PwrSwitcher is a System 7 control panel that lets you change from one active application to another using your keyboard instead of the Finder’s application menu. Using the control panel, you can configure PwrSwitcher to use the Power key on a keyboard so equipped, or the ‘esc’ key on a Portable or PowerBook.
PwrSwitcher 1.1 is the first new version since November 1991. There are a lot of changes
1) The Illustrator and Excel glitches are fixed without need of the Control key hack of PwrSwitcher 1.0. If you still need the control key, you can click a checkbox in the control panel.
2) You can now choose either power key or ‘esc’ key to activate PwrSwitcher. PwrSwitcher 1.1 works fine on PowerBooks if you select ‘esc’ as the activation key.
3) Settings changes are now effective without first closing the control panel.
4) I removed the “notify if can’t switch” feature. No one liked it, myself included.
5) PwrSwitcher won’t “queue up” a switch if there’s a modal dialog as the front window.
6) The control panel now describes actual activation chords. Before, you had to decipher them from some rather cryptic descriptions.
7) I fixed several crashes: one would occur if you pressed the power key after PwrSwitcher had loaded, but before the Finder had started; another happened if you started your Mac with extensions disabled and then opened and closed the PwrSwitcher control panel; and the last one happened under low stack conditions in certain applications or with certain extensions.
8) You may have noticed that PwrSwitcher 1.0 “forgot” how to skip hidden applications if you’ve updated to System 7.1 — this has been fixed.
9) You can use shift-command-option-escape to enter a debugger. This works fine on older Macs - the newer ones usually give you a command-power chord to do the same thing.
10) I’ve added documentation that enables hackers to customize PwrSwitcher’s activation chords.
