MacFormat 1995 March/macformat-022.iso/Shareware City/Utilities/Virtual Desktop 1.8/Virtual Desktop Help/Virtual Desktop Help.rsrc/STR#_1026.txt

Text File | 1994-10-18 | 7.5 KB | 323 lines






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åWhat Does Virtual Desktop Do?





Virtual Desktop, simply put, puts scroll bars on your screen.  This is the

most intuitive way for most people to operate a desktop which is larger

than their screen.  This “virtual desktop” can be as large as the user

wants it to be, with no additional expense of memory.





It also has a mode where the user can inspect and rearrange the layout of

windows and icons on the entire virtual desktop.



For people who use the same applications every day, Virtual Desktop lets

them build “doors,” which make the virtual desktop scroll to a preset

location when clicked, in the manner of an old push-button car radio, but

more ergonomic.  You can open a door by clicking, by pressing a

Command-digit combination or F-key, by selection from an optional Door

menu, or (if you have a recent PowerBook) by using the Control Strip.



Virtual Desktop also has a number of “usage options” which, when

enabled, let you do quick scrolling actions without leaving the application

you’re using.








xScroll Bars



Virtual Desktop puts a horizontal scroll bar along the bottom edge of your

main monitor, and a vertical scroll bar along the right or left edge (your

choice).  In the corner between the scroll bars is a little square anchor

window with the Virtual Desktop icon on it, where you can click to make

Virtual Desktop active.





While Virtual Desktop is active, you can scroll using either scroll bars or

keyboard.  Press the Page Up or Page Down key to scroll vertically (or

horizontally, with the Option key pressed).  Press the Home key to return

to the “home” or startup location.  Press the End key to go back to where

you were when you last pressed Home.



By default, the scroll bars only appear while Virtual Desktop is active,

but you can have them up all the time, losing a bit of the screen area in

exchange for easier scrolling.  You can also suppress them altogether, if

you prefer.

See the section entitled “Usage Options” below.



Reading the scroll bars’ “sliders” tells you where you are on the virtual

desktop in relation to all the other items (windows and desktop icons).

Ordinarily, the extent of the virtual desktop is padded by half a screenful

beyond the most extreme item in each direction.  To grow the desktop,

you can increase that pad factor in increments of half a screenful.  As you

move items farther outward into the pad area, the virtual desktop grows

automatically.








xFull View Mode



If you need to see beyond what your monitor or monitors can display at

one time, to get the big picture of all items on the virtual desktop, you can

go into Full View mode.  There are three ways to do it — by menu

command, by keystroke, and by double-clicking on the anchor window.





Full View mode takes over the main monitor, covering everything but the

menu bar and the scroll bars.  It shows a picture of the whole virtual

desktop, scaled down to fit, with color-keyed rectangles showing the

outline of every application’s windows, including the ones that are hidden.

A white area in the background shows what part of the virtual desktop is

currently visible through a monitor.  In this picture, you can get help

balloons to tell you what the windows and icons are, click and drag to

rearrange them, and double-click to scroll and bring them to the front so

that you can see them.  You can also drag the white area to move the

desktop view relative to all windows and icons.



On one side of the picture, Virtual Desktop shows a set of radio buttons

and a list box.  There is one radio button for every application which has a

window open, plus one at the bottom of the heap for all desktop icons.

When you click on a radio button, Virtual Desktop fills the list box with the

names of all the items belonging to that group.  By selecting an item from

the list, you can see where that item is on the virtual desktop.

Conversely, you can click on an item in the picture to see its name and

what group it belongs to.








xDoors



At some point, you will begin to imagine a virtually boundless virtual

desktop layout for your applications — mail windows here, word

processor there, and a picture of your spouse and children in the top

corner, in case you forget what they look like.  It would be hard to move

from location to location using scroll bars, and not very efficient using

Full View mode, so Virtual Desktop gives you a better tool for the job:

doors.





To make a door, you scroll to the location you want to work in, and tell

Virtual Desktop to create a new door.  It asks you for a name, and a place

on the desktop where it can drop the little door icon window with the name

on it.  You could build a whole corridor of doors to different places, or use

one of the predefined multiple-door arrangements (row, column, cross, or

grid).  To move from one preset location to another, you just click on a

door.  The door icon “opens,” and you’re there.  Every “room” should

have a trash can alias in the lower right corner, of course, but that’s

your job.



That describes the simplest use of doors.  Beyond that, there are some

useful preference options you can apply to each door.  You can associate

an application with the door, so that Virtual Desktop will make that

application active as you jump to where its windows are.  Better still,

you can have it tell Finder to open any item of your choice (application,

document, folder, or other) when you open the door.  If that application

prefers a specific color depth (“Thousands” of colors, or plain old “Black

& White”), you can tell Virtual Desktop to change the depth when you open

the door.



Even when Virtual Desktop isn’t running, you can use the Door menu,

placed on the right side of the menu bar, to instantaneously launch Virtual

Desktop and open any door.  For PowerBook users, the “Virtual Desktop

Doors” Control Strip module does the same thing without clogging your

menu bar.  This feature, combined with its ability to tie any item to the

opening of a door, makes Virtual Desktop an effective

application/document launcher.








xUsage Options



This version of Virtual Desktop offers five ways to do virtual desktop

scrolling without leaving the active application.





First, you can choose a key combination which scrolls the virtual desktop

up, down, left, or right.  You choose any combination of the modifier keys

(Command, Shift, Option, Control), plus any four keys for the four

directions.



Second, you can tell Virtual Desktop to watch the mouse pointer.  If this

option is on, and you move the mouse while pressing any combination of

the modifier keys, the virtual desktop will “shift” along with the pointer

when you release the keys.



Third, you can tell it to react when you shove the mouse pointer into any

edge of the screen, while pressing any combination of the modifier keys.

The virtual desktop will scroll away in the opposite direction.



Fourth, you can tell it to show the scroll bars at all times, whatever

application is active.  If you operate a scroll bar while using another

application, Virtual Desktop will return you to that application as soon as

it has scrolled the desktop.



Fifth, you can click on a door icon window, or use the Door menu or

Control Strip, to open a door, having set that door to switch back to the

frontmost (active) application.