MasterClass September 95


Don't make things difficult for yourself: let your Amiga
help you.


Using third party utility programs is a great tradition
amongst Amiga users. It's not that the original Workbench is
in anyway lacking in terms of major functions, especially
with OS3.0 and up, but more that adding little bits and
pieces is actually rather easy because of the flexible
design. Take a look through any Aminet internet mirror or
CDROM and you'll find megabytes of useful (and not so
useful) programs with which to clutter up your Workbench.

There are many program which exists only to make starting
other programs even easiesr, which sounds a bit daft until
you have tried it. For example, I use a utility called
ToolsDaemon which allows me to add my own items to the
Workbench menus. ToolManager has also had several mentions,
because many of you have apparently been wondering what the
gadgets at the bottom of the display in some screen shots
have been all about.

ToolManager is undoubtedly a superb program, and looks very
smart: but installing it can be a bit of a nightmare,
especially for beginners. For that reason I was particularly
pleased to see a utility called LaunchPad appear. LaunchPad
provides you with an on-screen collection of icons in a
resizable window, with each icon representing a program.
Click once on the icon and the program starts: it's that
easy. So no matter in which drawers or on which disk you
keep your programs, LaunchPad keeps all the icons together
in a bundle, read to run.

Setting up the program is simplicity itself. Install it
(into the WBStartup drawer for best effect) and then select
the EDIT menu option. You'll see a window pop up like this:

(launch1.iff)

To add applications, drag their icons over the window and
let go: they'll be added automatically to the list for you.
Most of the time the default settings will do fine, although
occasionally you'll need to alter the Stack settings to a
larger number if things don't seem to be working properly.

The numbers next to H and V refer to the orientation of the
icons which appear in the LaunchPad window. If you want a
horizontal bar, then put 1 in the Vertical (V) setting box,
and as many as required in the Horizontal (H) box. Simply
reverse the numbers for a column of icons.

If you want the icon to have a brief text description, you
can enter one in the box -- you can even set the colour for
it. If the icon seems to be too crunched (or there is no
default icon) you can totally replace the icon image with
text, although obviously this isn't as pretty.

One more useful feature is the HotKey assignment: by
selecting this option you can trigger the program with an
unique key-combination. Useful for screen-grabbers or for
popping up Shells whenever you need them in a hurry.

(picture: launch2.iff)
(caption: A vertically stacked LaunchPad display ready for
action. Some of the icons don't re-size well, and will need
repacing with the text option)

(picture: launch3.iff)
(caption: If you do start the LaunchPad program from the WBStartup
drawer, remember to include the line DONOTWAIT in it's tool
types. If you leave it out, Workbench will hang around for a
few seconds after loading and give you an error message.)

LaunchPad should be available from your favourite PD library
or Bulletin Board. It's "cookieware", so if you find it
useful you should post off some biscuits to the author. If
you are looking around Aminet for it, keep a look out for
the files "ami_beg.txt" and "ShowAmiga.lha" in the docs/help
directory. These will be useful to you if you are a beginner
and need some background information on what the Amiga is
and how it works. What do you mean you don't have access to
Aminet? If you don't have a modem (and therefore can't dial
either into the Internet or into a BBS which has the Aminet
CDROM online) you might know someone at university or
college, who should be able to get access to the campus
computers and do a spot of FTP'ing for you. Keep reading
Wired World for more information on this.







Box out: Pretty Workbench Displays

My lifelong mission to improve the appearance of the
standard Workbench display has taken a dramatic turn when I
finally sold off some engagement presents and bought myself
something much more useful: a PicassoII graphics card,
complete with CyberGraphics monitor drivers. It sounds a bit
technical, but it boils down to a new card which fits into
the Amiga 4000 (or A2000, or A3000) and improves the
standard video output. First and foremost it offers larger
resolutions in more colours. The refresh rates are higher
too, which means although a normal low resolution monitor or
TV is no longer suitable, with a decent PC style VDU you can
get some stunning results.

As you can see from the screen shot, this is one large
Workbench display. On my 15" monitor, 800 by 600 is about as
large as I can cope with, although by increasing the default
font size still further 1024 by 768 sized screens are
possible. As the PicassoII card works in a "chunky" graphics
format, 256 colour screens move around as fast as 2 colour
screens. Even better, the memory required doesn't have to
come from the Chip RAM supply: which means displays like
this still leave lots of memory for other programs.
Incidentally, a graphics board also speeds up MUI to
near-usable speeds, and is therefore worth buying just to be
able to use AMosaic properly.

(bigshot.iff)

The other highlight of the month was the arrival of the "Top
Cat" icons designed by Chris Johnston. What more can I say?
Other than I hope HannaBarbara's copyright lawyers aren't
watching.

(topcat.iff)