SHAREWARE NEWS

JAN 96 DISK OF THE MONTH (DOM)

by Louis Bookbinder

Happy New Year! We learned a lot last year and created some great disk and hope to do as well and better this year. As usual, we welcome your comments and requests. Here are the contents of our first Disk of the Month for 1996:

CenterMouse! Demo
Control panel which makes the pointer automatically go to the right button in any dialog which comes up. You can set up what you think is the right button. $6

DeskPicture4.0
DeskPicture is a handy utility that makes it easy for you to display pictures on your desktop and manipulate them to your taste. Once you've placed one or more pictures on your desktop, DeskPicture provides many options for adjusting their appearance. In general, DeskPicture offers many of the same functions for moving pictures and changing their size as drawing applications, so if you've used that type of application, you should have no problems at all. Includes 20 pictures or patterns. $19.95

Deskpicture~~~
One of the attractive Nagle prints Rich showed last year, for use with DeskPicture. Free.

Disk Charmer 2.4.5 folder
Drag and Drop application for reformatting floppies in the background. $10

Folders 1
31 attractive 3-D icons for folders. Free

Mac CPU Icons inside
11 icons to replace the generic hard-disk icon - pick the one for your machine. Free

MacLights
MacLights is a control panel for your Macintosh which enables you to use the lights on your keyboard to show disk activity. Each of the lights (num lock, caps lock, and scroll lock) can be individually programmed to show activity for any SCSI drive or the floppy drive. You can select any combination of reads, writes, and even specific SCSI drives and SCSI buses for any of the three lights. Freeware

MooVer
MooVer is a simple utility that creates a QuickTime movie from a sequence of Macintosh PICT files or sound files dropped onto it. It is great for creating computer animations, slide shows, or batch-converting images or sounds into QuickTime movie format. MooVer works on 68020 or better Macintosh models, is accelerated for Power Macintosh models, requires at least System 7.0, and needs QuickTime version 1.6 or newer. 8 PICT frames included to try on it, and a sound, too. $10

PopupCD v1.2.0
PopupCD is a unique pop up remote control that provides quick and easy access to your CD audio discs through your CD-ROM drive. It installs as a control panel / extension in your Control Panels folder, and is always immediately accessible with a quick mouse click anywhere on the screen from within any application. The attractive and realistic-looking remote control includes all functions normally used with conventional CD players, as well as a very functional display and playing time indicator. Best of all, PopupCD remains inactive and totally hidden until called up, conserving precious screen space. All functions can be accessed through the on-screen remote or with configurable keyboard hot keys. If you're tired of launching or switching applications just to control your CDs, PopupCD can be an elegant and unobtrusive alternative. $15

PRAM Auto-Restore 1.0
PRAM Auto-Restore resets your PRAM and Extended PRAM at startup and/or shutdown to a default that is stored in the Control Panel. It uses very few memory; when you let it reset your (x)PRAM at startup, it does not remain in the memory. When you let it reset your (x)PRAM at shutdown/restart, it installs a small (528 bytes) shutdown procedure (with the (x)PRAM defaults). You can set these defaults in the Control Panel to the actual settings in the PRAM by clicking only one button. $10

PrintChoice
PrintChoice is a control panel device which provides a quick way to select a printer without using the Apple Chooser. It adds a menu in the menu bar which lists your frequently used printers. $14

RAMGauge 1.3
RAMGauge is one of my favorite extensions, and has been for quite some time. It is the perfect extension: small, useful, and relatively easy to write. One glance at the menu bar, and you know exactly how much memory you have to burn. It is especially nice when there is so little that Finder won't let you use "About This Macintosh..." Free

RandIcon 2.02
RandIcon is a cdev that randomly changes the icons that represent your drives under System 7. You can do this with the 11 Mac CPU icons above if you are schizophrenic (or you want your Mac to be). $5

Real Eject 2.1
Real Eject is a control panel that prevents "ghost disks" from showing up on your desktop when you eject a disk using the Eject command from the Special menu or in file dialogs. Real Eject solves the problem encountered by almost all new users when trying to eject a disk. The most logical choice, choosing the Eject command either from the Special menu in the Finder or in file dialogs, does not work properly, as it leaves a ghost or grayed image of the disk behind. Soon the message "Please insert the disk <name>" appears, forcing the user to reinsert the disk. Some users resort to shutting down the Macintosh to eject the disk and avoid this problem. As an alternative, we suggest using Real Eject. $10

SIMM Stack 4.6
A HyperCard (2.2) stack about any memory chips use in Macs or Mac peripherals or specialty boards. If you need more memory, check here first. Free

Sleeper 1.1.5
Sleeper is a control panel for desktop Macs that dims the screen and spins down SCSI disk drives after periods of inactivity. Separate "sleep" times can be set for the two features. Setting up via the control panel is straightforward, and there is help available via balloon help and by clicking the Sleeper icon. If you have any problems, please contact St. Clair Software at one of the addresses listed in the "Sleeper Documentation" file. Also, please note that Sleeper is shareware. If you decide to keep it, please register your copy. Includes a DocMaker document bigger than the control panel! $20

STARBORN.PICT
Straight from the Hubble Space Telescope - proof that the Universe is more fantastic than anything we can imagine. Here stars are being born out of interstellar dust clouds.
Free

YesNoCancel
A little control panel (with a very colorful icon) which lets you hit keys to answer modal dialog boxes instead of having to move the pointer. Freeware

Tip O' the Month

From Your Shareware Team

A little calculator magic:
If you have a large set of numbers to enter into the calculator and do not want to make a mistake and have to start over, type the data into a word processor or the note pad. Then copy the data you just typed in and open the calculator from the Apple menu. Paste it into the calculator and watch the buttons get pushed by themselves and after a moment you'll have your answer.

Example:
2+2*6/2=

After you have an answer, you can then copy the answer and paste it into your document. There is no need to select the answer. Just make sure the calculator is the active window and select copy.

With the calculator open, type E and the answer will be displayed in scientific notation. Remember that the calculator processes the arithmetic in the order in which you type it, not by the standard operator precedence rules: the expression in the example returns 12, not 8.

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If you have a floppy that will not eject regardless of what you do, grab a paper clip and straighten it out. Then insert it into the small hole next the floppy disk slot. Push firmly and your floppy should pop out. You can tell a veteran Mac user, he usually has multiple mashed and bent paper clips strewn around his Mac.

If you would like to erase floppy disks as soon as you insert them, hold down the command-option-tab keys as you insert the disk. You will immediately see the dialog asking if you would like to erase the disk.

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Since the Scrapbook provided by Apple in System 7.5 and above is now an application, you can have multiple scrapbooks. But due to a programming oversight, there is no open menu to open other scrapbooks. Try doing this. Put your scrapbooks in a folder inside the Apple Menu items folder. Now you can just select the scrapbook you wish to open from the Finder or the Apple Menu.

What Does Pressing and Holding the Shift Key at Startup Do?

Have you ever considered what exactly is disabled when you press and hold the shift key during the startup sequence of a Macintosh computer running System 7.x? A lot of people think that all of the extra items they have installed will be temporarily turned off, but that is not always the case.

Primary Effects

This is a list of the most important results of pressing and holding the shift key at startup. All of the following items are disabled:

Other Effects

This is a list of the secondary effects of pressing and holding the shift key at startup. These items will also be disabled.

The items mentioned in this article are not all of the items that are disabled by pressing and holding the shift key during startup. Some third-party software not listed here may also be disabled by this action. On the other hand, many third-party software applications are not disabled by this action. They use their own "hot" keys to disable their software during startup. You will need to contact the third-party vendor for more information.

If your icons are already in grid positions, however, they will not move. For instance, sometimes I move a bunch of items into a new folder and when I open the window, all the icons are exactly on top of each other. Here is a trick: Select all (command-A). Then move the icons just a teeny bit - with the command key down. Whammo! All the icons spread out to unoccupied grid positions. (In the Views control panel you can specify square grid or staggered grid - the latter saves much space). Even if your icons look OK, check that the number of icons you see matches the number in the window header. If not, one of them is hiding - do the trick above to chase it out.

You can also alphabetize when you clean up the window: Just hold down the option key and the Clean up Window menu item becomes Clean Up by Name. If you want to order by Date or Size, instead, first go to the View menu (not the control panel) and select "by Date" or "by Size". Then hold down option and select Clean up by Date or Clean up by Size, which is what the Clean up item becomes. Afterward, go back to View by icon.

New Apple Software Updates Posted Online

The following Apple software updates have recently been released and posted on America Online, AppleLink, CompuServe, eWorld and Apple's Internet sites: