Using DragStrip

What exactly is a strip? Strips are composed of buttons, a status bar, page tabs, and a title bar. The buttons on a strip display aliases for items you wish to make launchable from strips. (An alias is an icon you can use as a representation for a document, program folder, or disk, which "points" to that item.) Also, buttons can hold data in the form of pictures, text, sound, URLs, and QuickTime(tm) movies. The title bar allows you to name and move your strips around your desktop. The status bar gives information about the current date, time, and names of strip items. Page tabs let you switch between different pages of buttons.

When you start up DragStrip for the first time, it will open a new untitled strip ready for use. After the first time you start up DragStrip, a new untitled strip will only appear if you close all of your other strips and launch DragStrip.

You can create an alias by dragging items from the Finder to a square on your DragStrip. When you open an alias, or click on a DragStrip button, the original item will open.

DragStrip will also open a separate default Processes strip showing the currently running processes on your Macintosh. The Processes strip is similar to the Applications menu in the upper right hand corner of the Macintosh menu bar. As you place your cursor over the process icon, the name of the process appears in the status bar of the Processes strip. The process you are currently using is indicated by a box around the process icon.

By clicking once on a process, you will make that process the frontmost active application. If you are in one application and click on a different application on the Processes strip, the application you clicked on will become active. Let's go through a simple process of making a new strip and creating our first strip.

To create a new strip:

Launch the DragStrip application by double-clicking on the icon from the DragStrip® Folder. The DragStrip® Folder is located on your hard drive.
Choose New from the File menu. This will create a new untitled strip. You also need to choose from various button size and style options (see below), which will be explained in more detail in configuration. After you have selected these options, a new strip will appear with empty buttons that you can fill with items.
Next, place an item on a strip by dragging it from the Finder onto one of the blank squares on your strip. You can drag any item from your desktop (applications, documents, folders, hard drives, etc.) onto a blank square and have it appear there. Essentially, when you drag these items, you are not physically moving the item to the strip, you are creating an alias of that item. Remember, an alias is a file that "points" to an item; when you open an alias (i.e., click on a DragStrip button) the original item will open. For a more detailed description of what types of items can be placed on your active strip, see below.

If you do not have Finder 7.1.3 or later, you will need to option-click on a blank square on your strip to install your items.

To install items on a strip without drag and drop:

First option-click on a blank square of your new strip.
Next, a standard dialog box will appear. Choose the item that you want to make an alias of on your strip.
Choose Open from the File menu.

Now your strip has an item and you're ready to go!

Saving Your Strips

By now it's probably a good idea to save your first strip. You can save your strips by going to the File menu and choosing Save or Save As.

Highlight the File menu and choose Save or Save As.
Pick the location where you want to save the strip. It is a good idea to save your strips in the DragStrip folder. Having a DragStrip area on your hard drive will make it easier to manage strips.
After picking the location, type in the name of your new strip and choose Save.

Closing a Strip

Because DragStrip is an application, a strip is simply an open document. In many word processing programs, you can have multiple documents open at the same time and switch between them; in this way, you can also have many open strips. Remember, if you close a strip and then restart DragStrip, that strip will not appear on the screen until you open it. Only previously saved strips that you leave open will automatically appear on the screen when you restart DragStrip, but your other strips will still be available, just like any other document. If you want to close an open strip, you can do this in two different ways:

Choose Close "Active Strip" under the File menu. or
Click on the close box in the upper left hand corner of the title bar of a strip.

Selecting a Strip

Switching between multiple strips can be accomplished by clicking anywhere on a strip. Since an active strip may have its title bar hidden, it will also be marked as active by a darker shadow on the bottom and left sides.

Additionally, the File menu displays the active strip name after the Close command. This is particularly useful if you have your strips displayed without title bars. Also, in the Windows menu, the active strip is indicated with a checkmark.

Deleting Items From a Strip

Dragging a strip item to the Finder trash can will delete the item from your strip, but not from your hard drive. Remember, items on strips are aliases of the real items. Therefore you are not deleting the original file, only the reference to the file on that strip.

You can also shift-click one or more items, and then choose Clear from the Edit menu, or press the Delete key to delete the selected strip items.

Rearranging Items On a Strip

Now let's rearrange items on the strip that you have just created. You can move an existing item on a strip by clicking on the item and dragging it onto a blank button on the strip itself, or you can drag to it to a blank button on another open strip.

In addition, if you option-drag an item from one location on a strip to a blank button on another open strip, that will put a copy of that item on the new button. You can also copy an item by shift-clicking on it, selecting the Copy command, clicking the pointer on the button or strip you wish to move the item to, and choosing Paste. Cut and Paste works in this manner as well. Copying items from one strip to another can also be very useful in cleaning up strips, or placing frequently used applications, files, or folders on many different strips or different pages on the same strip.

You should make room for the new items you are copying or cutting (see below) before you paste them. If you don't have room for all the items on the strip you are moving them to, DragStrip will only paste the items (consecutively) that it has room for on the strip. If you find that all the items you wanted to paste onto the new strip aren't there, resize the strip and paste them again.

Resizing a Strip

You can resize a strip by dragging on the grow box in the bottom right hand corner of the strip (see left). Strips can resize horizontally or vertically by rows or columns. Also, a strip grows button by button; you cannot make a strip smaller than will allow all of the icons on a strip to be visible, because the strip needs enough space to fit all the items. For example, if you have four items on a strip, the strip must have at least four buttons.

To resize a strip:

Select the strip you want to resize by clicking on its title bar.
While clicking and holding the grow box located in the lower right hand corner of the strip, pull out the strip to the size you want it to be.

You can also insert rows and columns into a strip by choosing Insert Row or Insert Column from the Options menu and clicking the location where you wish to insert on the currently active strip. If you just want to resize the buttons on a strip without adding new columns or rows, hold down the option key while resizing the window. This will only work if the icon style you have chosen can be resized.

Using Strips

Now we are ready to move on to a more detailed explanation of the many features and uses of DragStrip. Hold on, this is going to be a fun and fast ride!

What can DragStrip do? This section shows you all of DragStrip's functions. You can place various types of items on a strip, including applications, documents, folders, volumes, and data. Depending upon the item placed on the strip, many different functions are available to you.

Applications

Click once on an application item to launch that application.

If you drag one or more documents from the Desktop (or from a strip) and drop it onto an application item on a strip, the application will launch, attempting to open the documents you selected. For example, if you have a word processor alias on one strip, and your memo template file is on another strip, just drag your memo template alias to the word processor button. The application will then launch the application and open your document.

Hold down the Command key on your keyboard and click once on the item to reveal the item in its Finder window.

Click on an application while holding the mouse button down to produce a list of associated documents in a popup menu. These are documents that have been dropped onto that specific application strip item before. Choosing one of the menu items opens that document in the chosen application. You can change the number of documents DragStrip will hold for each application in the DragStrip preferences dialog box.

Items can be deleted from the document popup menu by choosing the document from the application document popup and holding down the Delete key while letting go of the mouse button. This will remove the chosen document from the document menu associated with that application. You can also use the Documents window to remove items from the documents list.

Documents

Clicking once on a document on a strip will launch that document in its associated application.

Dragging one or more document items onto an application item opens the document(s) in the selected application.

Holding down the Command key on your keyboard and clicking once on the item opens the enclosing folder of the selected item in the Finder.

Folders

You can click on a folder icon and hold the mouse button down to produce a list of items enclosed in that folder in a hierarchical popup menu. Choosing one of the menu items will activate that item (i.e., launch a selected application, open a selected document). The folder popup menu is hierarchical up to five levels deep. On color monitors, items in the popup menu will appear in the color of their Finder labels.

If you drag an item from the Finder over a folder listed in the hierarchical popup menu, you can place an item in that folder.

As with documents and applications, you can hold down the Command key on your keyboard and click once on the item to reveal the selected item in its Finder window.

Disks

Volumes (such as your hard drive) work much the same as folders; when clicking on unmounted volumes (such as removable media) or items from unmounted volumes, you may be presented with the Finder AppleShare password dialog box.

Storing Data On a Strip

You can drag text, pictures, sounds, URLs, and QuickTime movies to a strip and it will store them as clippings. Macintosh Drag and Drop allows you to copy select items such as text in your drag savvy word processor and drag them by selecting the items and holding down the mouse button. If the item is text or a picture, the strip will show a little bit of it on its button. If you drag them off, they go as their native data types, appearing on the desktop as clipping files. This data can also be transferred in and out of DragStrip through the clipboard.

A good rule of thumb is that whatever you can put into the scrapbook you can store on a DragStrip. Also, if you shift-click on a DragStrip cell, you can copy its data contents to the clipboard or paste contents to the strip from the clipboard. The strip can hold different kinds of data in each strip button. Thus, you can have text, pictures, and sounds all stored on the same strip. When you save the strip, the contents of the strip are stored in the strip files.

To store data:

Open a text or picture document and choose Copy from the Edit menu. This will copy the selected part(s) to the clipboard.
Select a DragStrip button by shift-clicking on it.
Next select Paste from the Edit menu. Now your data is stored in the button on the strip. By clicking on the strip and holding the mouse button down, the button contents will be displayed in a popup window (see above).

Believe or not, there are still more ways to enhance your DragStrip experience. In dealing with strips, there are preferences for the entire DragStrip program and Options for active strips. Setting global options in the Preferences dialog will help you create the new strips you need. Setting options will help you tailor an active strip. First, let's discuss Preferences; then, we'll customize a strip using Options.