BEOSWin : A BEOS Deskbar Shell Application
Written by Paul Robson (autismuk@aol.com)
BEOSWin is a BEOS style Shell for Windows
95 or 98, designed to emulate the "Deskbar" application of BEOS version
5. A picture of it is shown here running on my desktop. This is a Beta
testing version, officially it is 1.03 though.
The following features are up and running :-
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Provides most of the functionality of the deskbar menu.
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Uses menus directly from Windows, but allows additional menus.
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Will run on Windows 95 and 98 at least. Don't know about anything else.
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Will co-exist with the normal explorer shell
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Tiny (<80k) executable, self installing (just run it !)
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No support files at all, no uninstall program, it is completely
harmless. If you don't run it it isn't there.
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Open Source
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NEW Desktop Shortcuts (if explorer not running)
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NEW Startup Menu Execution (if explorer not running)
It will eventually be able to run as a complete replacement shell for Windows,
and it can be used as such now, but it is missing some of the projected
final features.
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Efx/Windowblinds replacement in application (in development)
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Run Dialog
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Recent Documents menu item
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Recent Applications menu item
To try it, just run the enclosed executable. That's it, there are no other
files or anything like that. It will almost certainly ask you to install
via a simple MessageBox. If you do this all it does is to copy the
executable file BEOSWIN.EXE to the Windows directory. It then pops up a dialog
allowing you to select it as the default shell. If you cancel at
this point it will still work, it just won't have copied the file in. BEOS
Deskbar will then start up.
You are probably running "Explorer" for this. It will hide the Explorer
Window, and create a new "non-accessible" area at the top of the screen,
so you can always see the BEOS menu bar. Don't worry, when the program
terminates everything goes back as it was and nothing will change (unless
it crashes and it seems pretty stable). The only changes made to
the system is that it writes some entries into your WIN.INI file.
Using the menu is relatively simple. The top menu opens cascading Windows
a bit like Start Menu does, except it's click up and click down, though
the succeeding menu entries aren't. The entries below it are the running
applications which you can hide and show.
Configuration is equally simple. You can create program links exactly
as before, using the "Configure Menu" option. You can also have additional
ones that are collections of shortcuts in the subdirectory "BEOS Menu"
of your Windows directory. One is created by default, "Demos", which is
empty.
Desktop Shortcuts are created by dragging a file onto the deskbar window,
a shortcut appears which can be moved. At present you cannot Drag and Drop
onto the Desktop. At the moment shortcuts cannot be renamed. Desktop Shortcuts
will not appear if Windows Explorer is running (I assume you want
to use Explorer's shortcuts instead).
The ZIP also contains a copy of BE4.REG, a BEOS Style for Windows 9x,
which you can double click on to run and installs a suitable appearence
in the Display properties Panel Applet. I didn't create it. If the person
who did lets me know, I'll acknowledge it or remove it appropriately.
You can also run EFX, or WindowBlinds with it if you want to have the
full BEOS experience. Or install BEOS of course.
Known Bugs
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Not all the Control Panel items are listed under Preferences.
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It doesn't provide one task menu per application type, but one per application.
Downloads
If you run this program, and have any suggestions for improvements,
bug reports, things that are rubbish, changes, BEOS suggestions, want to
draw some better Small Icons for the application or know how to make WS_EX_TRANSPARENT
work properly in Win 9x, or anything please contact me at autismuk@aol.com
The program was written using MS Visual C++ 4.2 but will probably
compile on anything as it is a straight old-fashioned C application.
Last updated on 7th March 2001