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3/31/00 Well gentle readers, this may be my last news update on ResExcellence. Do to the increasing demands of being the perfect Husband and Father, I find I no longer have the proper amount of time to dedicate to a great web site like this one. Rather than shut it down, like so many other sites have done in the past, I have decided to try something different - something I believe to be unprecedented! Starting now through April 1st, you will have the opportunity to purchase ResExcellence by entering a bid on eBay! This may be the first time a web site has been auctioned off in this manner. Can you afford it? Stop by the ResExcellence eBay listing and see where the current bidding is. Stop back on Monday to find out if I become a dot.com millionaire! Snapshots: Whoa! Sosb submitted our first Tri-Monitor Setup featuring three anime desktops. I guess we know one of the readers who voted for the 640x480 monitor! Brandon sends in an Aqua desktop with the My Apple desktop picture. Hey! I know a Propaganda desktop when I see it, and Eduardo Poplawsky mixes his with the Liquid (Aqua) Theme. Long time contributor Mariel Lohninger shows us his Custom desktop picture and some hacked apps. Yikes! That's quite the strategically placed application switcher in Wayland Radin Custom desktop with the Paper Theme. Alberto Chávez sends another snapshot featuring one of his lovely desktops. EZQuest 100GB FireWire hard drive only $399 at Smalldog.com Software News: by Cletus™ — I am cute and cheap!!!! UPDATED 13:18 hrs. EST. Since I am apparently for sale and may not post again Monday I thought I better add this today! Wapp Pro has been updated to version 2.6. I tried to save everyone a step, but I mistakenly linked to the wrong page for the Geometry PR3. Please get it by going through this link. If you downloaded off the link below then you received the same theme you already had or the older one. Remember there is not a number version change. OOPS! Sorry! I answered this question in the forum tonight and have actually handled several emails concerning this so... If you are interested in running iTools on a pre-Mac OS 9 system check this patcher out. iTools will be somewhat limited in running under this patch, however you can do it! Mafoo, aka Mathew (note the one "t") White notified me of a "silent" update to Geometry PR3 at power/MAC. There will not be a new version number assigned to it, but it has been updated. Mafoo also guarantees the download link is working. Hidetoshi Ozawa was kind enough to interpret the former OpColourLight page for me and give me the low down. It isn't good. Apparently word was given on the page by Mr.Oura (webmaster) that it would end by the end of March, which it has. The new page does not list or mention OpColour. It is possible it has been discontinued. Mr. Ozawa will try to keep me up to date on this matter. For the time being it will remain in our archive and on our server. ResExcellence and the readers thank you Mr. Ozawa! On an aside, what the heck is on the icon? Platinum Tech 2000 has been updated at InterfaceLift. This is a really cool Kaleidoscope scheme that is still in the process of being beta tested. Give it a try. Jerome Foucher has released version 1.4 of his shareware DeskTray. So what is new in this version you ask?!: Due to problems with the system for choosing the alternate folder, I had to completely change the way of handling it. Now DeskTray can list up to 5 of your favorite folders. Added an options to not display aliases in italic and to remove the vertical space between 2 different volumes in the list. there have been several cosmetic and bug fixes as well. It even comes with a manual now. Last time I mentioned Finder Fixer for adjusting the finder memory. Lon Hutchison sent in another suggestion called The Reaper which Jermey had covered in his Freeware Gems article. I had forgot about this. Thanks Lon. Submit Software News Suggestions! Icon & Desktop News by Ilona What's new in the Icon Archive? One new set! Many of you may still favor the System 7 Trash can. Rene sent us five of them in different colors, plus some bonus icons! What's new in the Desktop Archive? Five new pictures! If your wish is to match your desktop to the new Internet Explorer 5, Aldert Greydanus helps you grant your wish! Josh Franklin sent us a picture with an interesting quotation! Peter McHugh painted a brick wall for us! And we have a stylish and imaginative "When Worlds Collide" from Gavin Robb! You can check your "to do" on your desktop with Melissa Stone's "April Calendar"! Thanks! Enjoy! And don't forget: The Archives are always open for your contributions! RAILhead Design updated with an attractive system replacement icon set, "BeanieOS II"! IronDevil is in a hardware mood... "Fruit on the Hand" is a small collection of great looking hardware icons! A new icon set "The Greatest American Hero", has been released at Mad Science Laboratory today! Ronlun.com has released "MicroBlue" icons in iPack format for use with iControl! MikWorks has produced lots of soccer icons over the years. This time there is a new creation "Almasy", an interesting looking, "all over dots" system replacement set! If it is not enough for you to hear it loud, Creative Box wants you to see in loud! The new desktop picture and ATM replacement are all about sound! A few days ago I mentioned Dave Brasgalla's fabulous eWorld icons. He thought it would be nice to place these icons in appropriate surroundings and created five lovely eWorld desktop pictures. Get them from Iconfactory! Aldie obviously likes the Internet Explorer 5 so much that he even made a desktop picture. Get it from A-Graphics! We also have it in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! Don't forget to read our interview with Layne Karkruff from Blue Sky Heart Graphics! What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! Ilicon Graphic Design 3/29/00 I'll bet you didn't know there are almost 100 helpful little Applescripts on your Mac! Smartmac has a great article on where to fine all the demonstration Applescripts that are part of Apple's "Mac Help". Change Crayons Color and name in the Color Picker (MacOS Classic and MacOS X) by Rick Roe, webmaster of Icons.cx I noticed in Mac OS X DP3 that the familiar Color Picker has been reincarnated (and fully Aquafied) for Carbon apps... it even includes my favorite tool, the Crayon Picker! Unfortunately, the crayons are different than the ones I use all the time under Mac OS 8/9. Luckily, it's possible to edit the color table used by Crayon Picker under both OS versions. Here's how. (Continued...) Applescripts and mailto: Doh! Kevin Hessel updated his script from Monday based on the following: So beginning about 30 seconds after I sent you the "Mail To..." script, it suddenly and happily stopped working on my computer when configuring it with real names. Dead after a Restart, so who knows if something funky was up with my computer and it originally worked when it shouldn't have. It has now been confirmed by another ResExcellence devotee that indeed, the real names portion of the script doesn't work. Of course, the script can easily be reconfigured with a new format. Instead of having "Any Name" and leaving it at that, you must change it to "Any Name <anyname@isp.com>" Hence, this new script. Eric Albert reworked Kevin's script to make it recognize the email client you have selected in the Internet Control Panel. This script also stores the address that has been typed, making that the default the next time you run the script. Regarding 832 x 624... ResEx regular (and Apple employee) Bobby Kinstle provides this history lesson: Where the heck did 832X624 come from? I can answer that. First we must travel way back in time into the bronze age of computing, the late 80's. In those days you had new innovations like the color mac II and *gasp* 16 colors on the PC. In those days 256 color VGA stuck at 640X480 was the Holy Grail of imagery. Most monitors were still single frequency. But bigger and higher resolution monitors were hitting the market and someone at Apple said, "We gotta get some of that". Because VGA was totally inadequate, Apple decided simply to extend our existing monitor interface into higher frequency ranges to support these extra square inches. The highest resolution that could be reliably driven on a 16 inch monitor was 832 x 624. Remember when 16 inch monitors became 17 inch monitors and didn't get any bigger? Anyway, the reason it exists, is because it was first. Later when superVGA came out, they opted for 800 x 600. I doubt you'll find 832X624 on anything but a Mac. Scott Denowh adds: If I remember correctly, 832 x 624 was used instead of 800 x 600 because at 72 dpi it allowed for 1 inch on the screen to be 1 inch in real life. You can hold a ruler up to the screen it will be correct. I don't recall what size monitor that works on, I'm thinking 14 or 15 inch. Apple was just doing DTP people a favor with that resolution. Snapshots: After all this time, Boiler Plate is still a ground breaking scheme. Brad Jones combines it with a Blue Sky Heart desktop. Edward Loden displays the beautiful Gravity Well desktop picture with an Aqua Theme . An Evangelion picture and MacQNX Scheme are on Mile's desktop. With 192 meg of memory, Mike is able to launch Virtual PC and leave it running in the background. Displaying an Aqua Audion skin, Thales Carvalho also has the OS X DP and an Aqua Scheme. After adding a custom dock to his iLime desktop, Timm Hoff submitted this colorful snapshot. Jason Bissey keeps it simple and clean with this Custom DP and Paper Theme. User Contributed Splash Screen: Patrick Kelleher has created our first Browser Agnostic™ throbber. Available for Explorer 4 & 5, iCab, Netscape, and even Mozilla, there's no reason for you not to grab this spinning G4! Yikes! Here's a MOSS by David Messick featuring Jennifer Lopez. Peter McHugh has updated one of his Eudora splashes for version 4.3! Gavin Robb sent this Explorer 5 splash that he created with Bryce. Get OS X plus free Ben + Jerry's at Smalldog.com Software News: by Cletus™ I finally feel I am back in the swing of things and have a grasp on the software front once again. I also managed to get through some of my backlog of mail. Sorry for the delays. Dragon One Software has updated several of it's Control Panels for compatibility with Mac OS 9.0.4. Of note is EjectMenu v2.3.2 and FinderMenuTuner v1.2.2. If there is enough support for these to be added to the Software Archive let me know and I will do so. James R Whitson noted in an e-mail to me that; While thumbing through users' desktop screenshots I've noticed many of them have several extra icons in the menubar for things like PPP connection, MagicMenu, window selection, printer choice, and a lot of other misc. ones using apps like AliasMenu. But almost all of them still have the Help menu text. There's a small control panel called Help To Icon that I use that lets you change the Help menu text into an icon. It comes built in with about 9 choices and lets you add your own icons to the list using ResEdit. I have added Help to Icon to our Software Archive. Thanks James for the great suggestion! Peter McHugh sent me an e-mail concerning this little article on the Accelerate Your Mac web site. The article dealt with allocating more memory to the Finder to reduce errors and speed things up. One reader suggested using an older Control Panel called Finder Fixer to accomplish this. While there appears to be some controversy in follow up reports about how effective Finder Fixer is in later operating systems, Peter reports that it seems to work (limited) in MacOS 9. In any case I added to the archive for those of you still running earlier systems. The Kaleidoscope Scheme Archive updated with 12 new and 6 updated schemes. Some of the more unique ones include Fantasia by Janet Parris and Doggie Digs by Martha Royer. Remember to stop over to Control Strip Outlet as they begin their "Control Strip Outlet's Module Giveaway" contest today. AfterStep, Enlightenment, WindowMaker and BlackBox Themes.org have all updated their sites with multiple screenshot images of their latest themes. Does anyone know what has happened to Clixsounds? They seem to have stopped updating in December. Let me know! If you missed my post in the forum — it appears that the site for OpColourLight(E) is no more. I was sent a copy and uploaded it to our server. If anyone knows anything about this please let me know. Also from the forum is a bit of info that I feel is worthwhile posting here for all. Someone asked about information for developing Themes. Mac Themes Project was the suggested source of Theme Machine and much more information to help developers. Submit Software News Suggestions! Icon & Desktop News by Ilona What's new in the Icon Archive? One new set! What a treat we have today... one hundred characters from Superman, kindly contributed by Soren Karstensen! Another series starting today is an iCab icon set from Ryan Martinez. The first two are "MacOS Xish"! What's new in the Desktop Archive? Four new pictures! All are in the "stylish" category... "Scribbly" is a nice, light pastel colored picture by Peter McHugh, "MosaicFrax" is an eye-soothing gray fractal image by Gavin Robb. Another great looking picture, "Blackhole" is from Josh Franklin, and a fantasy "Garden" by Mark Evans! Thanks! Enjoy! And don't forget: The Archives are always open for your contributions! World of Kaos has just finished a gigantic set of Superman icons! What a pixel pusher he is!!! 100 icons, divided by three categories, so you can find your favorite heroes, villains and other characters of the animated Superman series easily. This is the biggest set he has ever made, and I think this is the biggest set ever in this category. In this set, quantity is equal to quality! Icon.CX first and most popular set, Solar System has been redone and extended. It now comes with a new AppleScript called iconSetter, which makes using the icons easier! They also have a new desktop picture, and a sound set for Outlook Express 5 in the goodies section! Intergalactic Desktops has a new icon set "We Love Glasses" and a new desktop picture for you today! One of our all time contributors, Aldie opened a new site just for his great desktop pictures. The site is an excellent example of a simple and elegant site design, just like all of his desktop creations. He rightly calls it "A-Graphics"! Congratulations, Aldie, you've done a lovely job! Ronlun.com has released a new desktop picture, "Revolution"! Creative Box has updated with a new ATM replacement named "GraphiteDV", and their "iRock4" is the desktop picture of the week at MacoSZone! Don't forget to read our interview with Layne Karkruff from Blue Sky Heart Graphics! What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! Register to Win a iBook at Smalldog.com 3/27/00 Moore's Law apparently applies to monitors too! I was expecting 800x600 to be the prevalent resolution, but most readers have already moved up to 1024x768. By the way, what the heck is with 832x624? How do we ever end up with that resolution? Should be take up a collection for the 6 readers who have monitors smaller than 640x480? Have you ever noticed the invisible light in the upper-left corner of your monitor? It's the imaginary source of illumination that casts the shadows on your icons, menus, and Finder windows. It's even more prevalent in MacOS X, throwing long shadows as windows appear to float above the desktop. So in MacOS X, why did Apple turn the folder icon to face away from the light? If you place a small hint icon in front of the folder, it will be in the shadow of the 'light'. So this week's Polling Place asks, "Should Apple have turned the folder in MacOS X?". A Previous Edit on ResExcellence contained a chart listing all the resource ID numbers for Theme Sound files. Alan Lively sent some information that has been added to the tutorial. Kevin Hessel created this Applescript for you to download: Remember back when Apple included the "Connect To..." script on your desktop? Well, this a "Mail To..." script that works basically the same way. I found that I e-mail two people more than anyone: My brother and my girlfriend. So instead of starting up Outlook Express, clicking the "New" button, typing a bit of their name and having Express fill it in for me, I created this script that defaults to my girlfriend's name, gives me an option for my brother's name, and also allows me manually type in any other name! Blammo -- directly to OE5. Now, the best part about this, I discovered, is that you don't have to use the person's e-mail address ... you can use their REAL NAME! If OE5 stores the person's name in your address book as "Any Name <anyname@isp.com>" then OE5 will automatically recognize it if you simply type "Any Name" and then press "E-Mail." Of course, you can also alter this slightly to make a new "Connect To..." script that will, perhaps, default to your home page, or give you the option to go to a search page! In plenty of time for April 1st, MacThings has collected over 20 mischievous Applescripts to wreak havoc on friends, family, and coworkers. So this is how the FBI discovers all that hidden stuff! Rams, recently featured on an episode of America's Most Wanted, sent this amazing tip. I must admit I was surprised to see all the hidden information... Being the ultra paranoid that I am, I began to wonder if all the time spent doing a 26 pass file wipe over several gigs of free disk space was *enough* (Ok, so I didn't really spend DAYS wiping my drive, but it makes for a good story!) then I remembered virtual memory! After dropping the startup disk on Netscape and peeking into the contents of my VM, I found ungodly things. Newsgroup posts that were 4 months old, E-mail from the White House, etc. Gotta get rid of that! Oh no, I can't even make that thing visible!! What to do?! Here's the trick. Open ResEdit and get file/folder info on "VM Storage" in the root level of your startup disk. Uncheck the locked box beside the name and rename it to something else (Like "VM Storage2"), then restart. When you do, you'll have a new "VM Storage" and the old one is visible and ready to wipe with your very own copy of PGP =) I haven't tried scripting this process yet, mainly because PGP 6.5.2 is LESS scriptable than 2.6.2 (for shame!). I hope that posting this doesn't mean that someday I'll be called as an expert witness for the prosecution! Snapshots: Toren Valimir rocks again with this snapshot featuring the SongDesk desktop and his I/OS X Graphite Scheme. With an Albie Wong scheme and anime desktop, SS3 GokouX shows us a nice was to do hi-tech. The battle over which is better, Quake or Unreal, moves into the snapshot section as Steve U. sends his snap with a Quake 3 desktop and Y2K Platinum Scheme... ...while Joseph Lalicata counters with an Unreal Splash DP and PearlRhap Scheme. Who gets fragged? You decide.... As the self proclaimed king of trek trivial, I immediately recognized Admiral Riker's Enterprise from "All Good Things" in this dual monitor desktop by Steven Raque. Showing a snagged copy of the outlawed Aqua theme, Frenchman Nicolas Aubagnac puts Quantum X on this international snapshot. User Contributed Splash Screen: Jon created an Alien About this Mac replacement. A cute cartoon MOSS was sent by Ra, showing a Mac computer in a dark alley! Just in time for Internet Explorer 5, Peter McHugh created a new splash screen and icon makeover kit. Joseph Lalicata sent a cloudy Hotline replacement splash screen. Ilicon Graphic Design Software News: by Cletus™ We had beautiful weather for golfing and managed to play 36 holes a day. I managed to get sun burned and very little sleep. While I look around the net to try to catch up on updates, I get the sense I did not miss a whole lot. Sorry, but today update is a bit light until I can dig around some more. Just Mac Themes has posted a preview of a new theme called "Candy" by Riverbed Software. Their news page is announcing a release of the theme on Monday. Mac Thing's Themes has also updated their site with a preview of Candy. Ben Mackin has assured me prior to leaving for my trip that he would be providing an update to his theme Liquid today. He also left me know that an update to the still unfinished Dark Platinum theme would be available at his site. remember also to stop by and check out the forum he has going for his themes here. Hopefully there will be more to report next time. Submit Software News Suggestions! Icon & Desktop News by Ilona What's new in the Icon Archive? One new set! They are berry cool, berry delicious and we thank Marc Clancy berry much! What's new in the Desktop Archive? Four new pictures! Do you like dolphins? Why shouldn't you! We have a pair of dolphins in a breathtaking ocean view environment by Scott Chitwood! If you would like to go to the Moon, where would you find a "Rocket"? Here at ResEx thanks to Melissa Stone! Hungry for a "TwoFace" smart quotation? We have that too from Josh Franklin! And we also have a "Darkroom", a warm gray, eye soothing desktop picture from Andrea Longhurst! Thanks! Enjoy! And don't forget: The Archives are always open for your contributions! Thursday, I saw the preview... today I've seen the whole set of 75 fabulous eWorld icons, another masterpiece from Iconfactory's Dave Brasgalla! I was in a chat room on the last days of eWorld, and though my English was even worse then, I remember how sad everyone was that this great, cozy Internet community was closing. We are all grateful to see the eWorld icons alive again! Now if only Apple would do something to bring back eWorld... Marc, one of my icon pals from GUI Galaxy, released a very interesting set at PseudoRoom today. Actually it is a "Berry Interesting" set!!! And we are berry happy, because he also contributed it to our Icon Archive. Thanks for the contribution! Say "Happy Birthday" to Kru by visiting her new site, The Little Darkroom! Celebrating this event, Kru has a present for you, a "Darkroom" desktop picture, mimicking the elegant site design of The Little Darkroom! We also have it in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution, and Happy Birthday Andrea! Colheres updates with two new icon sets, "Home" and "Staff". They also released a new desktop picture! You can't have a better source for icon links than Icon Parade! This week's update has 13 new links! So, I visited some and picked one... La:Luna has hardware icons and some cute cartoon ones, and we hope they open their desktop picture section soon. Rampant Mac updated with 10 beautiful new pictures and 15 patterns! Scott sent us the loveliest picture for our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! Don't forget to read our interview with Layne Karkruff from Blue Sky Heart Graphics! What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! EZQuest 100GB FireWire hard drive only $399 at Smalldog.com 3/24/00 Readers often send email requesting ways to edit the colors and style of Apple's Control Strip. My first recommendation is to download Ammon Skidmore's Extension Strip. It's what the Control Strip should have been! His web site also lists several other little utilities for your Mac, including some long forgotten, but very useful FKEYs. Ammon sent this tip for users of Hotline on Nubus Macs: I've not seen this mentioned elsewhere, so here is how I got Hotline 1.8 to work on my aged PowerMac 7100: Despite the fact that their web site says it works on all PowerMacs, Hotline 1.8 refuses to load on NuBus based PowerMacs because of a missing library called NameRegistryLib, which is only present on PCI machines. I resolved this issue by taking the NameRegistryLib stub library, which comes with Apple's Universal Headers 3.2, changing it's type to 'shlb' and adding it to Hotline's folder. Hotline now runs fine. I have tested this hack for some time doing everything except for streaming Quicktime movies. Remember, don't put the stub NameRegistryLib into your Extensions folder; your Mac will crash on startup (as I found out). Put it in the Hotline folder. Open the library in ResEdit and change the TYPE from stub to shib, Regarding shared bookmarks across browsers, Donald Scott sent this: Further to your notes on Netscape bookmarks, here's a link to a page which explains how to have one central bookmark file for Netscape, IE and iCab. Thus, anything bookmarked in one browser will also appear in the others. I've been using it for a few months now and couldn't do without anymore! Adding icon Paths to KDE One problem with KDE is that you are given only two places from which to select icons. A folder in /usr/share/icons and ~/.kde/share/icons. This means you can never easily access the large Gnome icons in /usr/share/pixmaps. This little edit shows you how. Bonus Snapshot of my Linux desktop...(Continued...) If you subscribe to the LinuxPPC user mailing list, you may have read that Jason Hass from LinuxPPC was recently involved in an automobile accident. Initially, because I heard nothing else about it, I assumed it was a minor affair. Unfortunately, I was mistaken. His recent bride is maintaining a web page with daily updates on Jason's progress. We all wish im a speedy recovery. Snapshots: The best part of having kids is that you can watch cartoons and not feel guilty! That's why I like Kerry Lannert's PowerPuff Girls desktop picture with the NeXT Theme. Philip Gabbert X-rays a fly on his desktop, and adds the MacOn Scheme. Wow! It looks like Star Trek's Seven-of-Nine has a sister! Alberto Chávez uses the Caprice desktop and AquaX Scheme. Is it NextStep or MacOS? Jason Showers does a good job tricking us with this snapshot! Timothy Horton shows the cool looking Chamelea desktop and the Y3K Lite Theme. Matt McEniry is under water with his Atlantis DP and Aqua Theme, and even an Aqua Audion skin! User Contributed Splash Screen: Peter McHugh send another of his clever creations. His New Moves MOSS comes in two sizes: giant and regular. Tommy T.created two splash screens featuring the beautiful Hong Kong Popstar Michelle Yeung. One for Netscape, and the other for AppleWorks 6. ResEx regular Mike Orticari sent a nifty About this Mac replacement for the owners of iBooks. Mike also sent a Hotline Splash with a split personality. Thirteen year old Adams Carroll contributes an Aqua-buttoned Quicktime Player makeover. Register to Win a iBook at Smalldog.com Software News: by Cletus™ Four!!!!!....boink!......man, thats gotta hurt!! As you read this on Friday I should be down in Virginia for a Golfing weekend. Hope the weather holds! I spent the past week adding new software to the archive, a few observant readers caught one or two of them! Well done — my work doesn't go unnoticed! :) The first was File Freak which I saw about two weeks ago on ZDTV's Call For Help! Then Diane & Martin Scott suggested it also. File Freak (formerly known as The Apper) is a simple and very fast program that offers a new and better way to get at your files. It says it is faster then Sherlock and I tend to agree. While this isn't GUI related, it is a good program to have on hand. Plus it's icon looks cool. Next I added SwitchIt at Diane and Martin's suggestion. SwitchIt is yet another application switcher, however this offers full featured customizing, is freeware and offers hotkeys and zero conflicts. Lastly was Okey Dokey Pro which has been suggested several times by readers over the last couple months. Last week I got yet another request from Jan P. Bode and figured if this many readers are requesting it I better get it in the Archives. This program will automatically click the default dialog button after a user specified time period. It will then log these clicks to a Simple Text document for you to have as a record. Joel Sass from the Control Strip Outlet wanted me to inform ResExcellence readers that a new contest is coming up next week. It will be a "module giveaway contest", with two free registration for Access Strip, which is currently in the Spotlight, as the prizes. Be sure to stop by and check it out. Themes.org has added several new screenshots for this week. This is always a popular area so if you have never stopped over to view them, now is a good time. Submit Software News Suggestions! Remember-if you find a bad link in the archive let me know! I recently fixed a couple. Icon & Desktop News by Ilona What's new in the Icon Archive? Two new set! A small set from Erik with a cute subject, "DogLove"! Oh, spring...! And something different, something very green from Patric Mathieson! It's time for another interview! This one is with someone I'm sure many of us love to watch while he is creating his excellent desktop pictures. His site is the famous Blue Sky Heart Graphics and the man is Layne Karkruff! Enjoy our little chat! What's new in the Desktop Archive? Six new pictures! One of them is the most wanted desktop picture of the last month: "Quantum X" with a little shadow, submitted by Michael Dicker! It was shown in our Snapshot section and everybody wanted to know where it could be found. Well, many of you need to look into the MacOS CD with more attention, since this picture is sitting in the "Extra Backgrounds" folder! :-) Our long time contributor Peter McHugh shows you some up-close "Barks" and "Dives"! And Melissa Stone will make you "School Daze" with her desktop picture! What effect does Pamela Anderson have on you? You'll know when you place "Hot Orange" on your desktop from Aldie! Finally, there is an excellent desktop picture for an excellent site from an excellent artist, Layne Karkruff whom I caught for an excellent interview! <grin> Thanks! Enjoy! And don't forget: The Archives are always open for your contributions! Waferbaby is back! And he reopens with a tiny new icon set called "Tin Combat"! Spy... is not your usual 007. It is a recently redesigned web site with lovely icons! The latest updates are two cute sets, "Wind Rose" and the most appropriate seasonal subject "Dog Love"! We also have it in our Icon Archive. Thanks for the contribution! RAILhead Design released "MacONX iPack" for use with Iconfactory's excellent iControl! Iconfactory has released Dave Brasgalla's new 32 bit icon set about his favorite subject, eWorld! As I write this, I have only seen the preview, since the set will be released sometime today (Friday), but what I saw was spectacular! The secret is out from the pixel bottle. Take a jar of eyeballs, some really green shapes, and "Make-a-GreenBot" with the help of IconIcon's new set! Aldie's Site posted a new, Pamela Anderson inspired desktop picture called "Hot Orange" We also have it in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! Ilicon Graphic Design 3/22/00 Developmental resource editor ResKnife was just updated, and don't forget to check out Resurrection! Regarding the tip to use Netscape's bookmarks with iCab, Jeff Moss writes: I have always shared bookmarks with Netscape and iCab. I use an alias of Netscape's file renamed for iCab, like you suggested, I just try not to open both of them at the same time. If I do, usually nothing adverse happens until I go to quit Netscape. Then I get an error about the bookmarks having been modified. I just hit cancel, and everything's ok the next time I launch either browser. Changing International Months and Days in the Date & Time Control Panel Alvaro Amorim sent an email requesting the following: We don't have a Portuguese version of MacOS. The best thing we have is support for Portuguese Brazilian in the English MacOS. In the Brazilian support, the names of the months, like January, March, May, begin with a lowercase letter. In Portuguese, they begin with an uppercase letter. The System shows janeiro, but it should be Janeiro (January). Is it possible to replace the name of the months in the Date & Time control panel? Yes it is. To test this edit, I did a fresh System install on an extra partition. After rebooting, the Setup Assistant asked me to pick a region and I chose "Brazilian Portuguese". (Continued...) Another sample Applescript to tidy up windows was written by ßob. After downloading the file, open it in the Script Editor and adjust the settings to suit your needs: (Added to the Splooy Applescript Archive) Snapshots: Mike Orticari displays a great looking Custom DP and the Platino Scheme. Gerald Lim also is displaying a Custom DP and Platino Scheme, but the effect is totally different! Displaying the Fluorescence Desktop from Digital Blastphemy, Shaun Howard adds the Graphite Scheme to complete a great look. Sure it's Platinum, but combined with the Korosu Desktop gives Harry Al-Shakarchi a good looking desk. Starting with a flouresant drum kit, Marcus Smith adds the Aerial Theme! ResEx regular, Scott Chitwood shows us he's "waiting for X" and the Ink Kaleidoscope Scheme. User Contributed Splash Screen: Called CardboardOS by Ra, this MOSS shows a clever picture of carved up piece of cardboard, complete with stck on text strings. The Nutscrape splach screen is haiku's commentary on the Netscape browser! The I/OS X Makeover from Toren Valimir that ties together a great looking K-Scheme with icons and desktops. ResExcellence is proud home to the matching I/OS MOSS. The Rev. Glenn Lucas has sent along another splash screen, this one for Eudora has a gentle Aqua look. Owen Strain, the ATM Guy, sent this great looking MOSS and ATM featuring Marathon! The Giant, transparent MOSS will be immediately recognized by players of the original game. (that's right, I mean you Claude!) Sucking MP3 with Rapster? Check out this splash screen replacement by Joe Lalicata. Get OS X plus free Ben + Jerry's at Smalldog.com Software News: by Cletus™ Process Info was updated to version v. 1.3. This little application will provide information and capabilities similar to what you will find on the new MAC OS X, about applications, desk accessories and background processes. This version adds a historic chart for CPU time usage of the selected Process. Another enhancement is that the Process Menu is now disabled when no Process is selected. I asked for information from you last time on Loaded! by Gadget Software. Weird, not one responded except for Gadget Software and I suppose since they make the product, the information is best when it comes from the horses mouth! Some people complained about Loaded! - it could not load-unload more than an extension at a time. We'll update the software shortly in a v2.0 - hopefully in less than two weeks. — Gadget Software They also left me in on some upcoming new software development they are working on: ...we also have a new software in preparation, named AutoScroll - it will automatically scroll windows if you pass the mouse over the bottom or the top of the window. Some products like that already existed, but they were abandoned and their compatibility with MacOs 9 is seldom. —Gadget Software After talking about Divider Lines for the Apple Menu, several readers suggested simply using Amico in order to get the same results, plus even more customizing. I use to use this myself, although I now use BeHierarchic. The reports I received indicate that it still works fine with OS 9. I have added Amico to the Archive. John M. Schilling from StimpSoft™, Inc. has updated his very useful AutoPurge to fix a potentially nasty bug where AutoPurge would move an original item rather than an alias to the trash. And now on to Schemes and Themes.... Ressentiment announced that Peter Harte's Aqua II Kaleidoscope scheme has been updated. Kaleidoscope Scheme Archive updated the other day with 9 new and 10 updated. New ones that I find interesting are Perfect Harmony, IndustrialTech, Nautiqua Bondi and eBox. Mathew White has released PR3 of his Geometry theme. Submit Software News Suggestions! Icon & Desktop News by Ilona What's new in the Icon Archive? One new set! A System icon set, called Charcoal from Matthew White, is today's icon contribution! What's new in the Desktop Archive? Three new pictures! Those of you who are just switching into spring mode, make one more snowball on your "Snowy Desk" by Peter McHugh, and take a last look of a "Snowy Sun"set by Rob van Aarle! If you wish to see everything in "Purple", Melissa Stone's picture is here to help you! Thanks! Enjoy! And don't forget: The Archives are always open for your contributions! I always found Wednesdays are the best working days. Don't you? When you get to Wednesdays, you are filled with energy... you are pretty much on to do something. Something great, something creative, something... BIG, what you can show to your wives, your husbands, to your bosses, or just for your own amusement. That's what we do here at ResEx, making your three characteristic days of the week a joyful experience... So, let see, what is the browsing menu today: IronDevil released "GOMIBAKO Icons 2", a collection of 15 pairs of trash replacement icons! Funny, colorful little creations for your everyday desktop use. power/Mac has many icon sets in progress, one of them is ready for showing. What you'll get is a known Mafoo styled, rather traditional, elegant, understandable and very delicate icons. This time it is a "Charcoal Collection", with some system icons. We also have it in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! Intergalactic Desktops has been redesigned and is celebrating the new look with a massive update containing a new icon set, 3 new desktop pictures, and 5 new K-schemes! Some of you may know Kru's cheerful little creations from the Hotline server, GUI Galaxy! Today she announced her great looking new icon site The Little Darkroom, with lovely icons form England! Welcome in the icon community Kru. Triball Software continues to release new pictures of their favorite landscape subject. Today's release is "Snowy Sunrise", which we also have in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! Quentin Hill has been redesigned and brought his "Transparencies" over this account and posted two new desktop pictures! What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! EZQuest 100GB FireWire hard drive only $399 at Smalldog.com 3/20/00 Just about 25% of you have experience with Multiple Users. That's higher than I was expecting. I also imagine that most of those users are in an educational enviroment, but from experience I can say that having Multiple Users on the family computer makes everyone happy! Computer monitors are like boats. Every year you want to get one that's just a little bigger! When I had my old Powerbook 140, I couldn't even imagine a screen of 1024 x 768, but now I want more! That's why this weeks Polling Place asks, "What's your monitor resolution?" The new search engine in on this page. It's substantially faster, so have fun looking up your name. Steven Massey, author of the recently mentioned StevePerfect 3.6.6 has updated the word processor based on reader feedback: I got a lot of great feedback for my software and I have just updated it to version 3.8.4b. The new version includes colored text support and a "Close" option from the file menu. Those were the two most requested features by your website viewers. It can be downloaded here. Mariel Lohninger sent this tidbit for the users of iCab: There haven't been any instructions, as far as I know, on how to import Netscape bookmarks into iCab. The import function in iCab sure won't allow it and the German support manual available at their site sure doesn't mention it, so I though it would be a good idea to let others know how one can easily import one's existing netscape bookmarks. Locate the "Bookmarks.html" file from your Netscape account (either in the preferences folder or inside the "Netscape Users" folder somewhere else on the hard drive. Open "iCab Preferences" folder in the Preferences folder inside the System Folder. Option-drag (to make a copy) the "Bookmarks.html" file from the "Netscape Users" folder to the "iCab Preferences" folder. Delete the "Hotlist.html" file inside the "iCab Preferences" folder. Rename the "Bookmarks.html" file inside the "iCab Preferences" folder to "Hotlist.html" Launch iCab and voilá! Since the format of the two bookmarks appeared to be the same, I tried to just alias my Netscape bookmarks into the iCab folder, but iCab modifies them right away so they are unreadable by Netscape - so don't do that! At Mariel's web site, MacDesigns, etc., he has appearance modules for iCab, Omnipage Pro, MacAMP, and tons of desktop pictures. Larry wrote two Applescripts for ResEx readers. The first will delete your Finder preferences & reboot your computer. The second script will open the Finder preferences & set them to what is showing below; if you prefer something else change the "true" to "false" . If you would prefer NOT to have the preference window open, then delete the line "open Finder preferences" & "close window of Finder preferences" . (Added to the Sloppy Applescript Archive) Snapshots: Today we surpass the 100th Snapshot milestone! Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to put together great looking snaps for our readers. If you would like to have your BOSS-A desktop posted, read the rules. Today's update is loaded with three dual-monitor displays! Adam Betts with a Custom desktop and QT 4 Modoki Theme (Hey Adam, send that desktop to Ilona for our archive!) Christopher Holland has a Dual Custom desktop and the FT-200 Scheme. Marisol Evans shows a kaleidoscopic Snake desktop with the Y3K Theme. Mevans loads up with a gazillion apps and two MacDesktop pictures. Sean has dual anime desktops and the QT 4 Modoki Scheme. Jason Stumpf created a funky Custom desktop for use with the DSG Theme. (That's funky in a good way!) User Contributed Splash Screen: Another Quicktime Player makeover has been added. This one's by Soren Laulainen. Another great submission from Mike Orticari. This MOSS features the G4 graphite Apple. Bixler McClure posts a cynical view in his Internet Explorer splash. The spotlight is on Smilin' Mac in this MOSS by Joseph Williamson. Sebastien Lavoie sent this extension loaded up with three dozen replacement cursors. Wayne Betts created this smokin' splash screen for Hotline 1.8 and 1.7.2. This is a test... this is only a test... this is a Test Pattern MOSS by Mike Slaven. A set of seven colored Netscape splashes featuring Laetitia Casta have been submitted by Kevin Zachary Hess. Register to Win a iBook at Smalldog.com Software News: by Cletus™ I am still trying to warm up after playing golf today. It was around 35°F when we teed off. It got up to around 45°F by the 18th and was much warmer on the 19th. As my lovely wife says, "I have no one to blame but myself!" But enough about me. How are you all doing? :) With the lack of updates over the weekend, I thought I would take a moment of your time and summarize the results of some of my questions from last time. With out a doubt, I received more input from the two questions I asked then from any other previous questions. Unfortunately I can not give all the names. But ResExcellence thanks you for your input. Divider Lines: Appears not to be causing any problems. A few reports indicate that in some, but not all Kaleidoscope schemes it may be hard to see the separators in the Apple Menu. Because it is a gray line and independent of the system this would be expected I feel. On an aside, Michael McGuire hacked together a line for everyone to use. There is no icon and no document — just the line. It is actually a sound file, so nothing opens if you accidentally click on it. You just hear the sound. Get it here. Faster!: Faster! received slightly mixed reactions. Remember it is the first release of the software. Reports ranged from the inability to start up and many more crashes, to: "It really works!". The most informative was from Ken who insists the system "felt" faster and then ran some tests that may or may not tell the whole story. The numbers did not indicate a speed increase, however, several aspect of his system truly seemed to be snappier, such as windows opening. Your mileage may vary. Steve Wolf asked if I had any information concerning Loaded! by Gadget Software. I have not used this. He was hoping to be able to load and unload more then one extension at a time, but has been disappointed so far. If there is a way please let me know and I will tell the rest of you. I mentioned about some schemes you would all be interested in last time on JSA. It is difficult however to sometimes find the download links easily if you do not read Japanese. Here is the link for at least one of them. MacDirectory has posted a good article on ACTION Utilities by PowerOn Software. Marcos Lopez from Mac Things dropped me a note last night so I would let you all know that he has updated The World of Mac Themes with a new theme called "Neon" Drop on by to check it out. Submit Software News Suggestions! Icon & Desktop News by Ilona What's new in the Icon Archive? One new set! The AIM smiley replacement series continues with the PacMan set from Adams Carroll! What's new in the Desktop Archive? Three new pictures! Get that baseball bat in action with "Thome" on your desktop by Melissa Jenoff. Be gently "Twist"-ted with the assistance of Aldert Greydanus! Finally, dance for the flute of "Kokopelli" by Paul Kuehn! Enjoy! And don't forget: The Archives are always open for your contributions! Here we go again, making your Mondays more bearable with the gigantic news update we have for you today: "SMD's Web" has disappeared and the new site called "Around the Pixel" has been borne! The look is lovely, the whole site is clean and very easy to navigate. Sandy's very first cursor, two new desktop pictures, and Startup Screens are part of the first update, all carrying the title "graphite"! There is also icon/desktop news, and software highlights of any kind which is related to customization. So, get her new goodies, praise her excellent work and don't forget to update your URL manager! Congratulations Sandy! Hell's Half Acre took a trip back to ancient times and returned with some Egyptian icons! The site has also been updated with some present day hieroglyphs... AppleScript that is, to help you manage your icons and other files! Colheres 's lovely ladies are diligent icon workers! Today they released four charming new icon sets! Icon Amazons is celebrating the season with a new joint set "Spring Fling"! IronDevil also redesigned the site. No new icons this time, but those of you who understand Japanese will enjoy the diary of his motorcycle journeys (I'm only guessing. I don't know a bit of Japanese, but the cute devil looks great on that bike!) The Moon has risen at Blue Sky Heart Graphics, but as we can expect, this Moon is not an ordinary one! "DC Moonrise" is an unique sight of a Moon rise. Aldie's Site has released another beautiful desktop picture "Twist". We also have it in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! OS 9 Rocks, says the title of the new picture at Flax Creations! Even if you have other opinion on the MacOS, you'll see that this desktop picture really is rock. A Macintosh, on your Macintosh! Confused? Maybe just for a minute. Head on over to AGKLP's download section, everything will be clear when you find the explanation of the newly released desktop pictures! Kuehn Graphics released a new piece of art for your desktop, Kokopelli! We also have it in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! MAJArch Studios 2000 has updated with four new desktop pictures on his favorite subjects: architecture and sport. We welcome one of the baseball players into our Icon Archive too. Thanks for the contribution! The late Bob Ross used to say, "In art, there are no mistakes, only happy accidents". When Bobby Marsh's Father had a printing error, his son thought they would make cool desktop pictures! You can find two versions of the "Printer Art" at B'Web Online! Creative Box's newest desktop creation "The Zone" is now on Zone... MacOSZone that is! A little info for those of you who are concern about Waferbaby's whereabouts: Don't worry, it will be back soon! What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! Get OS X plus free Ben + Jerry's at Smalldog.com 3/17/00 The ResExcellence search engine and Sherlock plugin have been temporarily disabled. On Monday, a new, faster search program will be available. This new version will also allow searching of the User's Forum (an often requested feature!). In addition, the Forum thread limit has been increased to cover over one year's worth of posts. Regarding Sherlock, here's the reason I will no longer be supporting it. The cgi program that performed the search also maintained a log of the search terms. While reading that log, I was surprised to see how few of the phrases were in any way connected to ResExcellence. The conclusion I reached is that most Mac users leave all their plug-ins active at all times, which is fine and dandy with me except for one thing - the hundreds of unnecessary searches each day bogged down the server. So gentle readers, toss the ResExcellence Sherlock plug-in and stop by the site to search for your user interface resources! Mac Development is a geeky kind of site with lots of links to programing tools useful software. They were nice enough to recognize ResEx as a Hot Site. Thanks! LinuxPPC Odds and Ends Everytime LinuxPPC boots, I ask, "What the heck is a BogoMip?". This HOW-TO site will tell you the value of this simple benchmark. There is also a chart of know Bogo-values and my Powerbook was right on the money. Read more with a search of the LinuxPPC list. Loki Entertainment has released LinuxPPC demo versions of Railroad Tycoon II and Heroes III. Julien Neuschwander asks: I've installed LinuxPPC 2000 and I love it! I tried to do the trick with the HFS partition, but I don't use KDE. What's the difference? How can I get Linux to see that mac partition and mount it at startup? Follow the instructions in the previous posting and edit the fstab file. Once inside Gnome, open the File Manager and find the directory that you mounted the partition into, for example - /mnt/mac. Drag that icon to the desktop with a middle-click and make it a link. Open the set Property window on the desktop icon and give it a new name and icon. lindkvist is a cute site with lots of cool things for your Mac. Be sure to see the fonts and icons! ResExcellence regular contributor, Justin Reese, has posted a souped-up version of ResEdit on his web site. Loaded up with templates, it adds support for extended window editing in Kaleidoscope 2 schemes. Shhhh..... don't tell anyone, but MyMac Magazine has posted tons of MacOS X picture..... Snapshots: Rett Nearburg sent a big-ol' firey snap with the Threeoh DP Tim Mityok used the Winter Night Desktop, Neutech Theme, and is running a program I have never heard of - MacStat! Jason Stephenson displays a chrome and diamond look with Cryptogenic DP and ZiggyStardust Scheme Dragons and Gargoyles are on Paul Thiem's mind with the Night DP and Desktop Guardian Scheme Things go better with Coke on your desktop, and Matthew O’Hara adds the Estaño Scheme to finish off with style. Wow! Brandon Gima has a great neon look with the Electric Monk Scheme and Twilight Desktop picture. User Contributed Splash Screen: Remember Power Computing? Some of their ad material features a reto-Miss America. Mark Boszko created humorous ATM and MOSS replacements for you to enjoy. If you have a bronze keyboard on your Powerbook, you may like the way this Quicktime makeover by Russell Chen gives the player bronze buttons! Blank Face is a cute puffy MOSS replacement by David Messick. Featuring the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, this gentle Netscape splash by James Whitson may be for you. Jaws is back! Included with a MOSS replacement by Chris Clark is also a desktop pattern and desktop picture to pointed-toothed fish on your Mac. EZQuest 100GB FireWire hard drive only $399 at Smalldog.com Software News: by Cletus™ I have added a new piece of software called Divider Lines to the Archive. The Rev. Glenn A. Lucas suggested this older extension that will make any "$" at the end of a line of text for a folder or document into a gray line in the Apple Menu. This can then be used as a divider line! He states he has used it without conflict in System's 7 - 8.6 and so can not vouch for compatibility in Mac OS 9. Keep me posted. Maury McCown dropped me a line about his "brand new" Design website, RAILhead Design. He has also updated several pieces of software including PreviewMaker which is in our Archive and will easily test and sample all aspects of your Kaleidoscope Schemes or Appearance Themes, as well as create previews to show off your creations. Be sure to check out his other fine software: MileageSaver 1.1, QuickSwitch 2.1 and ASCIIseek 1.2 while you are there. DragonOne has updated 8Tuner to version 3.5.2. This update provides better display of folder icons under 8.0 and 8.1. You do need to download new custom icons in order to get the benefits though. While 8Tuner is not compatible with Mac OS 9, the newly released 9Tuner by DragonOne is. Providing the same functions as 8Tuner has for previous version the Mac OS, 9Tuner is fully compatible with Mac OS 9. The required folders for 9Tuner can be downloaded from here. Gadget Software has released a new product called Faster! which they claim will "accelerate every single tidbit of your Macintosh, to speed up your computer — up to 3x's" A non-crippled demo is available and will auto detect any other Gadget software and accelerate it also. I definitely want reports of this! Aqua II++ is another Kaleidoscope scheme available from the Ressentiment web site. The site requires Java script be enabled in the browser, so..... Submit Software News Suggestions! Icon & Desktop News by Ilona What's new in the Icon Archive? Two new sets! Yesterday I introduced a site called Colheres. Today, these three talented women, mother and two daughters, compiled the "Colheresicons" set just for us! How sweet of them! As far as the AIM smiley replacement series goes, we are showing another set from Adams Carroll's miniature creations! We also have an AMP radio icons update set from Bob Friede! What's new in the Desktop Archive? Three new pictures! One of our new, young contributors, David Rook, introduced us to his blue imagination, "Mac."One of our old-time contributors Peter McHugh shows us his "Otexture" experiment, and our very own Michael Coyle went outside and came back with a "Waterfall"! Thanks! Enjoy! And don't forget: The Archives are always open for your contributions! Friday already? Time just flies in high speed... I'll reach an old age before I know it... I get off from this fast moving time-train from time to time, for enjoying lovely things, like today's updates! Maurim.com has changed to a more personal site and all it's interface contents went to a new site called RAILhead! This redesigned site holds desktop pictures, icons, schemes, fonts, software and has daily news, icons/desktop/graphic announcements. Their postings today are 12 new desktop pictures and a new icon set, BeanieOS! A long awaited Top Ten list is up at Iconmaniac! Take a look and enjoy the icons and the judges' comments! Another new site, MAJArch Studios 2000, is a showroom of a photographer's favorite pictures about architectures, landscapes and so on. There is also a section called Mac Creations, where you can find some desktop pictures. You might know these pictures since most of them are shown in our Desktop Archive. What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! Register to Win a iBook at Smalldog.com 3/15/00 If you are a developer working with MacOS X, then you need Parcel v1.0 by Anthony Pittari. This drag-and-drop Applescript toggles whether the new .app package is a MacOS X application, or a MacOS 9 folder containing the file's resources. Emails from readers indicate that there is a wealth of information stashed in these packages, and resource editing will not be ending with MacOS X, but entering its glory days! Awesome scheme artist, Maury McCown, has posted a ton of Aqua screenshots on his web site. See the future before the long arm of the law spanks him! Even the snaps have been taken down, be sure to browse his collect of Mac goodies. Can't satisfy your craving for MacOS X/Aqua? Take a look at this text editor from Steven Massey called StevePerfect. The purpose of StevePerfect is to have a simple typing interface that is slightly more useful than Apple's Simpletext. It also supports the latest Macintosh advances that Apple has yet to include with Simpletext such as themes, internet access, true worldscript support, a music player capable of playing mp3 or Quicktime audio, and a really easy user interface. It supports the basic typing features: Font, Style, Size, Search, Save, Open, and Find. It also includes some new features such as quick button links to Sherlock 2 and your default web browser (only supported in MacOS 9). StevePerfect is completely balloon help compatible and also features a help system. It uses Apple’s new Open/Save windows otherwise known as Navigation Services. Themes Support has been added in this version. Most themes I have tested work just fine, but I have found some problems with the text on the buttons with some Kaleidoscope schemes. So testing out your favorite scheme is the best way to see how it goes. I do know it works with most Mac OS X Aqua themes so try those out. I have a picture of one above. Also, I have received reports that StevePerfect runs beautifully under Worldscript extensions. This means that StevePerfect works with Apple's language software. One user has reported that it can type Arabic just fine. I'm assuming that means it works in other languages as well. If you get it to work please let me know. StevePerfect can also correctly print other languages besides English. Lastly, if you have Quicktime 4.1 installed you can listen to mp3 files or quicktime audio files while you work. This is the first program I ever wrote: 10 cls 20 input "What is you name?"; A$ 30 print: print "Hello "; A$ 40 for x = 1 to 10000:next x: goto 10 Yup. BASIC. To this day, when I need to do a quick text database translation, I'll write a little BASIC program to do the job. Take a look at Chipmonk Basic it you wnat to try a simple BASIC language on your Mac. Snapshots: Mike S. put together a great looking snaphot with an Apple Collection DP and QT 4 Modoki Theme. Mike Ulrich used a beautiful Nebula desktop with the Kaleidosony Scheme. Matthew O’Hara proves you can have clean lines, and still have a great looking desktop. Michael Dicker shows his Aqua envy with this Quantum X DP and Aqua Theme. It also shows a good looking DragThing setup. Ross Stump used the cool IZA Shock Absorber Scheme and AquaGQ Desktop in this nice snapshot. Laurent Peraldi has the biggest monitor I have ever seen! User Contributed Splash Screen: This is the funniest submission in a long time! This Netscape splash by Kybosch features a young Bill Gates in a police mug shot! Based on an earlier ResEx edit, Kevin Zachary Hess created a new MultiUser Login Makeover. This one takes its looks from the G4 advertisements. Peter McHugh sent two MOSS our way. The first is a remake of Brain Surgery, and the second has come cool transparency effects. Joe Lalicata sent this Hotline splash for you. Featuring Aqua, Duane Miller put together this Shark MOSS. Ilicon Graphic Design Software News: by Cletus™ (Updated at 6am) TaskMenuBar has been updated to fix a few bug. One was a conflict with OSA Menu and the other was a disappearing Icon in Eudora. Glidel has been updated to version 4.0.1 to provide better compatibility under System 7 and Stuffit Browser. It also provides better compatibility of the help display with the appearance manager and Kaleidoscope. Sig Software is releasing Drop Drawers 1.2 today. This version, which has just come out of beta will allow Drawers to list running processes, provide optional speech recognition for drawer items, let you use patterns and pictures for drawers and tabs and use hierarchical menus for folders in drawers. (Anticipated mid-day release so keep checking) JSA has some Kaleidoscope Schemes I am sure everyone will be interested in getting. Power On Software has updated the wonderful Action Files to 1.5.2. List of changes include: Support for localized systems. Bug fix where Compatibility list entries would not always be honored. Fixed bug where command keys would not always work in Navigation Services dialogs. Fixed compatibility problems with EndNote and FontLab. And, fixed bug where AF would delete menu items from any popup menu that came up after the user clicked on the volumes menu in Navigation Services dialogs. Update on Menu Choice — Larry Estes was among several readers to report success using Menu Choice with System 9.0. Submit Software News Suggestions! Icon & Desktop News by Ilona What's new in the Icon Archive? One set! -- You are on line, chatting with AIM... you're angry, you're crying, you're laughing... you desperately need some expressions to type. What do you do?... That's right, come to ResEx! Adams Carroll sent us some AIM expressions replacement icons and we'll serve them to you, one smile at a time! What's new in the Desktop Archive? Three new pictures! Just when I started to miss some Aqua related stuff to post, has came "AquaGeeQue" from Ross Stump who also sent us his whole desktop, see it in our Snapshots section! Paul Kuehn shows us how good a "Celtic Cross" could look on your desktop! Our loyal contributor, Peter McHugh, has been "Framed" this time! Thanks! Enjoy! And don't forget: The Archives are always open for your contributions! Today, we introduce two readers submitted sites! Dan and Nathan, thanks for helping me discover two new corners of the web. Colheres is a cozy home for three icon artists. The cheerful simple web site offers icons and desktop pictures in a lovely style. Iconfactory reminds us that on Thursday, the 16th, they will remove all of the non-winning icon sets from this year's Pixelpalooza, therefore it is your last chance to take a last look around and download your favorite sets! Kuehn Graphics has updated with a gorgeous new desktop picture, Celtic Cross! We also have it in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! WorldPrints.com is one giant site for images! In their "FREE Wallpaper & ScreenSaver" section, there are thousands of desktop pictures in several categories like animals, art, celebrities, holidays, humor, science, sport, etc, and often they even have subcategories! I enjoyed browsing through these beautiful photographs and poster-like images. You can download the images free for your desktop, available in 1280x1024 resolution, and if you like to put them on your wall, you can buy the print! Have fun! What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! Get OS X plus free Ben + Jerry's at Smalldog.com 3/13/00 We better put on another pot of stew for all the new readers to ResExcellence! With a quarterly growth rate of 16%, ResExcellence should be poised to take over the world by the year 2056! I'm preparing for another batch of Newbie questions because April's issue of MacAddict magazine features Hack 2000, with a nice tip-of-the-hat to ResExcellence. The most common newbie question? How do I add a command key to empty the trash! (Answer here.) This week's Polling Place asks, "Do you work on a Multi-User Mac?" Maybe at work, maybe at school, maybe even at home - if you have to login to get to your Mac desktop, vote Yes. (NT weenies, you're at the wrong site...) This question was prompted by my weekend activity of converting the family iMac to a multi-user machine. The reason was that my daughter had taken a liking to some radical K-shemes that drove Mom's eyes crazy. Another reason was that Netscape's bookmarks were becoming increasingly unmanageable due to the family's attempt to mark every page they had ever visited! But before you embark down the same path, heed my warnings! Other than the owner of the machine, Dad in this case, no other user can access the Mac's true desktop. So it's best to move any items off there into the Shared Documents folder. Each user gets their own Preference folder, unique to them. This means you need to be prepared to copy lots of settings from the main System Preference folder to each of the User's. You could simply create an alias to the main folder, but by taking the time to copy individual files, each user can have there own setting for each application. For example, Netscape lets you create multiple users, but that would require everyone to login twice - once to the MacOS and once to Netscape. By creating individual preferences in the local user's folder, everyone gets their own bookmarks and preferences without using Netscape's multiple user feature function. After a rough start due to missing settings, the entire family is happy with the results. Mom gets an easy to read Platinum theme, the teenager can leave her desktop as messy as she wants (just like her room), my Son gets a rotating collection of Pokeman desktops, and Dad gets a little extra piece and quiet. LinuxPPC Kernel for Powerbook 3400 The Powerbook 3400 has always had problems using its ethernet port. This weekend, I built a standard Powerbook 2.2.14 kernel with support for the ethernet port. While there was nothing tricky this feat, the fact that the 3400 could not access the net though it's built in modem or ethernet has always provides a catch-22 for updating the machine. This kernel also includes the modules and System.map. It does not include support for the internal modem or the PCMCIA slots. To .app or not to .app This is a little embarrassing because I know I posted this awhile ago, but I can't find it! I'm looking for an Applescript that toggles from a folder to a MacOS X .app. If you have an answer, please let me know. Snapshots: This is interesting, Bart van de Biezen sent a Snapshot that has a split personality, half MacOS 9, half Aqua! Matt Celia shows a great look with the normally subdued Paper Theme. Something good happened when Robert Erwin mixed the Warm Tension DP and Osmium 45 Scheme. ResEx regular, Joe Daniels says, "I want Aqua, I want Aqua!". Edward O’Rourke sent another great way to do hi-tech with a Black Background and Ink Scheme. A very cool desk was sent by Nick displaying a J. R. Tolken DP and I/OS X Scheme. User Contributed Splash Screen: exaOS is a great looking anime MOSS created by Reagan Denius. Another nice Eudora splash was sent. This one is by the Rev. Glenn A. Lucas. Inspired by the Stonecutters episode of The Simpsons, this MOSS by Claude Schrader should bring back memories. Inspired by the work of Jay Amici's, Kevan Staples sent this Netscape splash. A very nice Giant MOSS was created by larrye. It looks like it's made of plastic! (how'd he do that!) There's not much to do on a Sunday night in Indiana, that's when Wayne Chang got homesick and made the ATM replacement of Los Angeles. EZQuest 100GB FireWire hard drive only $399 at Smalldog.com Software News: by Cletus™ I hope you all had a relaxing weekend. Jerome Foucher appears to have had a busy weekend working on updating two of his very useful programs: • Navi iRae has been completely recompiled with the brand new Stuffit SDK 5.5. He is recommending this update "Highly" for those that use MacOS 9. • Wapp Floater received even more updates — It has now become a drawer and can be positioned on every side of the screen. It supports auto expanding/collapsing. Additionally, if Navi iRae 1.7.1 or newer is installed, when listing Finder's windows, control-clicking (or clicking & holding if FinderPop is installed) on a folder in Wapp Floater will display the content of the folder in a popup menu. Desktop Resetter 2.2.1 by Nick D'Amato has been updated to fix a problem on some machines (especially laptops with PCMCIA cards) where the desktop was never remembered. This problem was introduced with 2.2. If you are a registered user you will not have to re-register whenever an update comes out, and new options were added in the settings control panel. Last time I mentioned the update to Magic Power Menu. Over the weekend I received some more info from Gadget Software about how they are going to handle their software pricing from now on. They are raising the price by $5.00 on all software, but will offer subsequent updates for free to registered users. They have also ceased development of Mr. Undo. More info is on their homepage. Joel Sass from Control Strip Outlet has posted new Spotlight focusing on AccessStrip, a very versatile and useful file and application launcher. Very good article and well worth the read. Lastly, because I am a big music fan I found this interesting, although I did not have time to try it out thoroughly. It is called is called QT JukeBox and was written by Kekoa John Sylva. It uses Apple Script to convert your existing MP3's, MIDI and Music video files for use with Apple's QuickTime player. After converting via a simple drag and drop, you create a songlist from your exisitng files. You can read more on his homepage. Submit Software News Suggestions! Icon & Desktop News by Ilona What's new in the Icon Archive? One set from Matthew White, who has kindly contributed his newly released 32 bit "Blueberry Folders" icons! There's also an updated set, Graphic Converter replacement icons by Bob Friede. What's new in the Desktop Archive? Five new pictures! Find yourself in a sleeping phase of "Vulcanic" with Rob van Aarle, enjoy a beautiful "Mountain" scene from Aldie, get a closer look at the Pieta by Jaime O. Hilario, let a "MacUFO" take over your desktop from Bill Paris, and work on a wooden "Desk" from Peter McHugh! Thanks! Enjoy! And don't forget: The Archives are always open for your contributions! Just like everybody else, I hate Mondays, but since I writing the news at ResExcellence, I have gotten to love this day of the week. There's always a lot to write about on Mondays... Here is how we will start this week's icons/desktop news: Five new desktop pictures have been released at power/Mac! They also have a new Blueberry Folders" icon set in an elegant and delicate style. We have it in our Icon Archive too. Thanks for the contribution! Matthew has also told me that he is working on many new icon sets. I had the privilege to see the preview, and I have to tell you, they look great! I can't hardly wait to write about them. Have you ever wanted to wrap your icon presents? Here is your chance to do just that. Finally the long awaited submission has arrived on the Icon Amazons pages: Wrapping Paper from a new Amazon, Naminami! Sascha's Page is where you can find kal-schemes and 32 bit icons! Only two sets of icons, but they says there are "more coming soon"... I love hearing this kind of promise! "Volume 8", is a newly released icon set from the redesigned Icon Plaza. It contains many useful folder icons! Icon Parade is always managing to hunt down some new links for their vault, which now contains more than 700 icon links. Amazing!!! Oh, and just a reminder folks, we have an interview with Icon Parade's webmistress at ResEx. I would also like to thank Sara, who was the only one who knew and informed me about HomeArt's whereabouts! I thought it disappeared from the face of the Earth but now I have the URL. Thanks! World of Kaos has a new look and has promising more frequent updates starting with Superman... lots of Superman icons! They are planning to open a desktop picture section too. Great plan, we look forward to seeing them both soon! BParis Gallery, our loyal contributor, has updated with MacUFO desktop picture! We also have it in our Desktop Archive. It is a great looking piece, so jump over and get it! Thanks for the contribution! What's an artist do when it comes to vacation time? Having fun and, of course, take some photographs which can later be transformed into desktop pictures. That's what Aldie did. He spent his vacation in Switzerland, and now he's sharing a beautiful view from two little villages, Wengen and Grindelwald! You can get the majestic Mountain scene at Aldie's Site! And you can also see it in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! Triball Software likes landscape scenes and keeps producing peaceful and beautiful desktop pictures of them. This time it is a "Vulcanic" scene, which we also have in our Desktop Archive! Thanks for the contribution! "Tracy takes on..." No, that's not it! <grin> Well maybe a little bit? Tracy at Saffron Graphics opened a "junk" section where you can enjoy more and more as the section is growing. There is also a new desktop picture, Collision Allert. No, it's not about two planets, its about two UFO's! If you have the Alien icon set from Saffron Graphics, you must have this desktop picture too! Well, what do you know... Mission to Mars is coming your theatre near you and I'm sure it will effect more and more Sci-fi lover artists to create some out of the world characters and desktop pictures! Tracy also shows a preview of her upcoming icons set. Looking at the preview, the next icons could be anything from Lord of the Rings, to some great fantasy tale! I'm excited to see the finished set! What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! Ilicon Graphic Design 3/10/00 Previously, we discussed using Wish I Were to speed up a G3 upgraded Mac. Many emails arrived stating that while the utility did allow them to assign the Function Keys in the Keyboard control panel, they did not notice an increase in speed. While this is interesting, there is much better way to activate the Function Keys on older Macs, Keyboard Patcher from Stéphane Madrau. (This web site has been difficult to access. Cletus added the file to out archive.) If you are interested in trying the experiment, here is how to edit the Wish I Were's preferences. Install "Wish I Were" and pick a machine from the list. (This creates the Preference file.) Restart the computer and locate the Preferences in the System Preferences folder. Open the preferences in ResEdit and find the WIWv resources. Change the section hex to 0000 0196 as shown above. Save are restart. Ben Blake updated his cool utility, Appearance Randomiser 1.2. It now works properly on international MacOS systems. In addition to randomly selecting themes, sounds, and desktop pictures, this new version will also place a random picture on up to three monitors. (How many of us have three monitors!) Victor Yee put a lot of work into this series of Applescripts you can download to manage your PopUp folders. These three script applets allow you to create and manage sets (i.e. groups) of popup windows. You may wish to have different sets of popup windows for different projects, or maybe different users. Popup windows allow for easy access to all sorts of items. For example, you could have one popup window set up with all your apps set to button view for easy one-click access to your favourite applications. Creating a MacOS panel button for Gnome or KDE Rui Campos put together a little hack that lets you add a button in a panel that will allow you to reboot into the MacOS, or stay in Linux. It's sort of a "BootX" for Linux but in reverse. (Continued...) Snapshots: On Kin Camacho's snapshot, we're talking MP3, CD and Video, plus the Apple Spotlight DP and Hotspurs Scheme! Mr. Anonymous submitted his desktop featuring Pastimac DP and AquaX Scheme. If it looks like X, and smells like X, is it X? Decide for yourself after seeing Matthew Capitini's snapshot. Wow, nice looking icons made on a PC, but displayed on Etienne Blythe's LCIII. Tim Gray put together a nice chrome hi-tech look. A rare dual monitor snapshot was submitted by Bobby Kinstle. User Contributed Splash Screen: Jjaro created great looking giant MOSS. It's shiney surface is worth a look. Peter McHugh put together some makeover packs for the Quicktime Player. The sets of ppats will give the player a new 'skin'. Rage against the establishment with this MOSS from il y Noto! Alberto Chávez sent two Aqua styled splash screens, one for Netscape, and one for Explorer. I though she was great 10 years ago on General Hospital, now Kim Delaney is on N.Y.P.D. Blue, and Bruce Rader created a Eudora splash screen featuring the actress. Get OS X plus free Ben + Jerry's at Smalldog.com Software News: by CletusWazzup! Everyday Software has provided a maintenance release for clipEdit. What's been fixed? Well, clipEdit will now quit when sent a quit command via AppleEvent, all windows will now disable correctly when not in the front and clipEdit is now more theme/scheme savvy. Edward F. O'Rourke IV came across a piece of software that he says is working fine with Mac OS 8.6 called MenuChoice. MenuChoice is a control panel that will enable hierarchical menus (with subfolders) under the Apple Menu. I have added it to the Software Archive and would like to know if anyone has any luck using it on OS 9. If you can tell me either way drop me a line. DeskTray was forgetting the registration number and so Jérome Foucher fixed it. He also provided some cosmetic enhancements along the way. Recommended download for registered users. Gadget Software has not only updated their site, they have released version 2.0.1 of Magic Power Menu. This version fixes many bugs and adds the possibility to access the Apple Menu Folder by option-clicking on the Apple. Additionally there is an optional extension that will play chromatic sounds as you select deeper submenus. KSA has updated with 14 new and 13 updated schemes. I see Sugar Plate IV is there!! A few others I find interesting are: Anasazi and Alien Crash. Themes.org has uploaded 5 new screenshots to display their newest theme submissions. Submit Software News Suggestions! Icon & Desktop News by Ilona What's new in the Icon Archive? One set from Tatsuya, who has kindly contributed his newly released lovely icons, so we have something to show you today! What's new in the Desktop Archive? Six new pictures! Get Happy with Scott Chitwood, Think Sci-fi with Jimmy Arceneaux, and get yourself transferred into a Bar Scene by Bruce Hulvey. There is also a stylish desktop from Chris Aylen, and a transparent picture from Peter McHugh! Finally the eye-pleaser Machine Dream, submitted by Robert Erwin! Thanks! Enjoy! And don't forget: The Archives are always open for your contributions! Just because this week's news was not as plentiful doesn't mean everybody has stopped making icons and desktop pictures. In fact, I know diligent hands are working on wonders right now, only the masters are not yet ready to show you their masterpieces. Many pixels are placed on small 32x32 canvases as we speak, great ideas getting painted by talented hands into beautiful desktop pictures. Some sites are under redesign, waiting to full bloom for your browsing pleasure... I hope I can give you detailed information soon. Now, enjoy today's great new creations: Organica is a strangely beautiful imaginative desktop from PseudoRoom! Maybe we should ask the master, what is the meaning behind his interesting new composition... The recently redesigned Rampant Mac is a "one of a kind" web site, housing many gorgeous desktop pictures! The webmaster is a kind fellow, who told me that he can't make an update without sending at least one picture to our Desktop Archive! This time we received "Get Happy"! We certainly take the cheerful advice and greatly appreciate his lovely contribution! By the way, Get Happy was inspired by Nick Longrich's "Smilies" icon set. RampantMac has also opened its own icon section! In our Icon Archive, we have Mac Iconi from the three sets which have just been posted at RampantMac. Julien's Page has been updated with new iBook, iMac and Linuxed-G4 desktop pictures and also have new screen shots! New, improved, updated and expanded desktop collections have been posted at HeadStudio! And some pictures for the guys too on these pages! We have the least sexy in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! Introducing the simple and elegantly designed Machine Dreams, which holds more than 100 desktop pictures available in 1024x768 resolution. Furthermore, they have about 200 seamless tiles for use in illustrations and 3D renderings or for your desktop! Of course we had to choose one picture for our Desktop Archive too. Thanks for the contribution! InterfaceLift has put up previews in its SoftwareBox section and welcomes a new guest, Nick who creates faces for Audion, to its server! Whatever happened with HomeArt icon site? Does anyone have any information about it? Have a pleasant weekend Everyone! And don't forget to make some new icons too! :-) What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! EZQuest 100GB FireWire hard drive only $399 at Smalldog.com 3/8/00 Kevin Baucom sent this interesting email describing how Wish I Were solved a problem of his. Not having the same computer setup, I couldn't test this, so if you have any experience with this problem, please let me know. When I got OS 9, I couldn't figure out why the keyboard shortcuts didn't work on my G3 upgraded 8600. Another thing about OS 9 was for some reason, Sherlock 2 took just as long as Photoshop 5.5 to open (12 seconds). I didn't understand this either since Sherlock 1 opened almost instantly. I decided to try "Wish I Were" to make my computer think it was a G4. Now I can use the keyboard shortcuts AND Sherlock 2 takes about one second to open now. To make Wish I Were make your computer think it's a G4, use ResEdit to change the WIWv hex in the "Wish I Were" Preferences to 0000 0196. Patrick Kelleher's web site has a few iMac throbbers for you to download. Modify Apple's DVD Player to run with Macsbug After touting the advantages of Macsbug, it appears that Apple's DVD Player 2.0 won't launch if the debugger is installed. This simple modification to the player application allows the two to exist harmoniously. (Continued...) Snapshots: Long time contributor Peter McHugh has sent an action packed snapshot. It will take you a while to view everything on there! Another regular, Fam Chee Cheng shows us how he makes his MOSS submissions (In fact, the one displayed is the one I'm currently using). Both snapshots are loaded with Aqua. User Contributed Splash Screen: One of my favorite games is Marathon! That's why it's with a tear in my eye that I am happy to post Two Marathon MOSS creations by Peter Bohning. Always a busy man, Zero Divide created a nice brushed metal splash screen for Eudora. (I liked it so much, I installed it!) Peter McHugh sent an "Out of this World" replacement screen for About this Mac. Christian Plourde created a colorful MOSS he calls "MAChanic". A throbber that shows Superman leaping into the air was submitted by Davor Mihalji. A nicely done Netscape splash was created by Rick Thompson. Register to Win a iBook at Smalldog.com Software News: by Cletus Let's Rock this Joint!! Recently you may have noticed that I have been mentioning the Japanese Scheme Archive (JSA) as a resource for Kaleidoscope schemes. It's a great alternative for schemes that don't always show up in the KSA. Unfortunately for me the site is all in Japanese. But well worth a visit. Sugar Plate IV by Yoshihiro Kondo is cool. The muted colors make for a sharp looking scheme that is not over done, rather it is functional and easy on the eyes. I think it contrasts well with the hi-lite color. A different background pattern would set it off even more. Scheme Checker 1.4.8 has been released. If you are the creator of Kaleidoscope Schemes you will be familiar with this required product. The main difference in this release is that The Scheme Checker source code is now in the public domain. More information is found on the homepage. You will need to download HyperCard Player in order to use this. After a long wait The World of Mac Themes is releasing Slate Board v2.0. The theme is very well done. It uses several different backgrounds in the finder windows depending on the view settings. This is a nice feature. I used it for several hours last night and found it very pleasant. AEChadwick has suggested ButtonKey be placed in the Software Archive. Button Key is a Control Panel which helps you to use dialog and alert boxes without using the mouse. He has been using it on his Powerbook G3/300 (wallstreet) w/ OS 9 and has not had any problems with it. He also mentioned he often runs with a lot of hacks and extensions and it still performs well. Bob Friede notified me of an update to Replace by James W. Walker Software. You will recall that Replace is a small extension that will hi-lite the word "Replace" in a dialog window instead of the normal default "Cancel". Hugh Kawahara has updated Task Menu Bar. This version offers many enhancements and feature improvements: Detailed controls over the position, spacing, sorting order and appearances of the icons, add stationary applications by drag and dropping applications or aliases, suppress displaying certain types of applications, and compatibility with Apple's appearance themes and Kaleidoscope. Submit Software News Suggestions! Icon & Desktop News by Ilona What's new in the Icon Archive? There are no new icons today but we have an updated set from Bob Friede for Graphic Converter! This set changes the application and document icons for the image editing program. What's new in the Desktop Archive? Three new pictures: Calendar by Bill Ferriot - as seen in Bill Ferriot 's Snapshot picture, a nice MacOS DOCK created by Gex Qwerty for those who like gray, simple elegant pictures, and Peter McHugh submitted Envy, which contains two pictures in one download! Enjoy! And don't forget: The Archives are always open for your contributions! Let's see what's cooking in the pixel kitchen? IconMuseo released lovely "Framing Icons"! Interestingly, these icons were made for title icons at first, then the artist thought they could stand on their own. And they do! There are some new kines at Kineticon, among them, Alien Eyes! It goes well with the Alien Apple Menu icon which we have in our Icon Archive! The contest at IconHouse's "1024 Pixels" is still going strong! Send one icon and you might win something. IconHQ lets you peek into the future of his new icon sets! More of those lovely critters in his Bear System set, and more Copland style icons... We can hardly wait to see them! Background Matters has great collection of desktop pictures for iMac, G3, G4, MacOS 8x etc, and now there is a second page full of abstract and beautiful landscape pictures! What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! Get OS X plus free Ben + Jerry's at Smalldog.com 3/6/00 Wow! A surprising number of readers use Macsbug. To be honest, I wasn't using it myself until last week, but it really is a better way to manage crashes on your Mac. In the past, I had avoided it because it requires a hefty 1.1 meg of system RAM (at least on my computer), but since it enables me to cleanly recover from a crash, and even informs me of the offending app, the trade off is worth it. Sometimes, after installing a new program, you may feel that overall system performance has dropped. Applications keep crashing for no apparent reason. With Macsbug installed, a crash will inform you of the offending application, and often it isn't even the program in which you were last working. many times you'll discover it was an extension. In the Macsbug window on the left, the application that had control of cpu at the time of the crash will be listed on the left under CurApName. The screen show is the Help screen, viewed by typing "?". Three must know Macsbug commands: G - returns you to the last application before Macsbug was invoked. ES - Escapes the current app, often returning you to the Finder RS - Restart. The command of last resort! By watching the web server logs on certain pages, (Getting Started, ResEdit, Previous Edits...), I can get an indication of how many new readers come to ResExcellence each month. And I certainly know quite a few of you have been here since the beginning. This week's Polling Place asks, "How long have you been reading ResEx?" If you have recently tried to download the Mercutio MDEF to fix up your menus in Netscape, the Official Site has been having some ftp problems. The MDEF is also stored on ResExcellence. Just copy the MDEF resources to the clipboard from ResEdit, and paste into Netscape's resources. Jonathan McDermott wrote two Applescripts to download that you may find helpful: First, A little script called SetAppSwitcher, which turns the little devil off if it's on, and vice-versa. I keep an alias of it in my GoMac Quick Launch area, and it works just like a one-click light switch! Second, A script called Positioner, which keeps the app switcher at the top of the screen, dead center, regardless of screen resolution. While it's at it, it keeps my Audion mp3 player where I like it, too. Sometimes I switch my monitor's resolution and move the buggers around just to watch it work! With the built in error handling, it works flawlessly (so far!) as a background-only extension. MacInstruct has published a new tutorial, "A Quick Guide to Icons". While a little basic for ResEx readers, be sure to forward all MacInstruct URL's to your newbie iMac friends so they'll quit bothering you! Snapshots: Paul Heayn - Tribes 2 DP and Fallout III Scheme Don Tipton - Aqua Theme and Load ’o Apps Russ Boucher - FF7 DP and Bond Street Scheme Jared Nichols - Digital Blasphemy DP and Electric Monk Scheme User Contributions: Wayne Betts created a beautiful splash screen replacement for AOL 5.0 A MOSS featuring my favorite cartoon idol, Johnny Bravo, was submitted by Ryan Adams. <whoosh> Denis Goulet created two more comical MOSS replacements! Tommy T. created six imac colored replacement cursors. Just drop the extension in your System and restart! Zero Divide has done it again with a new Netscape throbber of fingers on a desk! Ryan Lindh created a nice looking About this Mac replacement for pre-MacOS 9 systems. We all need a little Love, and that's why Russ Boucher submitted this Netscape splash featuring Jennifer Love Hewitt. EZQuest 100GB FireWire hard drive only $399 at Smalldog.com Software News: by CletusWhere are my Wellies???!!! Fifty-five degrees, a little sun and I am back on the golf course. :) In case you don't visit our Forum (you do read them don't you?) you may have missed the following tidbits of info I posted: a) Timm Hoff and several others left me know that the download for Title Free (linked to Info-Mac) was an incomplete file and causing problems for people. I found another copy and have since uploaded it to the server. If you were having trouble, try this newer version. b) Ben Mackin updated his theme page with several news items and a software update over the last few days. If you don't check his page often you may want to read through them. Mac Things have added two (new) themes — iMac DV SE and Alpha Theme. They are both based upon Aqua with modifications to please Apple. I guess the way to word it is that they have been "re-posted" ;) DeskTray was updated over the weekend providing lots of improvements. The tray can now be positioned everywhere on each edge of the screen. When the tray is expanded, at its bottom there are now one or two (whether the tray is locked at a screen corner) grow "boxes". Added an option to display only small icons to save space and When expanding/collapsing the tray, the animation should now be smooth all the time. Public Access Software have released a beta version of Sherlock Menu. Sherlock Menu 3.1b2 adds two new key features; reconfiguration of Sherlock when it is already running and support for custom "channels" in Sherlock 2. Some other minor changes are still planned and will arrive shortly along with international versions of v3.1. KSA has updated with 15 new and 3 updated schemes. Submit Software News Suggestions! Icon & Desktop News by Ilona We have some professors in our Icon Archive! Four new pictures are in the Desktop Archive! Enjoy! And don't forget: They are always open for your contributions! PseudoRoom has released "Little Fat Professors"! Since I had no icon contributions for today, these cute, round-shaped professors saved me by agreeing to continue their strange lab works in our Icon Archive! Thanks for the cute little contribution! Oh, and don't forget to get the PseudoRoom screen saver too! Icon Town is ready to show you the whole Town view! Icon Parade keeps adding links for your icon searching pleasure. If you like birds, here is your chance to get all available birds icons, just look in the Parade's March special! Icon Amazons welcomes a new member, Phoenix, with her first icon set, Magic! Introducing Yellowlane, a site which will soon be full of interesting stuff, but what interests us now are the icons. Soon you can look for more excellent icon sets like "Macintosh Garden", winner of the grand prize in Pixelpalooza's System Replacement category this year! Welcome to the icon community, Josh. We hope to see more of your lovely creations! The master behind Blue Sky Heart Graphics has done it again! This time it is a gorgeous AlienToolKit desktop! Kuehn Graphics released "SpacePort", a beautiful imaginary space sight! We also have it in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! Triball Software updated with new picture, Rock. We also have it in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! KC's Custom Desktops has an "Apple iMac Matching Desktops" section and several desktop pictures available for your endless search for more pictures. What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! Register to Win a iBook at Smalldog.com 3/3/00 An Interview with Samuel Rydh, Lead Programer of Mac-on-Linux Mac-on-Linux is a fast and easy to install MacOS emulator for LinuxPPC. ResExcellence has an interview with lead programer, Samuel Rydh that also includes benchmarks and screenshots on this truly amazing program. (Continued...) Resource sleuth Quentin Hill recently answered a question in our forum regarding DVD icons: The icons are stored (under OS 9 at least) in the "UDF Volume Access" extension. They are in both 'ICN#' and 'icns' format, but only the ICN# appear to work. Edits are immediate, although you may have to eject any current DVD you have mounted. Quentin's iTools web site features a few snapshots of his desktop, and a few utilities he has written. A particularly interesting one is Font Fiend, a font preview utility. Sebastien Lavoie updated to his Seb's colors WIND for the ResEdit DITL editor. The changes from version 1.1 are: The toolbar has a minimize widget and a younger look with a change of the ProcID. The menubars have a new platinum looks. Regular ResEx contributor Erik Veland from Wigwam Multimedia has released a makeover kit for iCab. In addition to icons, cursors and pictures, it also features a system-wide cursor modification (optional), a 32 bit application icon for iCab and the Mac OS X folder icon. Snapshots: Bill Ferriot - Stickies Calendar and QT4 Modoki Scheme Eduardo Poplawsky - What Goes Up DP and Aqua Theme ResEx regular, Peter McHugh - Partially Transparent Custom DP Dei Makina - Anime Evangelion DP and Hi-Tech Theme Don't forget, there are four LinuxPPC snapshots in today's interview. User Contributions: Mark Seifert submitted a Smooth Graphite MOSS. An icy Netscape splash was created by Markus Magnuson. Pete Arvanitis put together his own version of a makeover kit for Remote Access. Brett Merson sent this funny Outlook Express splash. A golden smilin' Mac MOSS was created by Denis Goulet. Another creation by Zero Divide has been added to the Throbber page. Russell Chen sent matching ATM and MOSS screens with a MacOS X feel. Russ Boucher submitted a Netscape splash featuring Chloe. Ilicon Graphic Design Software News: by Cletus™ Wow! It has been a while since I have received a software suggestion for the Archive. Diane Jennings wrote me to suggest Pattern Manager that works fine with OS 9 despite being a year or two old — plus it's free!. She writes: "I am using it with OS9 and can get my favorite pattern to show up in some of the desktop tools, such as the calculator, and scrapbook." Wapp pro has been updated to fix a long standing problem with the Help menu commands not working properly. TriVectus Software has finished their beta testing phase and now releases Launch Key 3.0. This release provides many new features and enhancements to this keyboard launching utility. The archive has been updated. Sig Software has released Drop Drawers 1.2b2. This beta provides many improvements and new features over 1.1.1, including Drawers listing running processes, optional speech recognition for drawer items and patterns and pictures for drawers and tabs among others. Additionally you can try your hand at redesigning the Drop Drawers icons and about box logo for the final release of version 1.2. If you have never tried this application you can read more about it in our archive and about the author in our exclusive interview. Themes.org has posted five new screenshots of recently submitted Themes. Submit Software News Suggestions! Icon & Desktop News by Ilona We have a lovely set and an "Alien" Apple Menu replacement icon in our Icon Archive! Two new pictures and a pattern pack are in the Desktop Archive! Enjoy! And don't forget: They are always open for your contributions! Slow day for icon news but one of the most prolific icon artist's Etherbrian released three new icon sets and also new desktop pictures today! He keeps amazing me not just about his million ideas for icons but also the funny and inventive naming for the icons.One of his sets is placed in our Icon Archive too. And we thanks for the contribution. Creative Box released two elegant desktop pictures, Foreva Blue and Purple! We have the "Purple" one in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! Backdrops, though still under costruction, has been updated with new desktop picture, "Have a Nice Day", dedicated to wrestler Mick Foley! We also have it in our Desktop Archive. Thanks for the contribution! What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! Get OS X plus free Ben + Jerry's at Smalldog.com 3/1/00 Raffaello Lomartire tipped me off about this cool site with an iMac hardware hack. If you have an original Bondi iMac (and I do), this site shows you how to have both the iPort and a Mezzanine Board at the same time. Fred has been busy! A regular contributor to ResExcellence, Fred (from Fredzmac) has added lots of splash screens and other resources to his site! Remove the 90 second logout delay from Multiple Users. Previously on ResExcellence, we showed you how to remove the Command-Q key combination from the Logout menu item in the Finder. Thanks to help from John Moe and Bruce Partridge, the following edit can shorten the 90 second confirmation delay! (Continued...) Snapshots: A couple of cool looking Snapshots today! Allan Soerensen uses the PearlRhap Scheme and a great Quake 3 desktop pict. Fred Palumbo shows Dracula with the Golden frames scheme. User Contributions: Lately, I have received so many throbbers, that I decided to move them to their own page. Zero Divide sent a new one for Netscape that features an Alien Skull! Zero Divide also sent a new Hotline splash screen. Mike Orticari created a MOSS of what he hopes the next generation Powerbook will look like. Russ Boucher sent an Aqua pill About this Mac replacement for you, if you happen to be running MacOS 8.6. Denis Goulet sent another nice MOSS featuring the Apple logo. Mike Harrison sends a pair of files to OS X your Mac. An ATM replacement and MOSS featuring elements of MacOS X and Aqua. EZQuest 100GB FireWire hard drive only $399 at Smalldog.com Software News: – by Cletus honey, we're gonna need cat food! Nick D'Amato wrote in to let me know that his Desktop Resetter program has been updated to version 2.2. It fixes some minor problems with OS 9, works better with OS 9, and contains many assorted enhancements. I have updated the Archive. Thanks Nick! Jérome Foucher has updated another of his very useful software. Navi iRae, a control panel that provides you with a menu when you command-click the window's title bar, has been updated to version 1.7.1. The only difference with v1.7 is that now third-party developers can use an API to display menus with the content of any folder if Navi iRae is installed. This API will be used in v1.3 of DeskTray. MacThing's has released another Theme entitled DVSE. It is an Aqua-ish theme set in an iMac window frame. Stimpsoft™ Inc. has released an update to Cat.app. Somewhat useless, but nevertheless amusing. As it is currently running while I write this, I can vouch to the fact that it does in fact burp! If you happen to get The MacAuthority by ZD Journals you will have read this article already about the File Synchronization control panel. If not, then it is a good read. The control panel already comes with the MacOS and allows you to, among other things, back up only files that have recently changed. I have been using the control panel since reading about it and it works very well. Not as hands free perhaps as Speed Doubler's copy agent, but an adequate replacement. Recent updates from Monday that came too late for the update include: Power Windows and a Drop Drawers beta. Submit Software News Suggestions! Icon & Desktop News by Ilona Three new sets arrived in our Icon Archive! Five new pictures are in the Desktop Archive! Enjoy! And don't forget: They are always open for your contributions! InterfaceLift has been redesign and has released a handsome new 32bit system replacement set! We also have it in our Icon Archive. Thanks for the contribution! Flax Creations released two new desktop pictures and we have one in our Desktop Archive too! Thanks for the contribution! Introducing Kuehn Graphics, an elegant site which holds some gorgeous desktop solutions complementing several great kaleidoscope schemes! You can also find beautiful artwork as well. My site IliCon was also updated with two new desktop pictures and a new icon set! Yes, I've put them in the ResEx Archives, and yes, I thanked myself for the contribution! What's new on your site? Icons? Desktop pictures? Inform us! We'll post it! Register to Win a iBook at Smalldog.com Previous News Page...

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