February OS/2 Shareware

What other operating system boasts interchangeable WorkPlace Shells? If you don't like the one you've got, you can enhance it, or even replace it completely!

By Christopher Relf

Remembering the key sequence when you want to drag and drop to either copy, alias or move (Ctrl and Shift keys) is often difficult, so an automatic drag-and-drop prompt is included, giving you the option to select when dropping. It allows you to delete menu items in the standard right-click menu that you never use, leaving much more room for a fully configurable user menu -- a great idea!

As a bonus for using Desktop Wizard, the author has even included a couple of extras in the package: Little Digital Talking Clock 1.5 and ClipBoard Text Utility 1.2.

Overall, a very useful WPS add-on -- let's hope the people at IBM have a copy of Desktop Wizard, and are taking notes.

The downside is that as DragText has features which are added onto an application or the WPS instead of being built-in, it may not work for every possible window. In this case, conflicts may occur between DragText and some programs -- if so, it can be partially or totally disabled for that program using the Disable page in the Settings notebook. DragText takes a little getting use to, but it is definitely handy around the desktop!

Some interesting functions have been included that are particularly useful when using virtual desktops. These include the ability to move a window by dragging its frame with the mouse (in case the title bar is off your particular virtual desktop), to make the mouse pointer wrap at the edge of the screen, and to automatically move the mouse pointer to the focused window (very useful if you have a large desktop displayed at a high resolution).

If you are using an application to demonstrate something, you can draw lines on the screen and decorate the desktop with window shadows. If you're sick of using the keyboard for cut, copy and paste functions, NPS WPS Enhancer lets you do so using just the mouse. One great feature is the ability to individually enable or disable each of the extra functions, so you only have to use what you want and need.

You can use the Program Launcher as a WPS enhancement or replacement. My favourite enhancement is the ability to do away with the practice of launching OS/2, DOS, Win-OS2 and WPS applications from folders and icons that clutter and quickly fill up the desktop -- PC/2 allows you to do that from an extremely configurable pop-up desktop menu. If you need a virtual desktop, it is built into the core (up to nine by ninefold), allowing you to switch with button clicks or simply by moving the pointer onto a surrounding row or column of your desktop and PC/2 will automatically scroll into that direction. If you have more than one monitor installed, hardware virtual desktops are supported. Also, if you have a monitor that only supports 800 by 600 and you need a full 1024 by 768 for a particular application, you can extend your desktop to the full size, without defining an entire new desktop.

Another function, very much like its UNIX counterpart, is called sliding focus. If you have two windows open on the screen, be they applications or folders, moving the mouse over either of them brings it to the front and activates it -- you don't need to click your mouse.

Other tasks PC/2 can assist with include advanced marking, hotkeys, dynamic menu selection, environment spaces, title bar smart-icons, an application scheduler, and advanced power management support. PC/2 has a lot of features and sometimes it becomes confusing, even for experienced users. You won't use all of the features, but the pop-up desktop menu and the virtual desktops make it worth installing PC/2.

You can change the fonts for the file and directory lists -- if you're eyesight is good and you want to see every file in that directory, use a really small font to cram them all onscreen. Both the Drives and File Type drop-down lists are lengthened in order to fit the entire list on the screen. I really hope X-File's functions are added to our beloved OS/2 in the next version.