StripLaunch is a Control Strip module which will give you a small menu containing your favourite applications, most commonly used documents, best scripts and anything else you desire, just by clicking on it in the Control Strip. StripLaunch is small, fast and stable, and uses none of your system resources when you are not using it.
2. Installing and Using StripLaunch
StripLaunch will run on both 68k and PPC computers, with any monitor, in b/w or colour. It requires System 7 or later and, naturally, the Control Strip extension.
To install StripLaunch, drop the module named 'StripLaunch' and the folder 'StripLaunch Items' into your Control Strip Modules folder and restart your computer. It's symbol will now appear in the Control Strip. To add items to the menu, you just drag the desired applications, documents and folders - or, preferably, aliases of them - to the 'StripLaunch Items' folder. No restarting is necessary. The instant you drop something into the folder, it appears in the menu.
Click on the StripLaunch module in the Control Strip to bring up the StripLaunch menu. Selecting a menu item opens that item. If you hold down the Command key while clicking StripLaunch, you will instead get a 'Get Info...' window about the item. The Control key will reveal the item in Finder. If you also hold down Shift at the same time, StripLaunch will get info about or reveal the alias file in the 'StripLaunch Items' folder instead.
If StripLaunch doesn't seem to work, please refer to the section 'Problem Solving'.
3. Problem Solving
If StripLaunch refuses to appear in the Control Strip, please go through the following four steps before you send me the bug report:
Ñ Make sure that StripLaunch is located inside the 'Control Strip Modules' folder.
Ñ Make sure that there is a folder named exactly 'StripLaunch Items', and that this folder is also located inside the 'Control Strip Modules' folder. That this folder is missing is the single most common reason people contact me, asking why StripLaunch does not load.
Ñ If you have just installed StripLaunch properly, you must restart your computer for it to appear.
Ñ If all of the above is done, try increasing the size of your Control Strip. This is done by clicking and dragging the little 'tab' at the end of the Control Strip to the desired length. You can also reveal hidden items by scrolling the Control Strip using the little arrows to the left and right.
4. Advanced Topics
StripLaunch ships with a number of additional modules, helping you arrange your items more logically. These are identical to StripLaunch itself, apart from their names, icons, and the folders they scan for items. These may be used instead of the standard StripLaunch module, or together with it. Simply install all the modules you think useful, with their respective folders.
Items in the menu are arranged alphabetically. Thus, you may change the location of an item by changing its name. In particular, adding a 'space' in front of the name of an item will send that item to the top of the list.
If you would like certain items to stand out, there is a tagging system which will allow you to make items in the menu bold, italicised, underlined, outlined or shadowed. To accomplish this, add two characters to the names of your items according to the following list:
<B Bold
<I Italic
<U Underlined
<O Outlined
<S Shadowed
You may also combine any of these 'tags'. Thus, adding '<B<I' to a name will make that item bold and italic. Adding these tags to the beginning of the names will affect the way in which the items are ordered in the menu; tagged items will appear at the top of the menu. If you want to avoid this, instead add the tags to the end of the names.
You can also get divider lines in your menu, by creating a folder and naming it '-'. This divider line is sorted into the menu alphabetically, but there are two basic ways of getting it where you want. The first is to add a leading space to all items you want before the line. The other way, which is handy if you have groups of items in different styles, is naming the divider line folders '<B-', '<I-' and so on. Ordering will be such that the '<B-' divider line ends up before all bold items. This way, you will also be able to have multiple divider lines.
Another handy tip, if you are using AppleScript, is to create or download scripts from the web, which sets your monitor resolution and/or bit depth and/or sound volume, and add them to the StripLaunch menu. Since you seldom need more than two different settings (one for work and one for games, perhaps), you can add these two to your menu and then remove both the resolution, the bit depth and the sound control panels from the Control Strip, saving space, and reducing the number of selections needing to be done.
If you are handy with ResEdit or any other resource editor, you can also make new modules with different icons and names. Simply open a copy of StripLaunch with your resource editor. To edit the icon, open resource 257 from the resource families 'ics8', 'ics4' or 'ics#' and edit the icons. Don't forget to modify the mask as well. To change the name of the folder the module scans, open resource 1000 from the 'STR#' resource family and type in the new name. Then save the module, close it, rename it and install it. Also remember to actually create a folder with the exact name you typed in the string resource.
8. Registering and Getting Support
For information about registering StripLaunch or getting support, please refer to the enclosed 'Registration' document.
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Thanks to:
Alec Carlson
Richard Buckle
Mark Day
Niklas Frykholm
Thanks also to all those who contributed with comments and suggestions.
