Review: Magic Workbench 2.0

By: Katherine Nelson

Maybe you've tried to demonstrate the attraction of the Amiga to "friends" who own PC's or Macs. The MS-DOS people may appreciate the power and versatility of AmigaDOS. However, the minute any Windows or color Mac user takes a look at the standard four-color Workbench with black and white icons, you've lost them completely. They won't listen to your prattle about how little memory is needed to run games or applications. And they won't count how many programs you can run at once. They just sit back and say, "My computer can use more than 4 colors. My computer has color icons."

What you need is something to improve the look of your Workbench. There are several Workbench visual improvement packages available, and one of the most famous of these is Magic Workbench.

Magic Workbench is an icon/palette/background/utility package from Martin Huttenloher, with some help with the backgrounds and utilities. It provides an 8-color Workbench palette, but with version 2.0 you can use any number of colors while retaining the correct colors for the icons (see "Utilities" below...)

There have been many arguments over the merits of the particular 8 colors (black, white, 3 greys, and muted blue, peach, and tan) used by MWB. Some users feel that the color choice is too "dull" or "boring". However, I don't believe that the palette was intended to be overly bright. It lends a silky look to a Workbench that may be more professional and less "fun" than other color choices. Only your own personal preference can determine if the palette is right for you.

The icons themselves are infinitely more interesting than the originals. They have consistent sizes for each type, a consistent "style", the use of gradients to improve performance, and a natural 3-D look.

The best improvement over the original icons, in my opinion, is in the preferences icons. About on par for ugliness with the original prefs icons, were the original disk/devices icons. The MWB versions are decidedly much more appealing, in that they are more "descriptive" and more artistically designed.

Also included in the way of icons are System, Devs, Utilities, and Miscellaneous (such as the Trashcan) icons. These display the same attractiveness found in the prefs and devices icons.

With previous versions of Magic Workbench, there were a few complaints that although the drawer design was an improvement over the original, the drawers were still too boring. Version 2.0 now includes "imagedrawers", which are drawer icons with small pictures on the front that describe the contents. I feel that this is one of the better improvements to Magic Workbench, because it causes the loss of repetitiveness while keeping uniformity. This is especially nice, because the main directory of my hard drive is primarily drawers that lead to the programs, and facing nothing but 16 drawers in a window was getting a little mind-numbing at times.

The only dislike that I have with the icons, is the fact that the Hard Disk icons (while very pretty) are not the same size as the other devices icons. This may not be important to many people, but I would enjoy having the hard drive icons and the RAM icon line up in the same manner as all of the other MWB icons do within their windows. This is a fairly minor point, however.

For those wishing to convert icons other than the standard System ones to the Magic Workbench style, there are many icons available in the pix/icons and pix/mwb directories of Aminet.

The patterns included with Magic Workbench are very attractive, and match the style of the icons well. There are over 50 of them, and many more can be had on most Amiga BBSes as well as the large supply on Aminet. However, there is very little difference between two of the "Egypt" patterns, and between a couple of the "Stripes" patterns. I think the space they use could be better spent with more patterns of the caliber of "Marble", "Leather", and "Paper" backgrounds.

Improved versions of Helvetica and Courier fonts are included in various sizes, as well as the XEN font.

Also included for those who use Tool Manager or other "dock" programs, are a drawer-full of very nice MWB-style dockbrushes, so your Workbench can further improve its professional workstation image.

Utilities:

MagicWB-Demon: This is the utility that prevents 8 color icons from looking like crap on screens with 16 or more colors. It moves the MWB colors from the first and last four to the first eight colors in the palette. Icons can stay in 3 bit planes, and this allows for smaller icon size and greater speed because of it.

MagicCopper: An adapted version of WBVerlauf by Christian A. Weber, that is included with Magic Workbench 2.0. On AGA machines, it displays a 24-bit Copper gradient on a selected color in the background. A few patterns are included that are designed to work with this particular enhancement.

IconUpdate: A utility by Gerri Körner and Martin Huttenloher that allows you to update the images of your icons without altering the other information the icon contains, such as tool types, location, stack size, etc.

Also included are scripts and configurations for TolleUhr and DOpus that give them the Magic Workbench "look".

Notes:

The Registration fee is $20US/30DM/£15UK/etc..., and one registers through SASG. Information for registering can be found by downloading the demo version of Magic Workbench 2.0, or by writing to sasg@nathan.gun.de

Or, write to the author at:

Internet: xen@magic.in-ulm.de

Postal:

Please register Magic Workbench if you enjoy it, because right now, the Amiga shareware market is the primary source of anything for the Amiga. Also, if Mr. Huttenloher receives enough compensation for his past efforts on Magic Workbench, he may be persuaded to put forth more effort, and create a much-needed and much-desired 16-color Magic Workbench. (And I would get to review it. :) )

If you do register MWB, don't be surprised if every once in a while, (very rarely, actually), something very very cool appears on your bootup-screen and makes cool noises. If anyone can figure out how to make this appear more often, write to me!