Test reports
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Test reports
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Short:
| Commodity, mimicking the Taskbar of Windows | |
| Shareware with nag-requester, registration for 20 or 30 DEM (approx. 10.20 or 15.31 Euros) | |
| ??? |
| Damir Arh |
| English |
| 1.03 (or 1.9?) |
| (currently) hardly useable |
StopMenu is one of many programs that want to "enrich" the Amiga with a Taskbar like the one in Windows 9x. It consists of four separate programs: two preferences editors, a graphical memory-usage-meter, and the main program, which is a Commodity. The documentation remains silent about the minimum requirements, so you will have to try it on your machine... (it has been tested with AmigaOS3.5)
The installation is quickly done, you just have to decide on a target directory and choose between NewIcons and GlowIcons. Stopmenu is loaded at every startup with a little program in the WBstartUp directory.
The first thing you will see is a nag requester, reminding the user to register the program (20 DEM for a keyfile via email, 30 DEM via snail mail). Another thing to notice is the version number V1.9?! The docs and the installation talked about V1.03. Well...
Then you see nothing at all. Only when you move the mouse pointer to the lower edge of the screen do you see the taskbar with five buttons and a clock at the right side. When you click one of the buttons, a list opens up (as expected) with executable programs or further lists. The welcome difference to Windows: You are not limited to one sublist, but instead you can have as many as you like.
The first button ("Stop") is the most important. All user-defined programs and Stopmenu's own preferences are started from here.
The second button contains all Commodities, which can also be (de)activated or exited.
Button number three leads to the most commonly used prefs programs, and the two remaining buttons holds all windows and screens. Those can be brought to the front or background, activated or even closed. The author warns that the latter function can lead to crashes (and it really does ;-) ). Furthermore, you can create screenshots.
On the right of the taskbar, you see the current time. Clicking on it does not open the time preferences, but a graphical display of the CPU usage and the free memory.
In the preferences, you can define screens, windows or commodities that should not be shown by StopMenu, which might be useful. The five buttons can be shown or removed, just as you choose. Furthermore, you can set the style of the buttons (Amiga, Windows, XEN, etc.), the colors, a background pattern, hotkeys and so on. And you can choose whether the taskbar should be shown on all screens, if it shall remain visible always or only opened on demand. "Always visible" would be nice if only new windows wouldn't hide the taskbar. So the default is still the best option...
With another program, the MenuEditor, you can create your own lists. Unfortunately, this isn't very comfortable (just like all other preferences). There is no "Use" or "Test" button. All changes have to be saved first. Another good thing would be an AppWindow, like Toolmanager's, to add items just by dropping them on the list. You can only change the lists on the first button ("Stop"), but, as mentioned before, you can have several levels of sublists. All other lists and buttons are handled by the program itself. You cannot change them or even add new buttons.
That's about all the features of StopMenu.
Now to the useability - not many advantages, but a lot of drawbacks: The size of the taskbar and the buttons can't be changed. That may be inconvenient for users with small screens. If lists don't fit on the screens, they are simply cut off.
The form of the lists can't be modified. It's not possible to have lists only with text or only with icons (and if you don't define a text for a icon, it crashes).
In my opinion, the lists behave oddly. If you move the mouse pointer out of a list, it stays open and the selection still moves with the pointer.
But that's not all: The (most important) button ("Stop") has a built-in stop-function (maybe that's where the name comes from?). But if you click a little too long on it, the program is exited upon releasing instead of showing the list. This is worse than the nag requester.
But the biggest problem was (or is) the crashes. They strike quite often, and after a while you get pixel trash on your screen. Enforcer finally showed the reason. At every opening of a list, an Enforcer hit (read for address 0). No wonder that the program crashes sooner or later.
Because of this, it is very easy to draw a conclusion: In the current version, StopMenu is hardly useable due to the crashes. It might be nice and practical on a good day (even though I think it isn't). As soon as a stable version is available, it might be worth a look.
Denis Nikolic <d-nis@ping.at>
