Windows 8 panoramic backgrounds themes explained

[nsane.forums]

Microsoft has released its first official background theme for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, which takes advantage of the OS's new multi-monitor support for panoramic themes.

The launch of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview version last week introduced the public to a number of new features that had not been seen before in previous Windows releases. One of them is purely for visual pleasure but also very cool; it's the ability to take a desktop wallpaper and have it stretched so that one theme is shown on two monitors.

The official Windows Experience blog offers up more information on these new panoramic themes. These kinds of background can only be used on a PC running Windows 8; they will not work on a Windows 7 PC set up. On the other hand a Windows 7 background can be used on a Windows 8 PC; it simply won't stretch to encompass two monitors. You can check out two Windows 8 panoramic backgrounds, Nightfall and Starlight, at the Windows Downloads web site.

The blog also points out that if you have a Windows 8 theme with the auto color setting, you can "smoothly and automatically shift the Windows desktop glass and taskbar color to match the dominant color in whichever background image is currently being displayed."

Finally, if you have two monitors running Windows 8, you can also set up a different Windows 7-based background on each monitor. In Windows 7, you could only use the same background with two monitors.

View: Original Article

[nuthut]

I've been able to stretch desktop backgrounds across multiple monitors for a long time in 7... this isn't "new"

[FrankV]

Nice to see that MS took a pic of our famous Dutch "Kinderdijk".