Possibly the most essential tool an Internet downloader will ever have. Just drag-and-drop any com- pressed file (even ZIP files from the PC) on Expander’s icon and it is expanded and decoded right where you want it to be. Expander even works with your browser, expanding files automatically when the download is complete. The industry standard and rightfully so.   Does the opposite of StuffIt Expander: automatically creates compressed and coded files simply by dropping them onto its icon. If you have a Power Mac, the Expander Enhancer makes the freeware utility StuffIt Expander PowerPC-native and allows it to recognize even more compression formats.   ShrinkWrap is a handy utility which allows you to convert the entire contents of a disk into a single transferable file which, in turn, can be easily transformed back into an exact disk image of the original disk. It supports commonly used file formats, 40-bit encryption, and has StuffIt compression capabilities.   Although Apple has updated the user interface in Mac OS 8, many third-party applications do not yet take full advantage of these changes. Use Aaron Light to patch these applications so that they use the new appearance, giving your Macintosh a more uniform interface. In particular, Aaron Light patches floating windows, dialog box backgrounds, and progress bars (including the start-up progress bar).   Tired of the appearance of your boring old desktop? Jazz it up with this control panel and get 3D folders, retractable windows, and customizable Finder window back- grounds. Plug-ins are being added all the time to give this expandable program even more power.   A reader for PDF files, a very common document format on the Internet. Documents saved as PDF files retain all of their complex formatting and are readable by anyone on any system (PC, Mac, whatever) so long as they have a reader. Acrobat is a full-featured reader and includes a plug-in for Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer to automatically read PDF files on Web pages.   A feature-laden text editor for the creation of documents that will be read over communication lines. In other words, it does the grunt work in creating pages for Web sites and database systems. It sports loads of tools especially for HTML editors and software developers.   Don’t let the name fool you, this app is about much more than color. Plug in this little program and its menu icon and all of your Mac’s crucial control panel commands are at your fingertips: monitor settings, sound control, audio CDs, and TCP/IP monitor. Plus, you can set “shortcuts” (groupings of setting changes that can be performed with one click) and plug in new modules just by dropping them on the ColorSwitch Pro folder.   Replace your desktop pattern with a single image of your choice with this handy utility. Drop a GIF, PICT, JPEG, or Startup Screen file into Decor’s folder and watch it take over and beautify your desktop. Give Decor just one image or a selection to choose from.   Protects your system from pesky and possible debilitating viruses. The main program scans hard disks and floppies for existing viruses and removes them effectively. The Protection Extension acts entirely in the background to quickly detect the appearance of known viruses.   A control panel/extension which gives your scroll bars double arrows on each end for easier scrolling back and forth. It also has a live scrolling feature as well as a 'scrolling throttle' for controlling your scrolling speed. If you are running the Aaron extension, it uses the Aaron look instead of the 7.x look.   A powerful graphic display and conversion program, Graphic Converter is a must-have for anyone who uses images. Convert an image of just about any format to just about any other format with a couple clicks. Even convert folders full of images in one step. Images converted with Graphic Converter bear a thumbnail of the image as their icon for easy recognition.   JPEGView is a fast, powerful image viewer for both 680x0 and PowerPC Macintoshes. The program can open and display pictures in JPEG, PICT, GIF, TIFF, BMP, MacPaint and startup screen formats. JPEGView also provides an excellent user-configurable slideshow and automatically scales and optimizes images to fit properly on your monitor.   MT-NewsWatcher is a Usenet client for the Mac. Based on John Norstad's NewsWatcher application, it adds a few enhancements that make news reading faster and more enjoyable. These features include message filtering, a spelling checker, a speech recognition mechanism, and more. MT-NewsWatcher even offers multithreading, which allows you to perform several different commands simultaneously.   The full complement of NewerTech   gauges. Includes Clockometer, which reports the exact speed of your   processor; Cache-22, which reports the amount of Level2 cache and the speed of the cache bus; RAMometer, which tests your RAM; SCSI Info, which reports all available information on your SCSI devices; and Slot Info, which details all cards installed in your Mac.   An application which provides information on every possible memory upgrade such as; SIMMs, DIMMs, VRAM, Cache, etc. for every model of Macintosh and Mac clone that has ever been made. It also provides memory upgrade information on all Macintosh Laser Printers. It also contains an elaborate glossary and a very useful memory diagnostic utility.   Finally, a program which makes it more convenient to perform one of the most common, yet often tedious, computing tasks. Switching between open applications can now be done with a simple keystroke with Program Switcher.   SCSIProbe is a Control Panel useful for identifying and mounting devices connected to your SCSI bus. With SCSIProbe you can determine the device type, vendor, product and version for every device connected to your bus. It also includes a startup extension that, when enabled, can mount volumes without requiring the control panel.   The king of screen capture programs. With just one keystroke, you can capture images from your display in any format you choose, give them names you can remember, and get only the image you want. The elegant Snapz control panel offers the choice of capturing the entire screen or just a window, a menu, or even a block of space you choose. Finally, Snapz Pro puts your images where you want them and can even make project folders to organize your work.   This acclaimed utility can often solve those incurable problems that may elude other utilities. TechTool can analyze your system file for damage, zap the entire PRAM chip, delete the desktop file (often a better alternative to rebuilding), see the date your computer was manufactured and how many hours of use it has had, and perform a myriad of other functions.   Window Monkey adds background pictures or textures to any window in the Finder. You can color-code your windows to see at a glance what they contain, or use wild patterns just for fun. It's useful too: use the Window Monkey menu to quickly go to any window in any application, even if it's buried beneath many other windows.   This Macintosh program adeptly zips and unzips files. It is very easy to use and is ideal for compressing several files into one for easy transmission over data lines or storage on a disk. ZipIt files can be decompressed on almost any platform without loss of information.