The latest free public MagicWB 2.1p is available

MagicWB 2 is completely restructured on a new color-allocation scheme, which more than doubles the speed of the Workbench and reduces chip-memory consumption to only a third compared with all previous versions. It also features a highly improved color palette. MagicWB 2.0 introduces a never-before-seen standard for over four dozens of new image-drawers to achieve a more diversified look on your workbench and to make icon searching much faster and more intuitive. New icons, patterns, fonts and an AGA support complete this latest release of MagicWB.

If you are interested in new versions of MagicWB read the text about the future of MagicWB.

New Features

• MagicWB is an SASG product.

• The conception of MagicWB has completely changed. Color allocation, management and display of the patterns and the color palette have been significantly altered and improved. It is highly recommended to update any older MagicWB version for the new color allocation system paves the way for all forthcoming MagicWB versions, also for the conceived 16-color-WB (of which the realization is dependent on the amount of registrations for this current version 2.0). Besides, many other program packages are already supporting the new color system.

• A "demon" (a special utility) is now working in the background and watches over the correct color palette display under any resolution, screen depth and on any graphics board. He takes care of the palette re-allocation when a new screen is opened and checks which patterns have to be remapped or not (OS3.x). Furthermore the user can now define his own colors for the text cursor without getting in conflict with the MagicWB palette.

• Due to the new color system MagicWB has become 2-3 times faster than any previous version, nearly as fast as the original Commodore 4-color-WB! At the same time it needs 67% less chip memory and over 50% less diskspace on the system partition. The increase of speed is enormous. Also the patterns are displayed much faster without getting dithered anymore.

• The MagicWB palette has been considerably improved, especially AGA- and graphics board users will benefit from this new palette. Because of the fine increments of the 8-bit palette (8 bits per gun) the MagicWB palette could be optimized to the maximum of perfection. The palette is a little bit darker now to compensate for the old imperfection to manually decrease the black-level (brightness) of the monitor (since the old palette has always been too bright and resulted in a loss of the 3-D-effect of MagicWB's icons and patterns). Furthermore the gradient's 3-D-effect was improved by increasing the difference of the brightness level between the colors halfshine and halfshadow. This results in a strong 3-D-effect of the brown and gray gradients. Finally, the saturation of all colors is increased which leads to a far more vivid workbench with richer colors.

• MagicWB already offers an AGA-support: Some new patterns exploit the possibilities of the AGA-Chipset by using the copper in a way which results in a workbench background with a 24-bit color-gradient. This smashing workstation-look just needs a 16-color workbench in conjunction with MagicWB and its new utility 'MagicCopper'.

• The patterns (in a new format now) will also work under OS2.x without having to be converted.

• A dozen of new patterns in the MagicWB-style were added: Wonderful backgrounds like, for example, various stone structures, marble effects, sand, paper, rain, leather and gradient logos like IntelOutside, MagicWB etc.

• All third-party icons which were displayed in a distorted color look before are now correctly displayed because of the new 'MagicWB-Demon'.

• 'IconUpdate' features a new and powerful workbench-mode: Old icons can now easily be converted to MagicWB-style icons by dragging the specified icons over an app-window and dropping them onto it (drag&drop). This guarantees a quick processing of many icons in only a few minutes.

• MagicWB 2.0 invents a new standard for the Amiga workbench: Image- Drawers! This provides the user with a far more diversified look of the workbench. Each drawer gets its own specific imagery which shows the content of the drawer. The complete 'System' partition will be equipped with the new image-drawers when installing MagicWB 2.0. Altogether over 50 different image-drawers are being supplied with the new MagicWB. This should be sufficient to cover all different categories. The placing of these special drawers is carried out by the new drag&drop feature of 'IconUpdate' that makes this task a piece-of-cake. All your partitions are set up within minutes to achieve this refurbished and decent look on your Amiga.

• The default icons have been reworked (new trashcan, drawer etc.). New default icons for other programs have been added (def_KingCON, def_MUI etc.)

• The device icons have been strongly improved and now do have the same standardized height to ensure a perfect horizontal alignment on the workbench screen. New device icons have been added (CD, Network, Cartridge, etc.)

• A new XEN-font was added: XEN/11. This font now features all characters and is perfectly suitable as a fixed width system font for higher resolutions.

• New dock-brushes were added, some old dock-brushes were improved and redesigned from scratch.

• The style of all MagicWB-Icons has been improved: The annoying blue border has disappeared and was replaced by the color halfshadow. Many old MagicWB-Icons have been improved and redesigned (e.g. Prefs) and various new icons have been added.

• The Installer was considerably improved. Installations and updates are both performed by the Installer now and the system analysis is far more precise.

• An bonus directory is included in MagicWB 2.0. It carries a couple of MagicWB-style presets for the use with other programs and some ARexx scripts for DOpus.

• MagicWB features a very special "trailer". It's a hidden gag! Let's see when you will brace yourself for this smashing experience...

• Various bugfixings were applied on the different MagicWB utilities.