Intrigued by the rave reviews of FullWrite™ Professional's "WalkDown menus" feature? Would you like the same, consistent command-key equivalents in all your menus, in all your applications? Then step up to Staircase™, an introductory gift from Eccentric Software.
Staircase is an INIT/CDEV inspired by "WalkDown" which makes all menu items accessible from the keyboard. Menus are numbered from left to right (the Apple menu is zero), so that pressing Command-2 will select the Edit menu. The selected menu drops down and the menu items are labeled with number equivalents (except for the Apple menu). Thus command-2-3 would select the Copy command from the Edit menu in most applications.
Staircase includes several optional settings which can be changed from the Control Panel DA:
ON/OFF
- Toggles Staircase on or off. (NOTE: While "WalkDown" menus are inactive
when Staircase is "off", Staircase is still running in the background.
Currently, the only way to completely turn off Staircase is to remove it
from your system folder and reboot.
COMMAND KEY MODIFIERS
- These check boxes allow you to set the modifier keys which drop the menus
to any combination of the Command, Option, Shift, Caps Lock, and/or
Control keys. Staircase comes set to the Command key, which is the
FullWrite standard. We recommend SE and II owners use the Control key,
as this is currently unused by most applications.
ABORT KEY
- The Abort key is the key combination used to make a dropped menu go way
without selecting a menu command. It comes set to command-period, the
Fullwrite standard. To change it, type your prefered key combination
(a combination of command key modifiers and any one other key, not a
series of key strokes); your new Abort key will appear in the box. (My
personal preference is the Escape key.)
RETURN KEY NEEDED?
- If Return Key Needed is set to yes, then pressing the Return key signals
the end of a key sequence selecting a menu command. This is useful for
menus with more than 9 items. For example, Command-4-1-2-Return would
select the 12th item on the 4th menu (if Return Key Needed was off, the
1st item on the 4th menu would have been chosen, ignoring the 2 and the
Return). This option comes set to "no".
MENU DROP DELAY
- This sets the amount of time Staircase delays between calling a menu,
and dropping it, with fastest being instantaneous. If you complete your
key sequence before the delay times out, then Staircase will not visually
drop the menu. Staircase comes set to fastest. Once you become
familiar with the numbers of your menu items, you may want to set the
delay to a slower setting.
To install Staircase, simply place it in the System Folder of your Startup disk, and reboot. Staircase can be toggled on and off from the Control Panel.
Staircase is freeware, however it is NOT in the public domain, and Eccentric Software retains all copyrights! Staircase and it's companion file Staircase Docs, must be distributed together and at NO charge (commercial online services may charge standard connect fees).
Staircase has been tested on a Mac SE and Mac II under systems 5.0 and 6.0, under the Finder and MultiFinder. Staircase does not currently support hierarchical menus (it just ignores them).
UPDATES:
• v1.0.3 (11/06/88)
- Fixes a bug which sometimes caused an incorrect value to be returned
by GetOSEvent; this caused the system to freeze when copying from
floppy to floppy on a single drive system, amongst other things.
• v1.0.2 (10/25/88)
- Fixes grafport conflict bug which resulted from doing something that
Apple never said we shouldn't do.
• v1.0.1 (10/24/88)
- Fixes a bug which caused random bombing at boot up on machines with
ROM that does NOT contain color QuickDraw. Ooops.
- Fixes a bug which showed garbage characters in hierarchical menus.
- No longer let's you select disabled menu items. Ooops, ooops.
- Improved handling of color menus.
- Hilites selected menu title.
Please send all bug reports, suggestions and comments to:
