30th May 2002
Icons are wonderful creatures, but their spacing on the Desktop (and in the Windows Explorer) probably hasn't been optimized. Why even bother with icon spacing? So you can squeeze more icons into a smaller area! Right-click on your Desktop, select 'Properties,' then navigate to the 'Appearance' tab. In the 'Item' menu, be sure to write down the 'Icon Spacing' values (Horizontal and Vertical). Then, you can change both of them to 32 (I've found this number works best). If these settings don't work well for you, you can always change them back! Icons are helpful in visually describing what lies beneath them, and sometimes textual reminders are a bit too much. You know that the book icon is for launching your favorite word processor--but you can't have a textless icon... or can you? Rename the icon (select it and tap the 'F2' key). While depressing either ALT key, enter '0160' on your numeric keypad. This should create a blank space. At that point, you can hit ENTER and the icon will no longer have text underneath it. If you'd like other 'nameless' icons on your Desktop, enter an additional '0160' for each one (remember, no two shortcut icons can have the same filename).