I guess by now that you have viewed the Magellen Pic 1 and thought to
yourselves, "How do I create those pretty Dock Icons at the top of
the screen and what's those funny little buttons for?" Well folks
that's the purpose of this tutorial. I will explain to you all as
usual in easy steps how it is done.
Now before I start to tell you how to set up the Dock Icons I want
you to give the matter some serious thought first. Dock Icons SHOULD
be used to launch your most frequently used software and
applications. Button banks should be used for less frequently used
applications and the START BUTTON for whatever you choose. There
isn't much point in setting up a bank of Docks to launch stuff that
you only use once in a blue moon!
So now we have decided what applications we would like to launch from
our Docks, let's make a start. There is, one very small problem!
There are NO Dock Icons within the Directory Opus Magellan II package
so you will have to find your own! However that should not present
too much of a problem. If you are "on line" there are thousands of
them to be found on the Aminet site. Check out FabiusNIDocs, that's
where I got mine from. If your not "on line" then you will find
plenty to choose from by searching either CU Amiga, AF Format or the
latest AmigActive CD's.
Armed with a collection of your nice looking Docks we first need to
install them within Opus. Open the partition where your Opus5
directory is kept, open Images and that's where you put them. DON'T
put them in the Icon sub-directory that's within this drawer. Why?
because only REAL icons are stored here and we are going to change
those Docks to Images. How? Easy. Having copied your Dock Icons
into the Image drawer we just need to rename them. You will notice
that all the files here have a .small suffix. We are going to use
.large suffix for two reasons. Firstly to save overwriting any image
with the same name and secondly to make them easily distinguishable. Again a little bit of thought is required. If you look at Pic 1 you
will see that the first Dock Icon is an image of a Juke Box. I
decided to use this to launch HippoPlayer so I renamed the icon to
Hippo.large to make it easy to find again. Continue now to rename
all the rest of your Docks with meaningful names, not forgetting the
.large suffix. Having completed that task, let's move on.
From the Opus top menu bar select Buttons, New and Graphic Buttons.
A pop up Button Bank Editor (Fig2) and a Blank Button will appear.
In the Settings of the Button Bank Editor, untick the Full Border
box. The Blank Button should now look like Fig1. Leave Drag set as
Automatic and tick only Simple-Refresh. The next task is to give the
Dock Icon Bank a name, so edit Untitled to what ever you wish to call
it. Next we need to edit the Blank Button but you will notice that the
lower section of the Button Bank Editor is ghosted out. So, mouse
click on the Blank Button and it will start to flash. The ghosting
will now be removed allowing you to now edit the Button. Now you can
click on Edit and a pop up Button Editor (Fig3) will appear.
Let's now examine the Button Editor in closer detail as this is where
most of the main work is done. The first part we want to look at is
the Functions Box, this is where you choose which mouse button will
activate your Dock Icon. By default the left mouse button is
selected, but you may wish to change this. Having selected your
mouse button let's now add the Dock Icon Image. Click now on the Image disk gadget and a standard file requester
should appear. If you have installed Opus correctly the file
requester will default to where we stored our Dock Icon images
earlier. Now select the image you require. For the purpose of this
tutorial we will select Hippo.large as our image. Your selected Dock
Icon will now appear below in the button box. Good Stuff Eh?
Click now on Edit Function and up will pop the Function editor.
There is very little work to be done here other than to click on the
cycle gadget to set it to AmigaDOS and then click on the disk gadget
and select the path to the required program. For the purpose of this
tutorial our path is:- DH2:HippoPlayer/HiP
Finally click on Use, Use and Save. Well done class, you have
created your first Dock Icon. Now for your homework this week let's
make a nice row or column of them. You only have to click on Add in
the Button Bank Editor and follow the same procedure again.
When you have completed your Dock Icons, Position them on screen by
means of the drag bar which you can turn off as I described in my
last tutorial. Now right mouse click on the Dock Icon Button Bank
and from the pop up menu select save. Finally from the Opus top menu
bar, select Settings, Environment and Save Layout. This will ensure
that your Dock Icons will be locked to your desktop. Remember that
in Directory Opus you can snapshot an icon or lister but you can only
preserve the screen position of a Button Bank by the Save Layout
option.
Remember that Directory Opus Magellan II has a built in AmigaGuide
help facility. Whilst using any of the various editors if you
position your mouse pointer over a part of it and press the Amiga's
Help key an on screen help guide will be available to you.
To create a Small Button Bank as shown on Pic 1 is very easy as the
procedure is exactly the same as for creating a bank of Dock Icons,
with the exception that you use the .small image from the Image
drawer. Again what programs or applications or indeed what image you
choose for that program or application is entirely up to you. That's
the beauty of Directory Opus Magellan, you choose, it complies. Now if you have been following all 3 of my tutorials you will have
installed Directory Opus Magellan II correctly as a Workbench
replacement and configured it to give you the style of the desktop
that YOU want. You would have set up a Start Button to your own
requirements and you would have now set up some Dock Icons and a
Button Bank to quickly launch your favourite programs and
applications. Now most of what I have covered so far is mainly cosmetic albeit very
useful, and should you be thinking that this is all there is to
Directory Opus then you are wrong! Next issue I will be covering
Sound Events and venturing into Filetypes. Until then, happy
Opusing.