help me make an interactive desktop

I am looking for a way to either embed icons into a desktop background or to select part of a desktop background to activate a program, or both. For instance, I lets say I have a picture of a building that I would like to set as my desktop background but I would also like to be able to use the windows and doors as desktop icons. I would also like these icons or sections of the picture to also conform to the visual effect of the picture as a whole, such as resizing or changing the transparency and such. Is there a way that This can be done? Thanks for any help you can give me.

I can only think of a cheats' way!

Provided you're using gnome, get the background image setup, then create custom icons for your applications in some bright and obvious colour in inkscape, resize (right-click) the icons so they cover the area you want. Lastly edit the icons to transparent once they are in place, and disable icon text from gconf-editor.

mmm not ideal is it!?

I can see that would work to mimic an interactive desktop. However is there a way to lock the icon in place on the desktop, also I want to use different desktops at different times so when I switch from one desktop to another I want the icons to follow the desktop. I will try what you have said so far and see how that works. Thanks.

Ok, then there is another way....I think! If you are able to create a web page, and so basically an image with the links embedded into the page as applications. (don't ask me how!), then it is kind of possible to have kdesktop manage the desktop in Gnome, and so have said webpage as a background. It does however come with costs. Read more here. And a nested screenshot here.

I wish you luck! Of course I suppose you could always just try Kubuntu!

Ok, that sets me up with a few extra options and also may solve another problem I have with beryl. I want to add different desktops to beryl cube but gnome wont let me, metacity manager. However it looks like someone has kwin running in gnome, so I think I will try that. Hopefully everything will run smoothly. You have been a lot of help. Thanks so much.

joriad said: Ok, that sets me up with a few extra options and also may solve another problem I have with beryl. I want to add different desktops to beryl cube but gnome wont let me, metacity manager. However it looks like someone has kwin running in gnome, so I think I will try that. Hopefully everything will run smoothly. You have been a lot of help. Thanks so much.

Beryl has a wallpaper plugin that works for gnome, that allows different wallpaper on each side of the cube. I can't get at the Beryl site right now to give you an exact link, but start at http://www.beryl-project.org