TABLE OF CONTENTS
This month's Free Sample Shareware is no longer available.
3D Button 1.31 - This control panel
substitutes custom 3D buttons for standard push buttons, radio
buttons and checkboxes. Simply drop it on your System Folder and
restart. On color displays, the buttons have a subtle 3D look. On
black & white displays, the buttons are identical to standard
Macintosh buttons. Freeware
BigSecret 4.0 - BigSecret is a
program providing file security facilities for files you store on
your computer. The following facilities are provided:
The program will work with any variant of System 7. Shareware - $25.00
Custom Menus 1.03 - Custom Menus
is a control panel that lets you tailor the menus on your Macintosh
to suit your own preferences:
System 7 or later with Color QuickDraw is required. Shareware - $12.00
Disk Mapper 1.0.1 - Do these
scenarios sound familiar?
- You're getting ready to install that new software you just bought, or you're trying to download a large file from your favorite cyberspace place and you find there's not enough room on your hard drive...
- Or you're looking at your stack of CDROMs trying to remember which one had that file you've been looking for...
Well, Disk Mapper doesn't promise to make your hard drive any bigger, but it does show you, GRAPHICALLY, what or who's hogging all that space. Click on a folder and zoom in for a closer look. Or zoom back out. And with the press of a key, you can create text files that list all the files found on CDROMs or any other volume. No longer will you have to waste valuable time navigating through folder after folder trying to figure out which files need to be archived or trashed to free up precious disk space. Disk Mapper requires System 7 or greater and at least 256 colors (or shades of gray) are recommended. Shareware $5 (US)
FastFontMenu - is a System Extension (INIT) which
speeds up the building of the Font Menu in most applications. It does
this by sorting the font names in an internal array, rather than
insertion sorting them in the menu the way the current MacOS does.
This improved algorithm is scheduled to be included in a future
version of the MacOS, but since that'll take longer to ship, I'm
releasing it now as freeware. It's scheduled to expire with version
7.6 of the MacOS.
FlipSide 1.2 - a puzzle whose
object is to uncover all the wooden spheres. Each one you turn turns
the adjacent ones as well however. A fairly simple concept, but often
times can be difficult. Shareware $5
FunKeys 1.0 - allows you to set tasks to
the function keys. (The function keys are those 15 keys on the top of
your keyboard that most Mac users don't use). With FunKeys, you can
have each individual Function Key launch an Application (such as
Microsoft© Word, ClarisWorks, America On-Line, Netscape...the
possibilities are endless), or an AppleScript. An Applescript is a
script that executes a command. Some that are included with FunKeys
are AppleScripts to change the Monitor Depth, Sound Volume, and to
shut down the computer. Shareware $7
GetInfoExtreme 1.0.1 - File utility which allows
access to all of the attributes of a file or files in a folder. This
includes the file attributes, date/time stamps, Finder comments, file
position, and location on the hard drive. For all attributes which
can be modified, you can do so. For folders, you can change
attributes to common settings for all enclosed files, like
modification date, type/creator, and more. Shareware $10
Hummingbird - the world's first
voice activated arcade game. Instead of using the keyboard, you sing
to control the action. Unlock fee - $15
Line Up 2.1 - File utility for organizing
the Finder windows. Sub-folder windows can be controlled to open at
specified offsets from the parent window. Shareware $10
Okey Dokey Pro 2.0.1 - presses
the default button in modal dialogs after a time limit. The control
panel lets you specify several preferences. You may set the amount of
time before ODP activates, you may choose whether or not to show a
small countdown timer in the corner of dialogs, and you may choose
whether or not to keep a log of all dialogs handled. If you choose to
keep a log, it will appear as a document named 'Missed Dialogs' on
your desktop. It will contain snapshots of the dialogs dismissed
labeled with the time and date. You may discard the log at any time,
a new one will be created. Freeware
Power Windows 1.2.1 - is a tiny
extension that lets you drag the entire contents of windows instead
of a dotted outline. Unlike other similar extensions, Power Windows
uses backing store to preserve the contents of the screen as you
drag, instead of turning your window into a giant eraser. Shareware
$5
SmartScroll 1.0.1 - enhances
regular scroll bars so they show how much of a document is displayed
in a window. The thumb indicator in scroll bars becomes proportional
: If a window is displaying half of a document, the indicator will be
half the scrollbar size. Shareware $12
SmartSaver - 3.1 a file backup
utility program. Shareware $25
SmoothType 1.1 - makes your
screen look more like the printed page. Using a technique called
anti-aliasing, SmoothType blurs the jagged edges of bitmap fonts with
shades of gray, effectively doubling your screen resolution. This is
the similar to the technique used by some laser printers of varying
the size of the dots to improve the printed image quality. This is
also the reason why a television picture can look so crisp even
though the TV resolution is really quite low.
With SmoothType, your fonts look on the screen just like they will when you print them, so you no longer need to look at large point sizes to get an idea of what the font really looks like. The effect can be quite striking. When I view a StreetSmart on screen display (in Helvetica or Helvetica Narrow), it looks just like my monthly statement. With Netscape, the Apple web site (with the font set to Garamond) looks exactly like their ads, manuals, and other literature. Shareware $5
Zippier Zip 4.3.2 - is a free patcher that
allows you to modify the original Iomega Driver 4.3.2 and Iomega
Guest 1.1 software for the Macintosh, which ships with all Zip
drives.
× The patched Iomega Driver no longer complains when you start up with your Zip drive turned off, and more generally when no Iomega drive is found at startup. The driver is still not loaded, but you won't get the annoying error message at the end of the startup process.
× The patched Iomega Guest application no longer displays a message when the driver is successfully loaded, so you don't have to click OK or type Enter every time you load the driver after startup.
Freeware
Still nothing dangerous on Macintosh!
FreePPP author Steve Dagley, now at Netscape, sent a tip about using Navigator on pre-IIci models:
A problem was recently discovered in Navigator 3.0 for the Macintosh that can result in a system error on launch. This problem only affects older 68020/030 based Macs without 32-bit clean ROMs (II, IIx, IIcx and SE/30 models) that have more than 8MB of RAM installed. To prevent the system error, turn on Virtual Memory or install RAM Doubler before launch Netscape Navigator 3.0.(Macintouch)
A cool web site for good shareware is Hot Software from The Mac Internet Connection at http://members.aol.com/smart5/macologist/hotsoftware.html. Nice thing is that it has a lengthy blurb about each item.
Fixed-size fonts do not scale. They print well on doc-matrix printers. Keep them small or you get jaggies.
PostScript fonts use PostScript to allow scaling. Needs PostScript printers or Adobe Type Manager. But they take more system resources. Try to find a fixed-size font in the same family for screen use.
TrueType fonts are like PostScript but do not need ATM, and you can use them on the screen. But they are slower.
The shareware team has released beta software before and probably will, again. But I don't like it. Oh, I like the software - but I am willing to play with faulty, dangerous software. I have no right to inflict it on you.
So, what should our policy be? There is so much beta stuff out there right now that we could do Disks of the Month entirely of beta software. But we committed a long time ago to providing QUALITY software. There is a lot of good stuff out there which has gone through testing and stands alone as finished products. Some items certainly have their own problems. But look at the difference between final and beta: a final product has satisfied its author that it is ready for public use and won't cause problems making irate users get on his or her case. Beta products are KNOWN to have problems which the authors hope are slight enough that the main software features can still be tested. Tested by YOU, the public. Beta products are usually commercial products which the authors have no intention of giving away free once they are out of beta. To insure this, betas either have severe use limits, missing features, or expiration dates. Would you buy a commercial product with an expiration date? Well, sure, milk. We have enough problems with dated software going sour just because the technology changes so fast. But this shareware team will try not to release any shareware which will be a bargain when you buy it and useless a month later. Beta software is similar.
Beta software has some excellent bargains, if you remember the limits. As promised, if you want any particular piece of shareware, freeware, or betaware, ask us and we will see what we can do. But please don't get upset if we do not put any on the Disks of the Month, or list them in the New Releases column. And, of course, your response to this policy is welcome.
If you select an item in a window, then click in some other window, the first item is de-selected. If all you want to do is select or move the window itself, however, you can click (and move) on the title bar and the first item remains selected.
THE POINT: try the modifier keys (control, option, shift, and command) with your applications now and then - you might be surprised! You might even find an interesting new "Easter Egg"
You cannot get a boot disk (Disk Tools) for any system after 7.1. The System file is just too big. However, you can still use the 7.1 boot disk to get on to look at your hard drive. You can make a boot disk with some other utility, such as a disk checker (Disk First Aid, or Norton Disk Doctor) simply by putting the 7.1 System file and the other application at the root level of the disk. The application will run automatically whenever you boot from this disk. The 7.5 Finder is not small enough, but there are substitutes...
(hot link on vendor name -> vendor home page,
hot link on product name -> product page, possible download)
I apologize that the SMUG newsletter editor is sometimes unable to fit all of New Releases into the newsletter due to space constraints. Please check the Web page at http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~booky/sharenov96.shtml. Yes, that is ".shtml" - it allows me a server-side include for the mod-date at the bottom of the web page.
APPLE
Apple 9500 Graphics Accelerator 1.0.7
Appleshare 4.2.2 updater (from 4.2.1)
At Ease 3 CDROM Prefs Patch and At Ease 3.0.3 updater
Who uses ColorSync 2.1.1?
Laserwriter 8.4.1 (but Apple is not sure it wants to release it just yet!)
Open Transport 1.1.1b8c7 and Open Transport/PPP 1.0f1c9??!!? What's with the alphabet soup?
System 7.5.5 updater Netinstall. There are a lot of sites, actually. And we had it at the shareware table in October.
And sometime next year, look for System 7.6, on, so far, (are you ready for this?), 43 disks!
Aladdin Stuffit Deluxe 4.0.1 udater for the commercial version.
BigIsland YoYo 1.2.1 software for the phone control device they demo'ed at SMUG in September
CE Software QuickKeys 3.5
Claris promises Home Page 2.0 in December. Free, time-limited beta in mid-October. Link coming soon.
Common Ground Miniviewer 3.0 Another PDF format.
Connectix QuickCam 2.1 updater
Corel WordPerfect 3.5.2 (use fetch, not Netscape, to download from ftp://bbs.corelus.com )
Excalibur - a spell checker
Green Mountain DocMaker 4.7. Builds lovely stand-alone portable documents.
Iomega Zip Tools 5.0 - no site available
La Cie Silverlining 5.7
NetBatch 1.08b speeds up downloadingbatches of files from the Web.
Optima System PageSpinner 1.2.1
Bill Paterson released File Roundup 1.0, successor to FileList+. It catalogs any disk volume, and comes in Lite and Pro versions. However, the free download is time-limited: after 30 days it will no longer save.
Qualcomm's Eudora Lite 3.01b4 beta. Lite versions were last at 1.5.4, but perhaps Qualcomm wants to synchronize the Lite and Pro version numbers.
QuarkXPress 3.3.2 for Power Mac
St Clair Software has updated Sleeper 2.1, screen and disk saver.
Symantec Anti-virus for Mac (SAM 4.5)
UserLand Frontier 4.1 - super scripting system
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