Customizing Program Switcher

Program Switcher's control panel allows you to customize several aspects of Program Switcher's operation.

First and foremost, you may set the activator and switching keys that Program Switcher uses. You may adjust the keys with the pop-up menus under the Control Keys heading in the control panel. This is useful when you have a particular application that assigns meaning to a particular keystroke that Program Switcher may use.

Program Switcher is capable of hiding all the background applications for when when you perform a switch. This would be equivalent to you using Program Switcher to switch to an application, then selecting the "Hide Others" item from the application menu. To enable this feature, check the Hide Other Applications checkbox in the control panel. If you would like to hide the background applications when ever you switch application, even if you do not use Program Switcher to perform the switch, check th Always checkbox next to the Hide Other Applications checkbox.

If you use some applications to perform background tasks and you know that you will rarely want to switch to it (such as an application based screen saver), you may have Program Switcher exclude it from the switching list that Program Switcher displays. To do this, check the Exclude Certain Applications checkbox. Then add it to the list of applications you wish to exclude by clicking the Set Applications… button. Program Switcher will display a dialog in which you may add the application to the excluded applications list.

Advanced Options

Program Switcher has some advanced options that you may set to further customize Program Switcher's appearance and operation. Click the Set Advanced Options… button in the control panel and Program Switcher will display the following dialog:

Here you may customize the appearance of the switching window and aspects of the switching operation.

Under the Display Window Options, you may set the font and font size of the application name text, the type of window that Program Switcher uses to make the switching window, and the color of the switching window's background. The Use System Hilite Color option dectates whether the currently selected application will be hilited with the system hilite color (as set in the Colors control panel) in addition to being bounded by a black frame. Please note that this option is not available under the "Original" switching theme.

The first option under Switching Options allows you to change the characteristics of the switching theme. There are five types of themes. The first is the "Original" theme. This method just contains the name and icon of one application in the switching window at a time. Its window looks like this:

The second theme is called the "Large Icon List" method. This method shows you a horizontal list of all the running applications' icons in the tope of the switching window. It then draws a box around the currently selected application's icon, and writes it's name at the bottoms of the switching window. The "Large Icon List" switching window looks like this:

The third theme,  is very similar to the "Large Icon List" method. The difference is this method displays a horizontal list of the running applications' small icons and then draws both the large icon and name of the selected application in the botton of the switching window. The "Small Icon List" theme's switching window looks like this:

The fourth theme, called "Small Vertical List," allows you to see both the icons and names of all the running applications at once. It does this by displaying a vertical list of the running applications' small icons with their names to the right of the icons. The "Small Vertical List" theme's switching window looks like this:

The fifth theme, called "Large Vertical List," is the same as the "Small Vertical List" theme except each application's large icon is used. The "Large Vertical List" theme's switching window looks like this:

The second option under Switching Options is the Show Application Icon checkbox. Unchecking this checkbox causes Program Switcher to not display the currently selected application's large icon in the "Original" and "Small Icon List" switching methods. This option is not available under the "Large Icon List" method because that method does not display the selected application's icon with its name. The "Small Icon List" switching method would look like this if the Show Application Icon checkbox was unchecked:

The third option under Switching Options is the icon cache size. Whenever Program Switcher needs to display an application's icon, it needs to access the desktop database to obtain it. This would cause your hard drive to chatter evertime you do a switch and slow the switching process. The icon cache in Program Switcher will save the icons in RAM after it first accesses them to speed up future use of that icon. The number in the Icon Cache Size option specifies how many icons Program Switcher will save in RAM. This number should represent the number of different applications you may use in one session on your Macintosh. Please note that this feature causes your System's heap memory to be increased by about 3K for each icon in the cache, so you should set this option as low as practical. This feature is especially useful on Powerbooks if you are trying to cut down on hard drive accesses.

The final option under Switching Options is checkbox for enabling and disabling the auto-key feature in Program Switcher. The auto key feature allows you to press and hold your activator/switching key combo to have Program Switcher automatically step through each of the running applications after a small delay.

At the bottom of the Advanced Options dialog is a button that will let you preview your current configuration. Click the "Try Out…" button to see how your Program Swither window would appear.

Advanced Keystrokes

Program Switcher has several advanced keystrokes that you may find useful.

You may mark an application to quit while the switching window is up. Do this by pressing the 'Q' key when the application you wish to quit is currently selected in the switching window. Program Switcher will then draw an X over it's icon and send it a "Quit" Apple Event whne you let go of the activator key. You may unmark and application for quitting by pressing the 'Q' key again when you have the marked application selected.

You may toggle the current setting of the Hide Other Applications option by pressing the space bar when you let go of the activator key.

You may cancel a switch by pressing the switching key and holding it down while you let go of the activator key (in a normal switch, the sequence is in reverse - you let go of the switching jkey before the activator key). Program Switcher will ignore the currently selected application and not switch to it. Program Switcher will still quit any applications that you have marked for quitting.

Once you have the switching window displayed, you may step through the application list backwards by tapping the shift key instead of the switching key.

Pressing and holding the switching key for more than one second causes Program Switcher to automatically step through the active program list. Letting go of the switching key after the auto-step feature has begun causes it to stop. This feature is only available if the Auto-Key check box is set under "Advanced Options"