modifier keys as they add features you might not otherwise discover. For example, holding the shift key while clicking a taskbar button opens a new instance of the program, and holding the control key down while clicking a taskbar button cycles through all that buttons running instances bringing them to the surface sort of like an alt-tab but just for that application. A cntl-alt-tab opens the alt-tab display but keeps it open after you release the keys. Then you can arrow in any direction with the arrow keys to bring to the surface that particular application. This is handy. This is just like how windows-alt-tab brings up the rolodex view you normally get with windows-tab yet keeps it open after you release the keys. The modifiers with the arrow keys are fun too.

So, there it is. Now I need to figure out how to grab the other extras too! I’m sure someone has done that already.

-Jeff