We open up Serious Samurize and show you how to create a desktop object that displays free hard drive space.
While we're still talking widgets and objects, there's another app that's continuing to output some solid material: Serious Samurize (www.samurize.com). It was once a popular tool among tweakers, but its easy to use interface and preconfigured scripts has gained more respect among serious desktop modders.
Serious Samurize lets you customise your desktop to display hundreds of system details. |
It has a simple premise: place small applications on the screen. Most users simply pin the applications to the background wallpaper, making the entire desktop seem alive with activity. Check out the following steps to get you started with a simple config script that displays how much disk space is on each hard drive in your system.
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Step 1:
Head to www.samurize.com and download the latest version (1.55 at the time of writing). Install it, open it and select New. The basic design interface consists of two main areas: Design, and Tools and Settings. |
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Step 2:
Samurize comes with some handy built in tools that you can plug straight into your new interface. Our first step is to dive into the Meter list but going to the Edit Meters tab on the Tools and Settings panel. From the drop down list, select Add Drive Space. You should see text box appear in the Design Area and some properties appear in Tools and Settings. |
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Step 3:
The next step is to decide how you want to present the information. A graph is far more interesting for this kind of thing, so select Pie under Draw Type. Mould the image in the Design Area until you have it at the size and shape you want. |
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Step 4:
Now go to the Source tab in Tools and Settings and select which drive you want to monitor, and the units you'd like it to represent - we've selected Used Space. As it's a pie chart, it'll display as a percentage of the total drive space. Next, go to the Display tab and select some colours. You can also select the amount of transparency it has, too. |
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Step 5:
For added effect, you can also adjust the Inner Radius and Sweep values to make it look more like a futuristic operating system readout, rather than a pie chart from Excel. |
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Step 6:
Now to add your drive letter somewhere logical. Add another meter (Add Meter) and select Add Text. All you need to do is add the label into the text box and alter the font with the font dialog box at the bottom of the panel. The final step is to save your config file in your Samurize directory, load up the Samurize Client, right click on the tray icon, and navigate to your config file. |