Aaron Light 1.0
Author: Greg Landweber
Shareware: $5.00
Greg Landweber has done it again! I thought that there was nothing else that Greg could possibly do to enhance the look of the Mac OS once System 8 was released. I thought wrong.
Many third party applications retain the old System 7.x look, even when you’re running Mac OS 8. Aaron Light patches the progress bars, floating windows, and dialog box backgrounds. Aaron Light also substitutes the Espy Sans Bold 10 font for Chicago 12.
Installation of Aaron Light is just like installing any system extension. Drop it in your System Folder and restart. If you want to use Espy Sans Bold 10 as your System font, you must to select “Chicago” in your appearance control panel and restart. If you would rather keep “Charcoal” as your System font, as I do, you can keep that selected and Aaron Light won’t activate Espy.
I found absolutely no conflicts with any of my programs. I did experience a problem with Aaron Light in that it would only show the “Lavender” accent color to patch the progress bars on my machine, but this isn’t major because I, like many users, use the “Lavender” accent anyways.
The Summary
Aaron Light is truly a great enhancement. This extension was needed, and I’m glad that Mr. Landweber was the first to make it. Until the majority of third party applications are updated with the Mac OS 8 look, I would recommend this extension to anyone running Mac OS 8. Download it today!
Download Aaron Light 1.1
Author: Turlough O’Connor
Freeware
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/2573
FinderPop is a control panel that adds 3 submenus to any contextual menu in the Finder. It adds a “Processes” menu, a “Contents” menu, and a “FinderPop” submenu. These 3 menus don’t replace any of the Finder’s normal contextual menu items, they are simply added in.
The Processes menu allows you to see how much free RAM you have available, and what programs are currently open, letting you easily switch between them, thus eliminating a trip up to the application menu. When you control-click on any folder, the contents menu will show, letting you see the contents of the folder without having to open it. If there are other folders inside the folder you control-click on, you can also navigate through those hierarchically, totally eliminating the need to open any folders.
Finally, there is the “FinderPop” submenu, which allows you to put aliases of any files in the folder, allowing you to have easy access to those items any time you use a contextual menu.
The Summary
FinderPop is a wonderful utility, and since it’s a control panel and not contextual menu plug-ins, it lets you be as organized or unorganized as you like. Contextual menu plug-ins are a very good idea, and very useful, but if you want to utilize the full power of contextual menus, you need FinderPop.
Download FinderPop 1.4b3
Author: Jeff Krueger
Shareware: $10.00
http://www.citilink.com/~silver
Window Tamer initially sounded like a good utility that is simple to use. It claims that it can automatically set preferences for windows, eliminating the need to use the “view options” command to set preferences. I was excited!
So, of course, I downloaded it. I read the read me file, and then installed it, thinking I knew how to use it. I followed all the instructions, and was able to set what preferences I wanted to use to tame other windows. But when I tried to tame a window using my modifier key while clicking the window’s zoom box, it said that I can only tame 5 windows, and that I needed to restart to use Window Tamer.
So I restarted, tried to tame one, only one window, but it changed it to a list view! When I saved my settings, I had it on small icon view. If that wasn’t enough, when I tried to tame another window, it gave me the annoying shareware message again, telling me I had to restart! Excuse me, but I only tamed one window, not five as the Read Me file says. Talk about a program being buggy.
You may think that I didn’t read or follow the instructions well, but believe me, I did. Actually, I read them three times! And it still did not work on either of my Power Macs, a 6400 or the 6100.
The Summary
I have had an extremely bad experience with Window Tamer. I couldn’t get it to work, plain and simple. And worse yet, even if I could have gotten it to work, it would still only allow me to tame one window before restarting. Hardly enough trial usage time to justify a $10.00 shareware fee.
Download Window Tamer 1.0.1 68k Download Window Tamer 1.0.1 PPC
*****
All of the programs reviewed here require Mac OS 8, and thus only run on 68040 and PowerPC-based Macs. They can be downloaded at the My Mac Software Library, at https://www.mymac.com/software.
Adam Karneboge (webmaster@mymac.com)
URL’s
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/2573
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