MOUSE MISCELLANY ---------------  Part 1: Wading through the mouse-utility plague.  by Scott English   ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿? It's something that you don't really notice. Some of you might not even know of it's existence. But it's out there. The mouse-utility plague. It seems there are a few things that programers are drawn into writing. Clocks. Text Editors. And Mouse Utilities. Having become pretty well associated with freely distributable software,it has become more obvious to me than to others that this plague is reaching epidemic proportions. This has it's good and it's not so good sides, though I am happy to say that there probably aren't any obvious bad effects of this particular plague. I am particularly happy because it has given me the topic for this article, in which I will go onto a brief exporation down the mouse holes looking in detail at all those we little mouse program thingies. What are Mouse Utilities? ------------------------- No they aren't special things for your mouse when it joins you in a game of Monopoly. Mouse utilities vary widely, but of course the most common of all mouse utilities would have to be the Sun mouse type, but in general mouse utilities could be thought of anything that improves the operation of your mouse interface with your Amiga. Big or Small. Which is the way to go? ------------------------------------- There appears to be a polar seperation in the Amiga community over wether things such as mouse utilities should be specific and singular in their purpose (hence being very small and compact) or wether one big utility should cover as many functions as possible. There seems to be bonuses and minuses for both sides of the argument and I can't make my way clear to say if one is better then the other. Instead I will tell you about some of the points of both sides, and let you decide. But more generally you will find that most programs tend to go for the 'cover as many functions as you can in as little room as possible' approach. Small is Sweet -------------- Small modular type programs allow you freedom of choice as to what you want on your system's disks. This is a major concern for floppy disk users who must count each block if they are trying to cram in as much software as they can onto their boot disk. This problem is much less for hard drive users and should become even more irrelevant as we get further into the age of mass storage (with the likes of Floptical and CD technologies just to mention a few). Storage concerns aside this singular function approach does still give the user the power of control over their system. They can determine exactly what is on their system and remove excess baggage if they so choose. On the other hand, they easyily bring on another small module if they require a new function for their system. Disk and small amounts of memory space are the beneficiaries of this approach. Big is Beautiful ---------------- Larger programs that incorporate as much as they can appear to be more popular then the smaller approach. This may be because we do commonly have a lot of disk storage space at hand and need not be so strict over small wastages. Larger programs also allow you to get at other functions a lot faster then having to incorporate a module into the system. Instead, with a large program you may simply have to select a gadget from a control window or screen. Whichever is better, there are examples of both doing the rounds - they have been around for a long time, and I wouldn't worry about betting that they are going to be with us for a long time to come. This means that you will be able to keep updating your system with the best mouse utilities as they become available. Below I go through some of the mouse utilities that are currently available. Some have been around for a while, while some aren't quite so old. PopUp Menu ---------- This is one of those helpful utility programs that makes you want to thank your lucky stars for public domain. It is so handy that once you have it and you start using it, you don't know what you ever did without it. PopUp Menu is particularly useful if you use a sunmouse utility (the mouse activates whatever window the pointer is currently over), a utility which I found to be too much of a pain to make useful. PopUp Menu gets rid of all such problems. What it does is allow you to call up the title bar pull down menus anywhere on the screen simply by clicking your right mouse button. This means that you don't have to move your mouse repeatedly to the top of the screen to carry out workbench functions, you can simply do them right where you are. This also means that you don't have to risk activating other windows on your journey to the top of the screen. Maybe with PopUp Menu, the sunmouse utility won't be so bad after all. Not only does PopUp Menu operate with your Workbench screen, it will also work with absolutely any other program that uses the title bar pull down menus. The ONLY program that I have yet to encounter that doesn't work with the PopUp Menu utility is DPaint 4. In this instance it simply doesn't have any effect whatsoever. I have had PopUp for quite a while now, and this new version adds the ability of clickselecting. What this means is that when you make a selection, you can let go of your mouse button and the pull down menu will remain on your screen while you choose your next selection. This way, you can navigate your way down through menu trees without difficulty and without having to keep your mouse in the right place while you decide what it is that you actually wish to select. It also avoids that annoying occurence when you go to select something from the menu and accidently shortcut through another menu selection (causing the selections further down the tree to change). Get this for your Amiga owner in the family. They'll love you for it! PopUp Menu is available on the Best of Fish disk 75 from MegaDisc. Animated Pointers ----------------- The idea of having animated pointers seems really neat. I personally use an animated busy pointer on my system with great effect. Most people don't have them for their own Amiga, and when they seem them they are quite surprised. Even my friend, Andrew Quinan, whom I run into about once a week is always even a little suprised with the new pointer I seem to have. I believe that it is possible to Animate your actual pointer with a program called PtrAnim found on the Best of Fish 20 and Best of Fish 57 (both available from MegaDisc), though I have never been able to get the program to work on my system (which is a WB2.4 A500), nor can Andrew who owns a WB2.4 A2000. Therefore I can't really comment on the actual effect of this program. I know that if my actual pointer was animated I'd probably go balmy very quickly. I don't mind having my busy pointer animated, because my pointer isn't constantly busy, so the animations only last for a short amount of time. I think too, that you would get bored too easily of your pointer if it was constantly animated. However I didn't consign the PtrAnim files to the back of my disk box. Quite a few of the pointers for use with this program where quite good and I liked them enough to want to try and convert them to busy pointers. I succeeded in doing just that (after a lot of long tedious work) and came up with some really fancy results. Hopefully some of them will appear in an issue of MegaDisc very soon! Keep an eye out for them! If you are interested in using them, then you'll have to have at least WB2 to begin with. If you've gotten that far then you'll have to get hold of a copy of NickPrefs which can be found on the Best Of Fish disk 2 (available from MegaDisc). Once you have NickPrefs installed and the Busy Pointer Preference up and ready to go then you can create your own busy pointers or try out some of the ones I have created. The process I used for creating the busy pointers from the PtrAnim images was very time consuming. Especially for the Mickey Mouse and Smiley ones. I loaded the image file into DPaint and then saved off each frame of the image as a brush into RAM. I then used Busy Pointer to create the number of frames required (Smiley uses 47 for example) and then loaded each frame individually from RAM into the appropriate frame in Busy Pointer. Then I tested it, made sure it looked ok and then saved it off. As I said I was pleased with the results, which was good because I spent quite a few hours on them all (hopefully you have gotten the hint by now Tim, to include them in the next MegaDisc ;)) Pointers -------- Not everyone can or wants to use animated pointers, but you may probably be bored with the system pointer long ago. If you want to add a bit of flair and personality to your system then create your own pointers or use images that you find from just about anywhere. Unfortunately, you do have a size restriction to work by though, so keep this in mind when you go hunting. You can use clip art or bits of pictures and in this case, simply use your favourite art program (I never stray from DPaint), make them the right size, and then save them off as brushes. Then (assuming that you have WB2+), simply import the brush into the Pointer Preference editor. You will have a problem. The pointer will be recoloured to the current colours your have your pointer set at. Simply recolour and touch up the pointer to make it look the best. However even with the most amount of effort, you will be unable to salvage a brush into a useable pointer. This is usually because the brush originally had a large number of colours - bringing it back down to the four that are used for the pointer doesn't always happen well. If you have WB1 and you want to change your pointer to something nifty from a picture or such, then the best idea would be to load it into your paint package, magnify it until you can see the pixel pattern and then copy this down onto a piece of graph paper. Then go to your Preferences editor and copy the image from your graph paper up into the pointer editor. Very crude but about the only thing that you can do. If you see an icon that you really like, and think would make a good pointer, then you can use them as well - it just takes a little bit more work and effort. Most icon editors these days will allow you to save icons as brushes - there are even some programs specifically designed to do so. Once you have the brush, simply do the rest as stated above. If however you have no icon editor or specialised program that will allow you to do that, then another strategy is snapshoting the screen, loading that image into your paint package and grabbing the icon from there. Again I have been fiddling in this area as well and have created some pointers of my own as well as used some of the images from the above mentioned PtrAnim files as stationary pointers. (More hints Tim ;)) ButExchange ----------- This is a mouse-utility with a suspicious name. Heh. Underneath however it is a lefty-mouse clone. The function of ButExchange is to swap the functions of the left and right mouse buttons so that left handed people can use it without having to deal with any sort of confusion. Available on Best of Fish disk 84 from MegaDisc. PWKeys ------ PWKeys is a utility that allows you to move windows and screens from back to front and vice versa as well as cycling through the window and screens. You can move a window to the top, bottom, left and right of the screen, place it in the upper left corner, the upper right corner, the lower left corner or of course the lower right corner. You can minimise windows, maximise windows and refresh windows (no - that doesn't mean making them smell nice). You can add and subtract bitplanes from the screen (which is like adding and removing colours from the screen - and can also effect the quality of the image). You can lock input so that the computer can't be interrupted while it is doing something important like ... raytracing. You can toggle the mouse acceleration, toggle the sun-mouse (any window the mouse moves into is activated), and and...oh I've run out of things... and I was just getting into the swing of things too! Also from MegaDisc on Best Of Fish 84. Input Lock ---------- Allows you to lock your keyboard and mouse. Simply put, it is actually a part of the above program, PWKeys, by the same author and on the same disk - Best Of Fish 84. Mighty Mouse ------------ This one gets full marks for it's icon. (Leigh Murray, you should check it out if you haven't already! I think you'll love it!), as well as decent name. Comes packed to the brim with (*takes a deep breath*) a mouse blanker, screen blanker, clock (you can change it to 12 or 24 hours, it x and y position, and it background and foreground colours), more hotkeys then you know what to do with, a chip and fast memory warning which can be set to go off at various levels, and a beastly mouse accelerator - boy can this baby move! All of this is controlled from a graphical interface so minimal knowledge of AmigaDOS is required. Definately up there on top of the heap. Find it on Best Of Fish 85 from the mega guys at MegaDisc. Twilight Zone ------------- I was quite dissapointed when I loaded this one up - no 'du du dudu' music played at all. Hmph. I would have to say that this is my favourite of the lot that I have had the pleasure to review to date. It's not exactly packed with features, but those features that it does have are done in style. It has replaced my previous mouse utility on my hard drive. Twilight Zone is the king of the pile in my opinion. It is really only a screen blanker, but at the moment I have no use for anything else. The real reason that Twilight Zone appeals is because of the range of different screen blanking modules that are available. You can choose from Fireworks to Blue Balls (brrrrrrr! ;)) and another trendy little option is the Blank Now corner of the screen. Move your mouse here and the screen instantly blanks - great for hiding that top secret project or for just getting rid of that naughty picture when your mum comes in. Alternatively you can set up a Blank Never corner, which will stop the blanker working while the mouse is in that corner. Great interface that can be brought up with a set of hotkeys. Twilight Zone just shines out from amongst the crowd (and a really huge crowd it is too). Get it on Fish Disk 782. Yak: The author named this Yet Another Kommodity and he sure got that right. Sunmouse, window cycle, Zip/Shrink/Enlarge windows, blanker, pop keys, pizza order maker, remote nuclear device activator, space shuttle controller, when will it all end?!?!?! Hehehe, seriously though Yak is set up as a commodity so you can change all the settings with Exchange which is handy as is the click to front option which allows you to bring a window to the front of the screen with a double click of the left mouse button. As you can see, there is a wide range of mouse utilities available out there for just about every conceivable purpose. Many of them a real gems, you just have to be willing to test and try. Keep tuned next issue for part two where I'll look at another broad range of utilities to bring your mouse alive. =)  Scott English  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿?