Handy Desktop Background For App Developers

An article by -Matt-    No Comments

Ever been working with an application window and wondered if it would fit into a particular screen resolution?  I have.  I am continually testing our apps in different browser windows and periodically I check to make sure we are still within the maximum screen resolution as indicated in our requirements documents.  I had been using this nifty little Firefox plugin which did the job for me.  But, I don’t have that capability yet (that I know of) with Google Chrome.  And, what if I happen to be testing a non-browser-based application?  Well, I got tired of wondering and decided to do something about it.

I remember from a previous life having worked with a developer who had a very neat desktop background that demarcated the different resolutions with a label and border so that regardless of which application or window he was working in he could tell immediately how well it fit into a particular resolution simply by moving the window over the different sections of his desktop.  I did a bit of searching and turned up nothing in the way of desktop backgrounds that fit the bill, so I’m guessing maybe he did what I did – create my own.

Since I run a screen resolution of 1680×1150 on my HP laptop I’ve started with, well, a 1680×1150 image.  You can see that I like darks colors on my desktop, and the final version has a nice little gradient to spice it up a bit.  Conky overlays it very nicely, and I now have a great solution to my problem.

Here’s a screenshot of the final product running on my laptop:

Here’s the Gimp .xcf file with all the layers for the 1680×1150 resolution.  Those of you who run larger screen resolutions can take it and modify to fit your needs.

desktop_screen_res_bg_1650x1150.xcf

And, here is the .png file for those of you already running 1680×1150.

desktop_screen_res_bg_1650x1150.png

Hope you enjoy!