The Windows XP Desktop

Throughout the rest of this book, we’ll be showing the Windows desktop with a simple gray background
rather than any fancy pictures. The reason being that the pictures in this book are quite a bit smaller
than your screen, not to mention grayscale (black and white). So a plain gray background will make it
easier to see the pictures in this book.
Cross-
Reference
You can easily adjust the look and feel of your own Windows XP
desktop to your liking, as you’ll learn in Chapter 14.
With that in mind, take a look at Figure 1-6. This figure shows the names of the various doodads that
appear on the Windows desktop. Becoming familiar with those names is a good idea, as you’ll come
across them constantly in your work with Windows XP. The sections that follow describe each item in
some detail.
Figure 1-6: Names of things on the Windows XP desktop