PaneKiller user manual

What information are you looking for?

• What's new in PaneKiller version 1.24
• A quick tour of PaneKiller
• Instructions for customizing the main menu
• A description of the options in the Properties dialog
• A list of advanced features and shortcuts
• Information on how to register PaneKiller

The PaneKiller Properties dialog

Following is a brief description of each option in the Properties dialog, organized by page:

• Appearance

  Icon settings
  You get to choose whether to show icons for files and folders in  menus, and if so, when and how they are displayed.  With icons off, menus display most quickly, but they're prettier with icons on.  If you enable "fetch icons in background", there should be very little or no speed penalty for displaying the icons.
  You can also use full-size icons instead of the default small icons.

  Menu arrival effect
  Purely cosmetic, so choose your transition: there are now too many to list and it's easier to figure out what they look like by watching them than by reading about them, so try them out! Set it to (random) for a few days to get a chance to see them all, then pick your favorite -- or leave it on (random), which chooses between all possible effects.

  Appearance delay
  This option controls how quickly submenus appear when you hover over a menu item but do not click. If you set it all the way to the right, menus will never appear until you click on them.

  Show hidden or system files
  Controls whether hidden files are shown in menus.  You can have hidden files always hidden or always displayed, or you can tell PaneKiller to mimic Explorer's settings.

  Gradient background for selected items -- determines whether the item under the mouse cursor is highlighted with a solid color bar or a smoothly blended fade (available only if your color supports more than 256 colors)

  Menus have title area -- determines whether menus have their name imprinted at the top (if you click on it, you open the corresponding Explorer folder)

  Disable splash screen on startup -- available only to registered users, determines whether you see the PaneKiller logo as PaneKiller starts.

• Sort Order

  You get to choose whether to alphabetize menus; if you don't, files appear in the same order that they are listed in the folder.  Since this ordering is overly arbitrary, alphabetizing the files makes them easier to find.  (Note: My Computer is always sorted by drive letter, regardless of this setting.)
  If you choose to sort the menus, you also get to choose where folders come: at the top of the menu, at the bottom, or mixed in with the files where they alphabetically belong.

• Menus

  Desktop: If enabled, a Desktop submenu appears in the main menu, enabling you to access every file on your computer from PaneKiller. If disabled, you can only access files and folders that you create shortcuts to in your PaneKiller Items folder.

  Recent folders -- A collection of the last 10 menus that you selected an item from

  Recent items -- a collection of the last 10 items that you accessed

  Windows folders to show in main menu -- automatically creates shortcuts so you can access several important Windows functions from PaneKiller.

  Show PaneKiller About and Properties in all menus -- can be disabled only by registered users, allows quick access to PaneKiller configuration and registration information from any menu.

  Split long menus into multiple pages -- normally, if a menu is too long to fit on one screen, PaneKiller adds scroll arrows to the top and bottom, and you scroll to access the remaining items. If you don't like scrolling, you can select this option to have PaneKiller divide the menu into several pages, each of which fits on one screen.

• Taskbar

  Show in application area of taskbar -- causes PaneKiller to show up in the main area of the taskbar like most programs do, in addition to its small icon next to the clock, in case the notification icon by the clock is too small a target to click on (useful for those running at relatively high resolutions).

  Single click -- makes PaneKiller act more like normal menus -- the menu appears as soon as you click PaneKiller's taskbar icon, and PaneKiller disappears when you release the button, whether you've selected anything or not.

  Icon on taskbar -- allows you to select from your choice of icons to represent PaneKiller on the taskbar -- try them all and see which you prefer! Choose from animated designs that double as an indicator that your system is multitasking smoothly, or less distracting non-animated designs.

• Advanced

  Hide icons on Windows desktop -- many people would like to see their desktop less cluttered, now that they can access its contents from PaneKiller. If this applies to you, hide the desktop icons with this option.

  Shortcut key -- the shortcut key lets you access PaneKiller without using the mouse, by activating the main menu when you press your chosen key. See further description below, under "advanced features."

  Clear Recent items / folders -- for privacy reasons or if you're just in the mood to tidy things up, you can erase the contents of the Recent menus.

  Caching options -- because querying Windows for the information necessary to display a menu takes a relatively long time, PaneKiller keeps its own copy of this information for menus it has already displayed once, which makes PaneKiller much faster. However, if you notice problems such as menus not updating their contents when you update files on disk, you may want to tweak some of these options. "Clear all menu caches now" will reset all prebuilt menus and force them to be rebuilt the next time you display them; unchecking the "enable cache" option essentially permanently clears the cache, so that menus are always rebuilt when requested. Use of this option is recommended only if you have recurring problems with menus not updating. Update problems are more likely in the desktop and My Computer menus because of the way Windows handles these folders, so you can turn off caching here with the "always rebuild" options but leave caching on for most folders.

Advanced features

• To display the context menu for a file or folder (the menu you would get if you right-clicked on the file in Windows Explorer), right-click on the file or highlight it and press the [Menu] key (or Shift+F10 on keyboards without a Menu key). From there, you have access to all the options associated with that file type.
• To open a folder as a Windows folder instead of a submenu, double-click it.
• To open several files from the same menu, hold Ctrl as you click to select. The selected document or application will open, but the menu will remain visible so you can select other items.
• You can access PaneKiller completely from the keyboard -- use its Shortcut Key feature. By default, the Shortcut Key is turned off, but you can change this in the Properties dialog. After you set the shortcut key to your favorite keystroke, pressing this key at any time will bring up the PaneKiller main menu, and you can use the arrow keys and Enter to navigate the menus.
• Other keyboard shortcuts: Alt + Enter gives you an item's Properties; Shift + Enter opens a submenu as an Explorer folder instead of a menu.
• The Desktop item in the main menu is more than just a gateway to the rest of your computer -- by double-clicking or right-clicking it, you can also open your Desktop folder, or access your display properties.
• PaneKiller can now run multiple copies of itself so you can get even quicker access to stuff you need all the time, by putting more than one folder right on the taskbar. To invoke PaneKiller in this manner, create a shortcut to PaneKill.exe with a /root:[foldername] parameter on the command line: an example command line would be "panekill.exe /root:c:\Important" if you want the C:\Important folder to appear on directly on the taskbar.

Version history

• Version 1.24 (5/16/98)
• Version 1.23 (5/3/98)
• Version 1.22 (4/27/98)
• Version 1.21 (4/17/98)
• Version 1.20 (4/13/98)
• Version 1.10 (12/29/97)
• Version 1.01 (3/29/97)
• Version 1.00 (3/21/97)

What's new in version 1.24

Release date: 5/16/98
Bug fixes:

• In single-click mode, the menu would sometimes not dsappear when it should, and any interaction with this menu that should have disappeared (clicking on it, mousing over it to display submenus, etc.) would cause a crash (this bug only affected PaneKiller v1.23)

What's new in version 1.23

Release date: 5/3/98
New features:

• Access "Hide desktop icons" feature quickly from the menu that results from right-clicking PaneKiller's icon on the taskbar
• Menu creation and animation is more responsive to user input, so menu navigation should feel smoother
• More menu transition effects: Zooming Pieces, Comet Trails, and Merging Blocks.
• New website! http://www.maddogsw.com/ is now the place to go.

Bug fixes:

• Keyboard navigation of menus was broken in 1.22
• Fix Alt+Enter (shortcut to get item's properties) for items that lack a context menu
• Possible crash viewing Desktop menu when using the new (Internet Explorer 4 / Windows 98) shell
• PaneKiller Items folder may not have been created properly if it was not set to the default location
• Doesn't wait to resolve broken shortcuts (which was causing long delays while creating some menus)

What's new in version 1.22

Release date: 4/27/98
New features:

• Option to split long menus into multiple pages, instead of scrolling
• More menu transitions -- look for them in Appearance Properties (it's now a drop-down list, because there are too many to fit on the screen otherwise)
• Once again, faster! Menus fill faster, transitions happen faster and get out of the way sooner if you're just browsing around and flipping through menus
• Improved single-click -- it's now the default
• New keyboard shortcuts to open a submenu as a folder (Shift + Enter) and to get properties for an item (Alt + Enter)
• Changed default icon on taskbar to half-animated one
• Improved what happens when you right-click the Desktop menu item and say "Open as folder" (now you get My Computer, etc. icons in the Desktop folder window)
• Better error messages when PaneKiller is unable to open a file
• Setup has option to change the location of the PaneKiller Items folder

Bug fixes:

• Fixed working directory so certain apps (mostly older ones) work properly when launched from PaneKiller
• Fixed setup under Windows NT
• Warning messages if a problem occurs accessing the PaneKiller Items folder

What's new in version 1.21

Release date: 4/17/98
New features:

• Single-click setting makes PaneKiller act more like normal menus -- the menu appears as soon as you click PaneKiller's taskbar icon, and PaneKiller disappears when you release the button, whether you've selected anything or not. Look in the Taskbar property page for this option.
• Option to refresh a cached menu (right-click the menu's title bar)
• Options to cache menus that can't be automatically refreshed when the contents change (these menus will be marked with a "Cached menu may need refresh" item at top; select this item to rebuild the menu)
• Icon for Clear Recent Folders/Items menu option

Bug fixes:

• Cache code could cause PaneKiller to crash after viewing certain menus repeatedly
• Animated icon code was redrawing the taskbar icon even if it didn't change, wasting CPU time, and using the My Computer icon in this way would eventually cause the computer to crash
• Trying to access a password-protected resource (for example, on a network) would result in way too many copies of the password dialog
• The names of some folders could not be displayed properly as a menu title
• Icons are now cached with cached menus
• You can access menus while the Properties dialog is open

What's new in version 1.2

Release date: 4/13/98
New features:

• Speed
  Menus are now cached once used for quick access the next time. PaneKiller navigation should "feel" much faster.
  Menu transition animations are much faster.
  
• All-new visuals
  Animated icon on taskbar, new splash screen and logo
  Gradient-color highlights for the selected menu item
  Menus have titles with "Open this menu" possibility
  Much-enhanced Properties interface with tabbed property sheets
  
• Recent Items/Folders improvements
  Recent Items/Folders are saved between sessions
  Recent Items/Folders can be cleared, either by their "Clear this menu" selection, or by a button in the Advanced properties
  
• Navigation enhancements
  You can add Start Menu, Control Panels, My Computer, etc. -- lots of special Windows folders -- to the PaneKiller main menu, automatically -- look in the "Menus" tab of PaneKiller's properties
  PaneKiller properties can be accessed from any menu or right-click context menu, for easy configuration
  
• User requests:
  Can hide icons in Windows desktop
  Can appear in application area of Taskbar, like normal programs, if you think that the icon on the taskbar is too small a target
  Can run multiple copies of PaneKiller with different home folders, so that you get access to as many different folders as you want right from the taskbar (invoked via the command line, ie PaneKill /root:x:\)

• Improved Setup
  
• Registration and shareware improvements
  Registration codes are now calculated based on your name, instead of a PaneKiller serial number
  Lower price
  Fewer nag screens in the shareware version (I really want to make the trial version of PaneKiller a more pleasant experience without nagging you! But if you like it, please don't take advantage of my kindness; register it!)

Bugs fixed:

• Keypresses over the menu scroll arrows were causing PaneKiller to hang

What's new in version 1.1

Release date: 12/29/97
PaneKiller 1.1 includes nearly every fix and enhancement requested by users of version 1.0, plus many more.

• Send To (on the right-click context menu) works
• PaneKiller now uses the same menu font as Windows.
• You can navigate long menus more quickly by using the Page Up, Page Down, Home, and End keys, or by typing the first letter of a menu item's name.
• Support for the mouse wheel in scrolling menus
• You can double-click to open a folder as a folder instead of a submenu.
• Recent Items and Recent Folders track things you've worked with recently, for easy access.
• Option to disable the automatic "hover select" with the mouse, so submenus won't pop up unless you click on them.
• Feedback to show the current position in a long scrolling menu, and you'll no longer accidentally select the first or last item in the menu after scrolling when you release the mouse button.
• Using a context menu hides any visible submenus, to avoid clutter.
• An improved installer that allows you to choose the installation directory.
• Miscellaneous tweaks to drawing and menu tracking behavior, making everything just a little bit easier to use.

Bugs fixed:

• Word 95 or 97 hang when you quit it after launching it via PaneKiller
• Menus refusing to be dismissed after you've used a context menu
• Shortcut Key feature didn't respond to the correct key combination

What's new in version 1.01

Release date: 3/29/97

The Properties dialog did not look right on some systems not using Large Fonts display mode.

Initial release

Release date: 3/21/97

Other questions

• I think most of what PaneKiller does is self-explanatory -- the goal is for you not to even realize you're using a new program; PaneKiller should act just like the menus you've already mastered.  But if I've left information out that you'd like to know, send me mail and ask -- whether it's a new feature you'd like to see, or you're curious about how to access existing features.

Acknowledgements

• I'd like to thank Jacques Bensimon for his incredible wealth of feedback and suggestions for improvement, making PaneKiller v1.1 a much more useful and polished product.
• The original idea for PaneKiller is due to Adam York, a Macintosh™ refugee, who said, "Macs can do this... why not my Windows™ machine?" Adam has also been essential in uncovering last-minute bugs.
• Rachel Flowers came up with the name and gave me advice on the PaneKiller look and feel.
• Todd Carson and J.R.C. Guimaraes were incredibly helpful in providing feedback on, and testing fixes for, the bug in version 1.23. Todd's sharp eyes are also responsible for finding several of the other bugs fixed in versions 1.22 and 1.23.

PaneKiller is ©1998 Matt Ginzton, MaDdoG Software and is distributed as shareware.  PaneKiller is supplied as-is, with no warranties expressed or implied.  For licensing information, run Register.EXE from the PaneKiller directory, or contact matt@maddogsw.com.