Technetium 1.5 Final Release Registered Copyright © 1994 Gregory Arias. All Rights Reserved. Read the Disclaimer Warranty topic in the help file. Using Tech' means you agree to all terms stated in the disclaimer. This program is based in part on my GilaMenu 1.1 (aka Chameleon) program. GilaMenu 1.2 was available only to registered users of GilaMenu 1.1. I would like to thank the 200+ beta testers and registered users who helped me make this bird fly. Your assistance has been indispensible, and much appreciated. See the Help Topic "Procedures" for step-by-step instructions on how to perform common activities. INSTALLATION BETA testers : please DO NOT use your prior menus this time around. Start fresh and clean with a brand new menu. Some things in the file formats have been changed. CASE ONE : Technetium BETA version not installed currently as shell 1. Create a new directory for Technetium. 2. UnZip all the files in your distribution disk to the new directory. 3. Delete the Techneti.Ini file in your Windows directory. 4. Start Windows and run the TECHNETI.EXE file. CASE TWO : Technetium BETA version installed as shell now 1. Create a new directory for Technetium. 2. UnZip all the files in your distribution disk to the new directory. 3. Set the shell= line in SYSTEM.INI to the complete path to the new Technetium file set. 4. Delete the Techneti.Ini file in your Windows directory. 5. Start Windows and run the TECHNETI.EXE file. CASE THREE : Technetium BETA Not Installed (New User) 1. Create a new directory for Technetium. 2. Unzip all your files on the distribution disk to the new directory. 3. Make certain that no there is no file called techneti.ini in the Windows directory. If there is such a file, delete it before starting the program. 4. Start Windows and run the TECHNETI.EXE file. ***IMPORTANT*********************************************************** To install Tech as the shell, use the Options|System Options command to launch the System Options dialog box. Click on the radio button called 'Use Technetium As Shell.' Tech will ask you if you want to restart Windows. Click "Yes." *********************************************************************** DO NOT USE THIS PROGRAM IF YOU INTEND TO MIGRATE MORE THAN 30 PROGRAM MANAGER GROUPS. USING MORE THAN 30 GROUPS PUTS A SEVERE STRAIN ON THE WINDOWS USER HEAP AND WILL RESULT IN GPFs. USE CAUTION PLEASE !!!!!! *********************************************************************** I strongly recommend that you use some sort of disk cache utility. Even a small 256K cache using Smartdrive is very helpful. What's New 1. Program Manager Reader has been re-implemented to use DDE conversations. If you have a third party shell that supports Microsoft's Shell DDE Server specification and that shell is active, my shell should be able to communicate with it. This command has been moved to the Menu Editor as a toolbar button. 2. Hot Key support for program launching. Specify any unique alphanumeric character to launch a program so long as Tech is active on the desktop. Use the key sequence CTRL+ALT+alphanumeric. 3. Keyboard navigation. Use CTRL+ALT+F12 to bring up the menu. Arrow keys are used to cycle through the menu. ESC closes a menu. ENTER launches an item. 4. Shrinking icons. I have included a shrinking icon feature. I implemented a prototype which dynamically sized the icons according to the text height, as one beta tester suggested. Unfortunately, you had to select a 22 or greater point size for the font to even see the icon detail (it was just a little black box with a few colored pixels). I simply decided to shrink the icon down to an optimum level - optimum being as small as possible without losing detail (too little detail defeats the purpose of icons). 5. Icon Font in System Options bug has been fixed. 6. Using ALT+F4 to close the menu when Tech was the shell did not bring down Windows. This has been fixed. 7. Menu Editor buttons now display a command description when you move the mouse over them. 8. Clipboard commands in the Menu Editor now act on ANYTHING in the menu. Groups, Items and Ghosts all may be Cut/Copied/Pasted/Appended to the clipboard. Clipboard operations are better than drag-n-drop for several reasons, and I will not implement drag-n-drop server listboxes because drag-n-drop server for listboxes uses undocumented Windows messages and will not be compatible with Windows 4.0. Any other programs, like GDesk, will not be compatible with Windows 4.0 because they use this undocumented messaging scheme (the author will have to re-implement his editor to be compatible). I'm not falling into that trap. 9. Drag and drop client facilities (yes these are documented messages / API calls) are now available directly from the Menu Editor. You may drag a selection from any drag-n-drop server like File Manager and drop it over the Menu Editor. Your dropped selection will be *appended* to the clipboard. Simply navigate to any subgroup or the Root Menu and select Paste. This is a big improvement over the prior drag-n-drop schema, which required you to drag to the desktop icon and then drop. If you wanted to drag a new bunch you had to close the editor and start it again (ugh, a three-legged dog !). 10. Configurable Default Items. You may specify whether a default item does not appear, appears in Root Menu, or appears in the Options Menu. You can also change the titles for default items. For now, this is as configurable as they get. 11. I re-implemented the way that Tech is notified about system wide mouse clicks. Some people were complaining about incompatibilities with NDW and Tech with the right mouse button. I hope this fixes it. If you NDW-ers and PCTool-ers out there have trouble, I may just buy the two packages and see whether Tech or the 3rd party shell is the culprit, even though those two 3rd party packages will probably be obsolete with the arrival of Windows 4.0 :-). My guess is that NDW and PCTools are backward compatible with Windows 3.0, and so use the old 3.0 Message Hook API calls. If this is the case, then I really can do little about the situation. Also any other program which uses the old 3.0 Message Hook API may not be compatible with Tech. Tech uses the 3.1 Message Hook API for compatibilty with Windows 4.0. 12. Microsoft's 3-D Control Library has been removed because of some kind of incompatibility with Microsoft's Foundation Class Library (DDX for all you VC++ ers). This caused very interesting visual effects to occur, like a disappearing title bar, or sometimes even worse, a GPF. Microsoft Tech support refuses to answer any questions about their 3-D library because it is going into Windows 4.0 as a standard feature and they don't talk about any implementation details of Windows 4.0. Is it just me or is Gates and Co. a little too paranoid with these Non-disclosure Agreements. Anyway, the 3-D look for all of Tech's dialogs has been nixed in favor of stability. When MS finally gets it straight I'll put 3-D dialogs back in Tech (probably won't be until Win 4.0). 13. Changing the shell using System Options now prompts if you want to Restart Windows. Before you had to wade through the menu after changing the shell to find Restart Windows. 14. A Cancel button has been added to the Menu Editor. 15. I took out the animation for the splash window, and shortened the timeout for splash window destruction to 5000 miliseconds. I had not intended the splash window to be a 'nag' screen. 16. The Browse and Launch dialogs have been enlarged. 17. The little desktop resource meters will appear as a separate application in the near future. Thanks for taking a look at them and giving me some feedback. 18. Memory resource meter under Technetium Options | Resources rolled over to negative or erroneous values for free memory. This has been fixed. If you are running under Standard Mode, then the memory values are invalid. Tech is intended for Enhanced mode Windows. 19. Adding a new item did not initialize the Item Settings | Run Options to anything. This caused Tech to launch the program as a hidden window. This has been fixed. 20. The System Options dialog crashed on starting if you had unusually long run= or load= lines in WIN.INI. This bug has been fixed. 21. Using Cancel caused a number of problems, most notably Item swapping or mangled groups along with a GPF. This has been fixed according to my testing.