Dashboard Flotation Utilities ©1993 David Stewart 738 Hathaway Drive Auburn Hills MI 48236 Rights: For free use and distribution. ScriptTools script code may be altered, copied or excerpted. This material, however, is NOT public domain. It is copyrighted. ===================== I use a variety of shells, including PC Tools for Windows Desktop by Central Point Software, Dashboard by Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft Windows' Program Manager. In addition, when I use Program Manager I actually never make any use of it for launching programs; rather, I use Squeegee, by Icom Simulations. I also often use Dashboard as a utility program rather than as a shell--for only the multiple virtual screens (something it shares with PCTW's Desktop, but without anywhere near the drain on memory or resources). Often when I'm using Dashboard, I'll want it to float above other windows. But almost as often, I won't want it to. Switching between these two flotation modes takes time and, being a useless procedure otherwise, is something I'd rather not have much to do with--I just want the result. So I wrote these little utilities to take care of the flotation toggle for me quickly. Here's what's in this package: DASHFLOT.SCT and DASHSINK.SCT--PC Tools for Windows ScriptTools scripts. These are the source code (text) files. I included them merely so that interested parties could see how it was done. But I must give this warning: When I was recording and writing the scripts, I discovered, I think, that there is some kind of incompatibility between Dashboard and ScriptTools. What it is, I don't know. But what it looked like was something like this: Upon starting a recording session, ScriptTools would not respond to a command to end recording as long as Dashboard was running--and, in fact, the system pretty much locked up, except for one hotkey in Squeegee. With this hotkey, I was able to call up Windows' Task Manager and send an End Task to ScriptTools. It did NOT close ScriptTools, but it did make it responsive again, and released the system. If you don't have a hotkey for TaskMan (no, Ctrl-Esc didn't work) and you start recording in ScriptTools while Dashboard is running, you may have trouble. I don't know why, but that's what I experienced. (By the way, Dashboard's extended screen feature is not, as far as I could tell, incompatible with PCTW's Desktop. In fact, it's kind of neat--each separate desktop in PCTW is multiplied by the number of extended screens you have set in Dashboard. E.g., if you have 5 different desktops in PCTW Desktop, and Dashboard is set to 5 extended screens, you can access 5 screens in each PCTW desktop--for a total of 25 virtual screens. Cool--though you may not need it for anything.) DASHFLOT.RUN and DASHSINK.RUN--ScriptTools runtime executables. You need to have the PCTW script running executable, ScriptRunner (WNSRUN.EXE), to use these files. (At present, you have to have PCTW to have the running program.) DASHFLOT.RUN activates Dashboard, then quickly steps through a sequence of keys and dialogs to set the "Dashboard always in front" preference. DASHSINK.RUN does the same, but sets the "Bring Dashboard to front with..." preference; i.e., sets it to NOT float above other windows. DASHFLOT.EXE and DASHSINK.EXE--Visual Basic 3.0 executables. They do the same thing as the PCTW ScriptRunner files of the same 8-letter filenames, but they work with VBRUN300.DLL. I wrote the same utility in both languages because--well, because I have both, but not everyone has PCTW. DASHFLOT.ICO and DASHSINK.ICO--Icon files for the eponymous programs. The VB files contain the icons already; the PCTW files do not, so these are the icons I drew for the files (same icons as in the VB files). You will want to use these icons to represent the ScriptTools files in whatever icon-using launcher you implant them. DASHFLOT.TXT--This file. Ta da. How to Install and Use These Files... You can store these files anywhere you want. I'd put them in the Dashboard directory, but that's my preference. It doesn't really matter, as long as the other files they need to access--WNSRUN.EXE and various DLL files for the ScriptTools run files; VBRUN300.DLL for the VB executables--are either in the same directory or on your DOS path. You need only keep the files you intend to use; if you'd rather use the smaller ScriptTools files and don't need the VB files, trash the VB stuff; likewise, trash the ScriptTools stuff if you'd rather use the VB files. I wanted to be able to switch flotation modes quickly. I thought it silly that this was not an option that could be changed through one of the many pop-up menus on Dashboard, so I wrote these files in order to put them in Dashboard Quick Launch buttons. (All I was using on Dashboard was the extended screen feature, so adding these two Quick Launch buttons still keeps things pretty compact for me.) So that's one way to use them: Make Quick Launch buttons for them in the Dashboard window. (See Dashboard's manual or Help file for how to do this if you don't already know.) You could also put them in a Program Manager group (which would also make them available from Dashboard's pop-up group menus). And you can put them in a menu shell, like Squeegee or WinEZ, if you use one of those. Whatever you choose, Dashboard need not be the active window for the programs or scripts to work. They'll find Dashboard and change the setting, as long as it's running. If it's not, they'll tell you it's not there. That's all there is to it. Hope you like 'em. They're free, but if they've made your life in Windows any easier, I'd like to hear that. Drop me a line on AOL, as Doc Yeah, or on CompuServe, address 72122,03562.