You are allowed to use this program for testing and evaluation until a next version is available.
The program, in its current version, may be installed on as many machines as you like.
You are free to distribute the program provided that you include all the files in the original archive without any modification.
You are not allowed to sell the program, but can charge
a reasonable amount to cover the cost of the distribution media.
Under no circumstances will the author be liable for any loss
or damage that may be derived from the use of the program.
TabTray is the copyrighted property of Alessandro Felice
Cantatore, Bitonto, Bari, Italy.
The use of the program implies acceptance of the conditions stated above!
Introduction
Since the first days of Warp 4, while I welcomed the new WarpCenter
as an improvement over the old LaunchPad, I've always disliked the way the
WarpCenter trays were accessed: either by clicking multiple times the mouse
on an empty tray area or by selecting a tray in the trays menu.
That was just too much work for a lazy type like me!
When I had a chance to test the new xCenter/eCenter the first thing
I checked was how the tray widget worked.
While I was disappointed to find that it behaved almost exactly like
the WarpCenter one, I soon realized that, thanks to the greater flexibility
of xCenter/eCenter, it should have been relatively easy to find a solution
to save my right hand a few mouse clicks.
I wanted something that would work like the tabbed launchpad of Object
Desktop: able to bring a given tray to the top with a single mouse click.
So I thought to create an icon for each tray, drag them to the left of
the tray widget area (see the Tab Area in the picture above),
and find a way to select a tray via a click on the corresponding icon.
At first I thought that the flexibility of the xCenter/eCenter would have
allowed me to use just a simple REXX script with a proper setup string.
When I was told that such a thing was not possible, I realized that I
would have been able to write a small program to perform the
same function just by sending a proper message to the tray widget.
That solution works and, by the way, writing this document is taking much
longer than writing the code of TabTray.
Installation
TabTray consists in an executable file and this documentation file.
To make it work as described in the introduction follow these steps:
unzip the archive containing TabTray where you prefer. The TabTray files
do not need to be in a PATH directory.
now find a destination for the program objects you are going to create,
for instance: Desktop\Programs\Utilities.
Create a first program object by dragging the TABTRAY.EXE icon on the
selected folder, or by one of the other usual methods to create a program
object pointing to TABTRAY.EXE.
Write in the parameters field:
the name of the eCenter object containing the tray widget you want to
control,
the number of the tray you want to select with the current program
object (1 is the number of the topmost tray widget menu item).
Rename the program object like the tray which it controls
(the name will appear as you move the mouse over its icon in xCenter/eCenter).
Assign it a proper icon.
Drag the just created object on the left of the tray widget.
Create a new object by copying the just created program object,
changing its
settings as previously described (since step 4) so that it can control
the next tray and repeat until you have created as many objects as the
trays you want to control.
When you will have finished your xCenter/eCenter should look like the
above picture. In that sample there are 7 trays:
System (drives, command prompts, templates, config.sys, etc.)
Internet (dialer, email, news, mozilla, etc.)
Office applications
Games and multimedia applications
Development applications
Tools and utilities
Registration
This program is free and no program registration is required to use it.
