Brought to you by Skidperfect Software, Inc. - <skidperfect@kagi.com> http://www.shore.net/~chanson
Shareware Fee: US equivalent of $10 during the year 1995, $15 afterwards.
NB: this file is formatted for use with Apple's SimpleText and not TeachText. It looks best with the Palatino (default) or Times font. Since this document is not locked, you can easily copy the e-mail addresses and URLs and you can change, for personal use, the fonts displayed. Also note that items in bold in paragraphs are the names of files/folders/programs. Underlined phrases are new terms that the programs Control Strip and Extensions Strip brought about.
This software is copyrighted material and therefore you are not allowed to modify this software or its documentation in any way, shape or form, nor can you sell it for your own profit. You may only charge a reasonable fee for the cost of distributing it. See the Distribution section for information about how and on what Extensions Strip may be distributed.
Contents:
About the product
Description
Feature summary
Hardware and software requirements
Compatibility
Installation and setup
Quick Installation - must read
Tips & Tricks
• About the product :
Description:
Extensions Strip is a combination background-only application and control panel that work together to provide a powerful environment to run control strip modules in. Its theme is "extensions with a global interface" because control strip modules, particularly Extensions Strip savvy ones, get the best of both the extension and application worlds, without any conflicts!
Control Strip is a control panel by Apple that installs a small floating window on your desktop. Inside this floating window are various control strip modules. Modules are small programs that you install into the root module folder, usually named "Control Strip Modules", inside your System folder, which will then appear on the Control Strip window. They can tell you useful information and do handy things. They usually don't patch your System so you most likely will not encounter extension conflicts or crashes because of them.
While Control Strip was a great idea for Apple to develop, they unfortunately didn't make it as flexible as most people want, and didn't give module programmers enough inherent power to utilize more of what your system software is capable of. This is the sole reason why I wrote Extensions Strip (abbreviated as ES.) After releasing 8 freeware and shareware control strip modules on the Internet, I felt a strong need to create a better, more intelligent host for these modules, while retaining backward compatibility. Below is a list of ES's features to further illustrate this key point.
Feature summary:
• Operates on all Macs (with Color Quickdraw & System 7.1 or later) and runs Power PC native with 68K compatibility.
• Backward compatible with all existing control strip modules and hosts a new breed of Power PC native and Extensions Strip savvy modules (modules that take advantage of the new API.)
• Dynamically configurable:
- Module and strip window loading/unloading is done on the fly!
- Supports multiple strip windows that have horizontal or vertical displays.
- The control panel allows full configuration of colors, fonts, and many other things.
- Extensions Strip can be quit and launched at any time. Quitting ES will free up all of the memory used by itself, and the loaded modules!
• Integrated drag and drop:
- Clicking and dragging a module with the option key down moves or copies the actual file.
- Dropping a module onto a strip window automatically moves the file inside the strip's folder and loads it into the window.
- Consistent drag and drop interface: drag-aware modules that are hilited when clicked upon, will also be hilited when dragged items enter their bounds.
- Extensions Strip's API lets modules know the total window area taken up by themselves. This gives a larger access area for drags inside drag-aware modules.
• Greatly extended module API for safe drag creation and AppleEvent sending, event record checking/modification, integrated drag and drop, and many other things for greater control & recognition of the environment. ES also supports Desktop Strip API improvements such as configurable module width and ability to have non-hiliting module clicks. Included for programmers is the Universal C and Pascal header files containing the new API alongside the commented out original Control Strip stuff. Also included is a sample FAT C project, ESDemo.c, that demonstrates some of the cool stuff that Extensions Strip can do for modules.
• Globally patches only two traps under System 7.5 (balloon help dispatch & alias dispatch) and three traps with pre-7.5 systems (SetCursor plus the other two). Such little patching (compared to Control/Desktop Strip) is friendlier to your system because it reduces time-consuming overhead and lowers the chance of software conflicts.
• This package includes a new, freeware module called Process Manager. It is a FAT binary, Extensions Strip savvy, module for displaying and accessing processes (open programs.) It is also compatible with Control Strip and Desktop Strip, although some of its features require the Extensions Strip API.
• Even with all these cool features, Extensions Strip is dirt cheap! Registrations sent in the year 1995 cost just US$10, and after 1995 they are $15. Many different payment methods are supported because I use the Kagi Shareware service. See the Cost/fee and registration section for more details.
Hardware and software requirements:
• Color Quickdraw. All Macs have Color Quickdraw except for the Mac Plus and computers before it, Mac SE, Classic, and the PowerBook 100. Note that the SE/30 and Classic II do have Color Quickdraw, even though a color monitor never came with their base configurations.
• System 7.1 or later.
• Macintosh Drag and Drop (which is built into system 7.5 or later) is highly recommended. With it, you can option-click modules to move them or drag modules onto strips to install them.
Compatibility:
This software has been tested on systems 7.1 to 7.5.2 with a wide range of hardware and other system extensions. There is a rather long list of beta testers which have been working hard to make sure that Extensions Strip works on all of the promised machines. However, if you encounter a problem with Extensions Strip I would be glad to hear about it and I'll try my best to fix the problem. Please include your system software version, computer model, and active modules in the message.
Extensions Strip cannot be compatible with modules that have bugs, as one would naturally expect. Here are the following modules that have notable problems:
• Program List by Men and Mice - this module's close routine crashes every time it is called. Since the close routines do not normally get called under Control Strip or Desktop Strip (as of this writing), Program List does not crash when used with these programs. I strongly suggest the use of Process Manager, which is included in this package. It contains many more features than Program List and is FAT binary (see its separate documentation for more information.)
• AppleTalk Switch and File Sharing modules by Apple - the dialogs displayed by these modules can only be used while the Finder is in front (when ES is a background-only app) or when ES is in front (when ES is a regular app.) This is a long-standing bug in these modules that I hope Apple fixes it soon. Note that these modules will only crash on you if the program they loaded in quits, and the modules then try to display a dialog. This program is usually the Finder for Control Strip, Desktop Strip, and Extensions Strip in the background-only app form. There is already a replacement for the AppleTalk Switch module by Jeremy Kezer which works flawlessly.
• Installation and setup:
Quick Installation - must read:
1) if you are currently using Control Strip or Desktop Strip, remove it from your Control Panels folder since they cannot co-exist with Extensions Strip.
2) drag the control panel Extensions Strip Control into your System Folder.
3) drag the 68K (for 68020, 68030, or 68040) or PPC (for PowerPC) version of the Extensions Strip system extension/background-only app* into your System Folder, depending upon the computer.
4) if you do not have the TSM Fix system extension already installed, drag it into your System Folder. TSM Fix, freeware by Matt Slot, fixes a known bug with all versions of System 7 where clicks onto floating windows get occasionally "missed". It may not be necessary under Copland, aka System 8.
5) PowerMac users need to put the ExtensionsStripLib shared library into their System Folder. Adding it to 68K systems does nothing.
6) restart your Macintosh.
You are now set to use Extensions Strip. Enjoy!
* To use Extensions Strip as a regular application, drag and drop it over the utility appe <-> APPL, also freeware by Matt Slot, and place the resulting file into the Startup Items folder of your System Folder. The primary benefit of using ES as a regular app is that modules are loaded inside ES's application context, and not the Finder's. This is especially nice for module programmers because they won't have to leave their programming environment to try out the latest compile. See the programming docs for more details.
Tips & Tricks:
• put the module Process Manager into into its own strip window by creating a new folder in your root module folder, usually named "Control Strip Modules", and adding Process Manager to it. Process Manager looks especially nice in a small, vertical window by the unused space of the upper right corner near your hard disk icons.
• all modules, and strip folders inside the root module folder, can be aliases instead of the actual items. The actual modules/folders don't even have to reside on the same System disk!
