Get your Workbench sorted out with the CU Amiga guide to
making the most of what you've got.


First things first: stop your Workbench acting as a Backdrop
Window. It's the first menu item in the first menu from the
top left. Switch it off right now, and save it with your
normal disk and icon positional settings. Why? Because it's
pretty useless, and if you are running a standard PAL screen
it simply takes up extra space with title and scroll bars. I
wish I knew what good a Background Workbench window is at
all: someone please write and tell me.

The next thing to do is add a decent pattern to get rid of
that boring grey colour in the background. If you haven't a
lot of extra memory, you can use a simple repeating texture
from the Prefs/WBPattern program -- remember that as well as
the example textures, you can draw your own if you want. If
you do happen have a little RAM to spare (and a graphics
card helps a lot here, as it takes the screen memory from
Fast RAM rather than Chip RAM) you can add a huge digitised
picture with hundreds of colours. I spend days at a time
creating various abstract textures in The Art Department
image processing program. Why not try loading Photogenics
and having a bash with the Plasma textures? Remember to
lighten the pattern so that dark text has a good contrast
and can be read against it, and also to send in your
examples so we can pick some good ones to print in the
magazine (and make available via the coverdisk, Internet or
BBS).

Finally, and especially if you have the standard PAL display
of 640 by 256, stretch your Workbench. How does 1024 by 1024
sound? Big enough? Good -- all you need to do is click "off"
the default settings in the Screen Mode requestor and fill
in some larger values. Once you have selected USE your
Workbench will be redrawn (remember to shut down any Shells
or other programs so the Screen can be closed and re-opened)
and your new larger-than-life display is at your disposal.
Simply move the pointer to the left or bottom, and the
screen will scroll to display the extra area.

You find find making it all the way back to the menus a
little tedious with a screen this large, so find the
IControl program, which is also in the Prefs drawer, and
click on the "Screen Menu Snap" button. From now on when you
select a menu -- no matter where you are -- the screen will
snap back to the menu displays.

This extra large display track can be very handy at times,
and a lot more than a gimmick. Imagine for a moment that you
are using a program which opens a long display and detailed
window, and you need to use a scroll bar to step up and
down. There will usually be a noticeable delay as the new
screen contents are redrawn. Now make a huge screen, and
drag the program's display window down into the unused
space. Now you can scroll up and down in a jiffy, because
nothing needs redrawn. The extra Workbench space is already
used, and the Amiga only needs to point the Workbench
viewport to a different location. This trick is especially
useful for use with DTP and World Wide Web browsers -- and
it even works on graphics cards too, where the Chip RAM
limit is removed you can have some seriously gigantic
displays


Customize!

There is a lot of fun to be had -- not to mention time to be
saved -- by experimenting with the hundreds of small
programs which folks have written to alter the way in which
Workbench works. It's all a consequence of the very flexible
design of Workbench, which means updating the system to use
new features or tricks is quite straightforward. Here's a
run down of some of the utility programs I've been playing
with this month.


Rings_V1.1

Let's start with an easy one -- a Workbench utility that has
no earthly purpose whatsoever: Rings by Tim Kreuzer. It's
described as a Public-screen "Moving Ring" graphic display,
and that's exactly what it does.

It has no purpose other than to sit on your Workbench and
well, ring. That's all it will ever do. Why? Because that's
what it is suppose to do. It's "eye candy", and if you don't
like it, you don't use it.

(rings.iff)



AAVD14

Now here is something more useful -- Almost A Virtual
Desktop in fact. AAVD was written by Jimmy Westerlund and if
you have ever used an XWindows system you'll know all about
it. What, you haven't? Well, remember that bit about
resizing the Workbench and scrolling around inside it to get
more space to work in? Now wouldn't it be nice to have a
little snapshot of all the windows in the display, so you
could find each one quickly?

That's what AAVD does -- it displays a minute copy of the
Workbench in a little Window all of it's own. AAVD even
allows you to move and resize the teeny little Windows as
well, and it's actually a lot of fun.

(avvd.iff)


FreeSpace

It's obvious, it works. If you need to keep an eye on the
amount of space free on any AmigaDOS devices, try FreeSpace
by Barry McConnell. The C source is included, which is
valuable by itself.

(free.iff)


XSize32

Here is another XWindows inspired utility which adds a
little big extra to your Amiga. Carsten Melberg and Günther
Rehm have created a utility which alters the way in which
you size windows on the Workbench. Try it -- you might like
it.


WBExtender

If do like your Workbench screen title bar, and you also
want a handy way of checking your hardware (in case someone
sneaks into your room and swaps CPUs on you) you'll be
interested in this commodity. Written by Martin Berndt, this
extension will keep you up to date on your hardware and
provide other little snippits of news in the title bar.

(wbext.iff)

SystemPrefs

In a simlar vein, Richard Körber's System Preferences editor
will provide you with an easy-to-use way of altering CPU
settings. It will be of most use to 68040 owners, who have
the various caches at their disposal. Quite why they would
want to switch them off and slow down their system is of
course, a mystery. Perhaps if you only switch them on for
half an hour a day you appreciate them more.

(system.iff)

MagicColours

So you like MagicWorkBench do you? (I still like it better
than NewIcons for some reason) but found that using more
than a few colours in my Workbench preferences caused my
icons to go all funny. As ever, this was a consequence of
the Amiga's liking for screwing up any but the first four
colours. The MagicColours utility forces them back to
sensible blues and greys -- essential if you have a graphics
card like I do (smug mode on).



Where to get it....

All this software came from the Aminet 6 CD-ROM. You can
find it in the utils/wb drawer either on this disk or on the
real Aminet Internet FTP site. Alternatively, many BBSs will
have it -- including The Heart of Gold on 01247 274919
because I put it there myself.