═══ 1. Introduction ═══ Lou Miranda's Top Tips for OS/2 Warp Tips are selected and produced in the IPF format by Lou Miranda Miranda Consulting Corporation P.O. Box 65707 St. Paul, MN 55165-0707 Double-click on the bullseye to start! This document was last updated in November 1994. To retrieve the most recent document, go to the PC World Online forum on CompuServe. Just GO PWOFORUM to get there. This document is Copyright 1994 Louis M. Miranda. All rights reserved. This document may be freely distributed as long as no modifications are made. I make no guarantees with respect to the effectiveness of these tips. Use at your own risk. ═══ 2. Start Here ═══ To begin, double-click one of the icons: Read the tips. Find out where to get more help with OS/2 Warp. ═══ 3. More Information ═══ For more tips, tricks, & troubleshooting with OS/2 Warp, double-click an item: Contributing Tips Credits PC World IBM Corporation OS/2 Warp tutorial. Go back! ═══ 3.1. Contributing Tips ═══ How to Contribute a Tip If you would like to contribute a tip, or would like to get more tips, please contact me on CompuServe. Just leave a message on the PC World Online forum. Just GO PWOFORUM and leave a message addressed to Sysop in section 20 (OS/2 Q&A). ═══ 3.2. Credits ═══ Who Contributes to These Tips The tips you see here are compiled and produced by Lou Miranda. Lou is a frequent contributor to, and former Contributing Editor for, PC World magazine. He is also a Windows and OS/2 programming consultant based in St. Paul, Minnesota USA. A number of people helped contribute ideas and tips for this document, as well as providing help on the PC World Online forum. They include (in alphabetical order): Tony DiBenedetto Bill Norris Joe Rosenman Lou Wiener Thanks for everyone's help! //Lou. ═══ 3.3. PC World ═══ PC World CompuServe Forum PC World magazine has a forum on CompuServe. To access the top level of the forum, which contains software & hardware reviews and other information, use GO PCWORLD on CompuServe. To access the message sections and download libraries, use GO PWOFORUM. Currently, forum section 20 is the OS/2 Q&A section, where I leave a Tip of the Week every Monday morning. And there are a number of OS/2 experts there also. Currently, library section 12 is the OS/2 Files section. Here is where the most recent version of this file is always uploaded. PC World Magazine PC World magazine is a monthly magazine for people like you. It covers the entire PC industry, has new product information, and contains tips and tricks for running your PC at its best. PC World magazine has had a number of OS/2-related articles recently. For example, there was a review of Skyscraper in the June, 1994 issue, and OS/2 software was featured on the October 1994 issue's cover story (page 125). It also had an OS/2 Q&A column from January, 1994 to August, 1994. More OS/2-related articles are coming in future issues, so keep an eye out for them. ═══ 3.4. IBM Corporation ═══ IBM Corporation IBM sponsors several forums on CompuServe for OS/2. To access IBM's customer support forum (for questions on installation and compatibility for example), GO OS2SUPPORT. To discuss OS/2 with other users, GO OS2USER. IBM also has forums for people who program for OS/2, using any language such as REXX, C, C++, BASIC, etc. You access these with GO OS2DF1 and GO OS2DF2. ═══ 4. Tips ═══ To look at a tip or trick, double-click on any of the items below:  Finding & printing a tip  Using drag'n'drop in IBM Works  Quick-open an object's settings  Starting any application quickly  Viewing PhotoCD images  Finding an object  Saving your desktop with REXX Go back! ═══ 4.1. Finding & printing a tip ═══ How to Search for and Print a Tip Can't remember where that elusive tip is?! Just click the Search... button on the bottom of the window. Then enter text you want to search for, then click All sections and then Search to begin. It's very easy to print a tip that you see here. Just press the Print... button at the bottom of the window. Then choose what you want to print, and click the Print button. ═══ 4.2. Using drag'n'drop in IBM Works ═══ Using Drag'N'Drop in IBM Works Did you install the OS/2 Warp Bonus Pak? If so, you should have the FaxWorks and IBM Works folder on your desktop. These are very powerful applications. And they're fun and easy, too. There should be a README icon in the IBM Works folder . Double-click it to open it (it's a Works word processor file). Inside it are a lot of good tips on using drag'n'drop. For example, let's say you create a letter and want to fax it to someone. Normally, you'd open the letter, choose File|Printer Setup..., change the printer driver to the fax driver, select OK, then choose File|Print to fax it. Then you'd have to fill in the fax cover sheet and type in (or search for) who you want to fax it to. Then you'd have to go back to your document and change the printer setup to use your printer again--a lot of work! It's much easier with OS/2 Warp! Just open the Phone/Address Book icon in the IBM Works folder. Drag a name from the phone book and drop it on your document's icon--the icon will now have a tiny business card added to it. Now just drag the document icon to the fax driver on your desktop (assuming you've installed FaxWorks). Voila! Works will automagically send it to the fax number contained in the person you dragged to the document (and if you have mailmerge codes, it'll merge it too!). You can even drag a Contact List (a collection of people from your phone book) and it will fax it to everyone on the list! What if you drag a name on by mistake, or want to remove a name for some other reason? Easy. Just right-click on the document's icon and choose Settings. The first page is now a Merge page. You can delete one or more names, and change the Action on Drop (open, print/fax, or none). One more tip: Isn't it annoying that when you're editing a document you can't do a drag'n'drop unless you dig around to find the document icon? No more! If you're editing a Works document, you'll see a small icon all the way on the left, just below the File menu. Just drag it to the fax or printer icon on your desktop. It's that easy! ═══ 4.3. Quick-open an object's settings ═══ Quick-Open an Object's Settings Tired of having to right-click on an object and then choose Settings to open the settings notebook? There's an easier way. Just hold down the Alt key and double-click on the object; the Settings Notebook will be opened automatically. Clicking once on an object will holding down the Alt key will allow you to edit its name. You can even enter a name on several lines by pressing the Enter key. When you're done editing, just click the mouse on the object once. ═══ 4.4. Starting any application quickly ═══ Starting Any Application Quickly Do you clutter up your desktop with icons for an OS/2 window, a DOS window, and a DOS full-screen session? You don't need to. You can start any application from an OS/2 command prompt. For example, double-click on the OS/2 Window object, then type MSD.Exe and OS/2 will automatically start the DOS MSD.Exe program. No need to have a separate icon for a DOS session! To try it now, double-click this graphic to start an OS/2 session, and try entering the DOS command above. ═══ 4.5. Viewing PhotoCD images ═══ Viewing PhotoCD Images Did you just get Warp? Want a fun tip? If you have the CD-ROM version of OS/2 Warp, and you installed the Multimedia extensions, did you know you have a great source of Kodak PhotoCD images? There's a bunch of fun stuff in the MMPM2 folder: 1. Videos! Look in the Movies folder's Ultimotn subfolder (and head down through the subfolders until you find one that has videos appropriate for your hardware). Just double-click on the files and they'll be automatically loaded in the video player. Then just press the play button. 2. PhotoCD images! OS/2 now supports the PhotoCD format. In the PhotoCD folder inside the MMPM2 folder, you'll find 24 images. Select them all by right-clicking on the folder background, then choose Select->All. Then right-click on one of the selected images, and choose "Create LT Reference..." from the menu. Then click on the Desktop tab in the notebook; find the Multimedia folder, click on the + to its left, then select Multimedia Viewer and click the OK button. There are a bunch of really pretty pictures here. ═══ 4.6. Finding an object ═══ Finding an Object If you've moved from Windows to OS/2, you probably like how you can have folders inside of other folders in OS/2. Of course, you can have folder, inside of folders, inside of folders, .... What if you can't find an object you placed in one of your folders? Do you have to spend an hour searching through all of them by hand? Of course not! Just right-click on the desktop and choose "Find..." from the menu. In the "Name" field, enter the name of the object you're looking for. Just like the DOS command line, you can use an asterisk * as a wild card. In the "Start Folder" field, click the down arrow to the right, then move to the top of the listbox and choose "C:\DESKTOP". Then click the "Find" button. OS/2 will now search through all your folders and come up with a window containing all the matches. You can manipulate the object by dragging & dropping it, or right clicking on it. Then click Close when you're done. Advanced Tip: The Find feature is much more powerful in OS/2 Warp v3 than it was in version 2.1: you can now search on extended attributes. Try this: Right click on the desktop, then choose "Find...". Click the "More..." button, and then click "Add". In the Attribute field, you can search on Object Class, Name, or Style; Date or Time; Flags; Subject, Comment, or Key Phrases! Let's say you want to search for an IBM Works document that you created. Select "Object Class" from the Attribute Field. Then scroll down through Comparison Value until you find "Document". Now click "Add" and then "OK". Then click "Find" in the find objects dialog. OS/2 will now find all objects that are IBM Works documents. This is a welcome feature in Warp, and can save you lots of time. ═══ 4.7. Saving your desktop ═══ Saving your Desktop with REXX Have you tried OS/2's super batch language? It's called REXX and it allows you to do far more than DOS's batch language. In fact, it can even interact with your Desktop! Let's say you want to save your Desktop. Normally, you have to shut down to save your Desktop, because folders only save their settings when they're closed (and the Desktop is only closed when you shut down). This may be a problem, for example, when you do a Dual Boot--since the Desktop isn't closed before rebooting, icon positions aren't saved. Windows 3.1 has the same problem--you have to exit Windows to save your Program Manager settings. But Windows has a shortcut (Hold down the Shift key while choosing File|Exit from the menu)--does OS/2? With REXX, yes! Just cut out the next few lines and paste it into an empty file using the OS/2 System Editor, then save the file as SAVEDESK.CMD: /* Beginning of REXX file */ /* The first two characters of a REXX file must be a forward slash and an asterisk ('/' & '*') since this tells OS/2 that it's not just a batch file. Those two characters also start a "comment" in REXX; to end the comment, just reverse the order of the characters. end of comment: */ call RxFuncAdd 'SysLoadFuncs', 'RexxUtil', 'SysLoadFuncs' call SysLoadFuncs rc = SysSaveObject("", "Synchronous") say 'rc = ' rc /* end of Rexx file */ Now go to an OS/2 command line and type SAVEDESK. There should be a pause and then you should see "rc = 1" when it's finished. Now your desktop is saved. For more information on programming REXX, see the REXX Information icon in your Information folder, or double-click on this graphic