Drop Drawers lets you configure many settings for each drawer in the Drawer Options window. To open the options window, choose Options… from the drawer’s contextual menu (accessible by control-clicking).
Those settings which are common between clip and process drawers are described in this section – see subsequent sections for options specific to a particular drawer type.
Placement
• Location. This sets which side of which screen the drawer is located on. You can also set the screen and screen side by dragging the rectangular adjuster in the center of the drawer’s edge.
• Floating. This sets whether and when the drawer and its tab should float above all other windows on your desktop. If it is set to Never, the drawer will always act more like an ordinary application window.
• Lock Drawers and Tab Size. Once you are happy with a drawer’s sizing, select this. The adjusters on the drawer and tab will disappear and the drawer’s size will be fixed. Please note that a drawer’s adjusters may remain hidden even when this setting is on if the drawer’s size is controlled automatically. For example, a Clip Drawer can be set to adjust its width or height automatically in the Arrange All dialog box (accessible from the drawer’s contextual menu).
• Expand when Mouse at Edge. This sets whether the drawer automatically expands when the mouse touches the edge of the screen within the tab and whether it contracts again when the mouses leaves it. Drawers can always be expanded or contracted manually by clicking or dragging the drawer tab.
• Key to Expand or Contract Drawer. This allows you to set a key which will toggle the drawer between its expanded and contracted state.
• Name. This sets the name of the drawer, affecting both the name of the drawer’s file and the name shown in the drawer tab.
• Where. This shows the location of the drawer’s file. Click Show File to reveal the drawer’s file in the Finder. Click Move File… to select a new location for the drawer’s file.
Appearance
• Color Preset. This sets the background in the drawer’s tab and contents to one of the many built-in schemes, which include Apple’s iMac and iBook colors. Choose Theme from the menu to use the current system-wide theme’s background (requires OS 8.5, Kaleidoscope savvy).
• Tab. This sets the shape of the drawer tab. There are currently five options – Square (boring), Round (like Finder pop-up windows), Angled (like tabs in dialog boxes), Handle (like a briefcase) or Theme to use the system-wide theme’s tab (requires OS 8.5, Kaleidoscope savvy).
• Color. For both the drawer’s tab and contents, this sets the background. Choose Custom to use a selectable color or Theme to use the system-wide theme (requires OS 8.5, Kaleidoscope savvy). When Custom is chosen, the small color area may be clicked to change the color.
• Show Name. This sets whether to show the name in the drawer’s tab. Note: The handle style never shows the name.
• Auto Width and Depth. These set whether the drawer’s tab should be automatically sized based on the name to be displayed within.
• Fade Edges. This sets whether the drawer’s background should fade gradually at the drawer edge.
• Image. For both tabs and drawers, this area allows you to set an image to use for the tab and drawer background. Images can be copied in or out of the square area using drag and drop or the three buttons labelled Copy, Paste and Clear. Once an image has been set, it can be used according to five options – None (ignore image), Tile (apply the image as a repeating pattern), Center (display the image in the center of the area, shrinking if it is too large), Scale (scale the image so that it fills as much of the area as possible while maintaining its proportions) and Fill (scale the image to fill the entire area ignoring proportions).
