Date: Wed, 18 Sep 91 14:26:36 EDT From: Clare Durst Subject: System 7 goodies Thanks to everyone who contributed their information on System7 special goodies: to Murph Seawall (of course!), George Wittenberg, Jonathan Helton, Dan Goldman, John Morgan, Nathan Gasser, Jill Williams. Hope I haven't fogotten anyone. Forgive me for taking so long to report on them - a lot of things can come up at this time of year in a university, as we all know. In submitting these, I can only vouch that a) they all work together for me on my IIcx and portrait monitor; b) they all seem to work together on a small screen SE with 4 meg of memory and c) almost all are almost free. Almost the only other thing I have in memory besides these apps is Suitcase. Several (marked with an *) do much the same thing. Take your pick. Someone suggested the NOW utilities but since they're not shareware I didn't check them out. Popover and ViewPaint both were recommended, and I can't find them on the archives. Post, someone? Everything else IS on Sumex. I've tried to stick to the "serious" things - no sounds or pictures, although I did include CursorAnimator! Although I've crashed occasionally, I only would recommend against one item: Trash Chute, until it's fixed - it deletes the original of an aliased item, rather than the alias. And the one thing I STILL haven't found is a way to make a command key move something to the trash (not instantly delete it). STARTUP APPLICATIONS DARKSIDE free Tiny screen-saver app. Many different options. Be careful: Some may have screen-draw problems. If you haven't bought 60 copies of After Dark for your network, get this and have a clear conscience! APPLICON free * Tiny app. that shows icons of all open apps so you can switch between them easily. VERY useful in its 2.1 incarnation, and the most popular of apps recommended. TRASHMAN $5 Empties trash on schedule; VERY useful SYS7 SPECIFIC APPS ALIAS ASSASSIN free Finds aliases so you can delete old ones ALIASMAKER app free Makes alias to anything dropped on it Other VERY USEFUL APPS COMPACT PRO $25 invaluable file-compressor DISINFECTANT free "all you need for virus protection!" DOWNLINE Free unstuffs files as they are being downloaded. Doesn't work with stuffit classic, deluxe, or compactor files TASK-IT free shows what your mac is doing and how. understudy free Lets you open files for which you don't have the app with a similar app Documentation a bit obscure! FILELIST PLUS free catalogs any size disk you want, saves out into tab-delimited files, etc., etc. A necessity. CHOOSER APP BROADCAST 2 $25 a zone or $100 for all Send/receive 3-line msg to anyone on your network; Allows background sending now. CONTROL PANEL DEVICES ALTCDEF free Nice double-triangles at either end of scroll bars. Sorry, but I can't fathom the "ghost thumb" concept so maybe this DOESN'T work very well. APPMENU or APPSWITCHER free * * Invokes app. menu anywhere on screen when you hold down modifier I haven't found much difference between the two. Handy. CLOCKADJUST or NETWORK TIME free Set your internal clock using your modem or your tcip/ip connection CURSORANIMATOR free (postcard to Europe) Changes watch, arrow, etc. to more interesting items. Fun. Not essential. DFAULTD $20 Goes back to earlier folders used or default directories for specific apps Not quite Boomerang, but better than nothing. DROPCHECKfree Tells you when things have been dropped into your folders. BUT it's stored in Sumex with no doc - how do you turn it off when you've looked at an item? ESCAPADE free lets you select buttons in dialog box by typing 1st letter of its name. Useful. EXTENSION MGR free Manage inits (extensions & CPs) Seems to work well. Necessity. FINDER COMMANDS $5 Lets you make command key equivs of all finder menu items I can't make it work on the VIEWS menu, but otherwise it's VERY useful. FINDER MENUS $10 works like finder commands BUT until you pay up you only can use 1st part of alphabet in cmds. FLASHIT $15 Great screen-capture. No mac should be without it! MICN free Makes menu items into mini-icons. Might be good for new users; old hands don't need it and crambar also saves space on small screens. POPCHAR free Lets you find all those strange symbols in a font and plug into a doc. Old reliable. POWERSWITCHER free * Uses the "triangle key" (power key) to switch between apps. Seems to work more reliably for me than proswitch or Switch. PROSWITCH Another application switcher. SAVOMATIC$20 Auto-saves files at specified intervals. SCSITOOLSfree Mounts newly turned on scsis, etc. SUPERCLOCK free Best clock around. Familiarity should not breed contempt. WINDOWSHADE/ ZOOMBAR free (or $500000) compress windows to get to other apps. I found zoombar buggy but many people swear by it. I swear by Windowshade! EXTENSIONS CRAM BAR free displays menus in compressed type. Great for 9" screens. HELIUM/NOBALLOON free, free Helium turns off balloons with keyboard combo. Noballoon gets rid of them altogether but they come back with the keyboard combo. DAs MCSINK $45 text editor that does a lot of file clean-up chores Add/strip is another possibility here if you do a lot of file conversions REMEMBER $20 Keeps track of your life. Very useful calendar/reminder prog ADDRESS BOOK $20 You must have something like this as a "rolodex" sub. Doesn't print from within program but imports and exports to text files. *Yet another way to switch applications Again, thanks to everyone. I'm sure, given the ingenuity out there these days, the list will be obsolete in six months. But then I'll let someone ELSE come up with a replacement!