Quick Menu Manual
(for version 1.2.0.1)
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Table of Contents
1. Installation instructions
Just unzip the archive to a directory of your choice, and you're ready to go. Run the Quick Menu configuration tool (qmconfig.exe) and populate your menu with categories and applications, save them to file 'menuitems.xml' (which Quick Menu loads by default), and then run quickmenu.exe. You will then be presented with a dialog for choosing which hotkeys to use with Quick Menu.
2. Uninstalling
Just remove the directory and all the files. Nothing is added to the start menu or the registry.
3. Using Quick Menu
3.1 Basic functionality
Quick Menu is invisible until you activate it by pressing the hotkeys you have selected. When activated, Quick Menu pops up where the mouse cursor is. When releasing the hotkeys, Quick Menu will be deactivated and disappear again. That is, you have to keep the hotkeys down for as long as you want Quick Menu to be visible. This does not, however, apply to the middle mouse button - read section 3.3 below.
3.2 Hotkeys
Alt, control, shift, windows key ('win' for short) and the middle mouse button can be used as hotkeys. The hotkey selection dialog will present you with four groups of radio buttons and one separate checkbox. The four groups correspond to the four keys alt, control, shift and win. In each group you choose which keys can be used in the hotkey combination: left, right, either or none. This means that if you choose 'either' in the 'shift' group, 'left' in the 'win' group and 'none' in both the 'alt' and 'control' groups, Quick Menu will be activated when you use any of the following key combinations,
left shift + left win
right shift + left win
left shift + right win
Finally there's the checkbox for using the middle mouse button as a hotkey. This one is separate because when checked, Quick Menu will be activated when you click the middle mouse button, regardless of your other hotkey settings. The other hotkey settings are still active though, so you can have both a 'shift' + 'win' hotkey AND the middle mouse button, and Quick Menu will be activated either when you use 'win'+'shift' or middle mouse button.3.3 Middle mouse button as hotkey
As explained above, the middle mouse button can be used as a hotkey for Quick Menu, although it doesn't work the same way as the keyboard hotkeys. When using the keyboard hotkeys, Quick Menu is visible for as long as you keep the hotkeys pressed down. When activating Quick Menu with the middle mouse button, the menu will stay visible until you double click anywhere in the Quick Menu window where there are no menu items.
3.4 Multiple profiles
Quick Menu has support for multiple profiles. What this means is that you can have different menu item files for different users. Each menu item file has its own skin and hotkey settings. The first time you launch Quick Menu with a new menu items file you are presented with the hotkeys selection dialog. Load a file other than 'menuitems.xml' by passing the file name as a parameter, read below for more information.
3.5 Parameters
Quick Menu takes one optional parameter. If you want to use a menu items file other than 'menuitems.xml' then you give the name of that file as a parameter to quickmenu.exe, like this:
quickmenu.exe MyMenuItems.xml
Be sure to quote file names containg space:
quickmenu.exe "My Menu Items.xml"
3.6 The context menu
Right click anywhere in the menu to bring up the context menu. From this menu you can:
| • | "skin" : change skin |
| • | "set hotkeys..." : open up the "set hotkeys" dialog. |
| • | "sticky mode" : toggle 'Sticky Mode'. In 'Sticky Mode' Quick Menu will stay visible until you disable this option. |
| • | "cascading menus" : toggle the cascading menus setting. In cascading menus mode Quick Menu will upon activation only show the categories. When you move the mouse over a category name a new window with the applications will open. |
| • | "edit menu" : open up the Quick Menu configuration tool with the current menu items file. |
| • | "reload" : reload Quick Menu. Same as quitting and starting again. Useable if you have changed the menu items file while Quick Menu is running. |
| • | "quit" : exit the program |
4. Quick Menu configuration tool
Use the Quick Menu configuration to build your Quick Menu. The Quick Menu configuration tool window is divided in two parts: 'categories' and ' applications'. You start out by adding items to the 'categories' section, and then, having a category selected, you add items to the 'applications' section. For each application you give:
| • | a title, this is what will be visible in Quick Menu |
| • |
a program file, the file to launch when clicking the title in Quick Menu.
Press the '...' button to open up a file selection dialog. For programs
this would be an .exe file, but you can select documents or windows
shortcuts (.lnk) as well. Launching a document from Quick Menu would be
the same as double clicking it - the program associated with its extension
will be launched with the file. If you leave the working directory box (read below) empty, and enter a folder name in the program file box (like c:\temp), that folder will be opened with Windows Explorer when clicked. |
| • | a working directory, the directory from which to launch the application. Press the '...' button to open up a directory selection dialog. |
| • | parameters, here you give any parameters you want to pass to the application when being launched |
After giving that information just click the 'add' button, and the application will be added to the list. You can either type in all the information by hand, or drop a Windows shortcut (*.lnk) on the application list (when having a category selected), and all the information will be taken from the shortcut file. If dropping a shortcut file onto the list, you need not and should not hit the 'add' button.
The order in the lists (both categories and applications) will be the order displayed in Quick Menu. If you wish to change the order in the list, you may do so at any time by selecting an item and dragging it to the location you want.
Save the menu list using the 'File -> Save', or 'File -> Save as...' menu options.
5. Skinning
A skin consists of two things - a set of bitmaps which make up the Quick Menu window, and a 'skin name'.ini file for additional information.
The Quick Menu "window" is divided into nine (3x3) rectangular pieces:
| • | tl.bmp - the top left piece |
| • | t.bmp - the top piece (tiled horizontally) |
| • | tr.bmp - the top right piece |
| • | l.bmp - the left piece (tiled vertically) |
| • | c.bmp - the center piece (tiled both horizontally and vertically) |
| • | r.bmp - the right piece (tiled vertically) |
| • | bl.bmp - the bottom left piece |
| • | b.bmp - the bottom piece (tiled horizontally) |
| • | br.bmp - the bottom right piece |
Each skin has to be put into a separate directory (which in turn has to be in the skins directory) with the same name as the skin and the .ini file. Make sure the .ini file is saved in DOS/Windows (CRLF) mode (and not unix or unicode mode). The .ini file contains four sections and some settings for each section:
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[skin]
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[application_font] - the font to use for the application titles in the menu
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[category_font] - the font to use for the category titles in the menu
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[numbers] - some measurements
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