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DragStrip®What's new in DragStrip 3.6
DragStrip 3.6 supports a plethora of new features over versions 1.x and 2.x:
Strips can be broken down into multiple pages. Each page has its own page color and can contain as many items as the strip can hold. Pages are a great way of organizing your strips based on the projects you are working on or the applications you use frequently. When page tabs are visible, you will see the page's name in a tab along one edge of the strip. Page tabs can be drawn along the top, bottom, left and right side of the strip, or they can be hidden entirely. Even when page tabs are hidden, you can switch between pages by pressing the option-tab key combination.
Background Patterns for Pages and Buttons
You can now set a pattern for each page. That pattern can be drawn on the page background and the buttons, or just the background. This lets you create really vibrant looking strips.
Improved Support for MacOS 8.5
DragStrip 2.0.1 was named as one of the best utilities to go along with MacOS 8 by MacWorld magazine. DragStrip 3.6 takes that even farther by supporting key MacOS 8 technologies like Contextual Menus and the Appearance Manger.
Holding down the control key while clicking on a strip brings up a popup menu that gives you options to change the item you just clicked on. If you control click on a DragStrip button that contains a file, you can do things like open it, rename it on the strip, reveal it in the Finder, set its label, quit running applications, and more. Since DragStrip supports MacOS 8 Contextual Menus, you can also use any of the CMM plugins on the file that the button references. Some of these options include compressing files with popular compression applications, changing the file's type or creator or making an alias to it in another folder.
There are also contextual menus for DragStrip page tabs, Processes Strip items, and the status area of a strip. Contextual menus are also supported in MacOS versions 7.6 and earlier, though Contextual Menu Manager plugins will not work in earlier system versions. DragStrip windows now support the new MacOS 8 Appearance manager. This new window appearance allows you to "window shade" the window simply by clicking the window shading widget in the title bar. They also maintain the modern gray appearance. DragStrip 3.6 also supports the new Navigation Services and Icon Services in MacOS 8.5. New Strip StylesDragStrip comes with several predefined strip styles. Styles are groups of settings that are remembered and can be applied to other strips. The "Default" style is the one that is used whenever you create a new strip. You can create new styles based on the settings in the frontmost strip by selecting "Create Style From Current Strip...". You can apply a style to any strip by selecting that style's name from the Strip Styles submenu. If you hold down the option key, you will apply all of the stored strip settings for that style. Without the option key, DragStrip only applies color information.Strip styles are a great way of copying all of the strip configurations between strips and making all of your strips look alike. More Button StylesDragStrip 2.0 supported five different button styles. DragStrip 3.6 includes the new "Tiled" button style. Click here to see the different button styles.Simpler ConfigurationIn addition to support for Contextual Menus, which make working with strips much simpler, DragStrip 3.0 and later supports a "Simple Menus" mode which removes some of the power user settings from the Options menu. When the "Expert Menus" item is chosen, those power user settings are available again. Enabling "Simple Menus" makes accessing more commonly used features of that menu much, well, simpler.The DragStrip preferences dialog has also been simplified, removing several panels while maintaining the immense flexibility that has been so popular. Finally, the DragStrip Trash icon has been removed. Users of DragStrip 2.0.1 used the DragStrip trash can to remove items from strips but now this can be done by either selecting items and hitting the Delete key, or by dragging them to the Finder trash can.
Plug-in tools can be very powerful. If you are a developer and are interested in writing a plug-in tool, contact us for more information. The Color Picker is the first tool available for DragStrip 3.0 or later. As others are released, they will be posted at the Poppybank Software web site.
Tool TipsWhen a strip is configured to have only icons showing and no status bar, it is sometimes convenient to be able to see the name of the item that the cursor is over. When this option is turned on, you a small box will appear below the item that the cursor is over showing the name of the item. These boxes are often referred to as "Tool Tips".Window AnchoringWhen you are trying to line up DragStrip windows with each other or with the edge of the screen, DragStrip will try to help with the alignment by automatically locking the window right next to another window, or the edge of the screen.Automatic File Name UpdatingWhen the name of a file that has been added to the strip changes, DragStrip will automatically update its name on the strip to match.Resizing Strip ButtonsIf you hold down the option key while resizing a window, the buttons will be resized to fit in the larger or smaller window. If you do not hold down the option key, the number of rows and columns of buttons on the strip will change. This is a quicker way of changing the button sizes for icon styles that support resizing. These icon styles are large icon with name, small icon with name, no icon with name, and variable. Click here to see the different icon styles.Improved AppleScript SupportDragStrip 3.0 or later's AppleScript support has been updated to support accessing buttons on any page. You can also change pages via scripts as well as setting page properties.View Full Paths to FilesIf the status bar is showing and you hold down the option key while hovering over an item, the full path the the item will be displayed in the status bar. Holding down the shift key also displays the file type and creator code for the file.Status Bar can be on Top or BottomThe status bar can either be on the top or the bottom of the strip. It can also appear on the left or right side, if the strip is rotated.Simplified Color ConfigurationIn DragStrip 1 and 2, you had to configure the light and dark hilight colors for strips. Now these are automatically determined based on the button or page color.Importing Strips From DragThingIf you currently use DragThing as your launcher, you can select Open... from the File menu, then choose the DragThing Preferences file in the Preferences folder of your System Folder and DragStrip will automatically import your DragThing docks and create DragStrip strips. This will not change your DragThing settings in any way.Even more!Click here to see the changes since version 3.0.
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Last Updated: 07-Dec-98
Copyright © 1997-1998 Poppybank Software
These are files that can be added to the Tools folder which add functionality to the application. The first tool is called the Color Picker. When the Color Picker is installed in the Tools folder, a new menu item appears in the Windows menu called "Color Picker". Choosing this menu item opens the Color Picker window which can be used to configure the colors on DragStrips.
You can click on any of these colors and drag them to a part of a strip. When you do this, the part of the strip you dropped the color on will use that color. For example to change the color of a page tab, you can drag a color from the DragStrip Color Picker and drop it on the page tab you want to change.
