Quick Switch V1.01 April 13, 1992 1. General introduction Have you ever had a hard time in finding a desired window buried under many windows? Quick Switch (QS) is designed to simplify the MS-Windows operation in switching windows effortlessly. By simply holding down the right mouse button, you will get a list of all windows currently open, or you can make all of them minimized at once on the desktop (screen). The list will show you icons and associated window names in a clear fashion. You can double-click an icon in the list to activate the corresponding window. V1.01 contains fixes for minor bugs found under Windows 3.1. 2. How to use it. Once QS is run, operation is very easy; simply hold down the right mouse button for a short period of time (the default is 500 milliseconds). Then the QS listing will show up. Again, hold down the right mouse button. Then QS will minimize itself to an icon. While you are displaying the QS listing, double-click a desired application's icon. Then you can switch to that application. Once you select an application in this way, QS will minimize itself until you hold down the right mouse button to re-activate QS. You can display in the QS listing top level windows only or with child windows. The relationship between a parent window and its child windows will be clearly indicated by connecting lines showing the structure. By single-clicking the QS window's client area with the right mouse button, display level (top level only or including child windows) can be instantly changed. If the application which you are running supports multiple documents as child windows, then double-click the icon of an child window in the QS listing. You will be activating the parent window for the corresponding application with a selected document in the active child window. Since the Program Groups in the Windows Program Manager are handled in a form of multiple documents, this is very useful to switch the Program Groups within the Windows Program Manager. This feature is also useful in switching documents if you are working on multiple documents in a wordprocessing or similar application which supports the multiple documents as child windows. If the QS mode is set to minimizing all windows at QS activation time, holding down the right mouse button will minimize all windows currently open and arrange them on the desktop at once. Once all windows are minimized and arranged on the desktop, activating a desired window can be done in a regular way of double-clicking an icon. When the right mouse button is held down while all windows are minimized, QS will be activated and show the QS listing with all windows currently running. Double-clicking an icon in the list will activate the corresponding window. In many cases, if a dialog box is shown on the screen, its parent window is locked and it is not easy, if not impossible, to switch to other application. If you hold down the right mouse button in the dialog box area, then QS will be activated and you can switch applications. This is useful, for example, to switch to other application while the application you have been working on is suspended for printing, or some other reason. 3. Installation To fully appreciate the handiness of QS, it should be running all the time as a background task so that it is ready for activation in response to holding down the right mouse button. To easily accomplish this, it is suggested to load QS as an icon at the start up time of Windows by editing WIN.INI file as follows: [windows] load=drive:\subdirectory\QS.EXE 4. Option setting. If you select Option in the menu, you will see a dialog box in which you have a couple of option setting selections: (1) QS mode. This option is to select either QS should, at its activation, list the currently open windows or make all of them minimized. (2) Display level. This option is to tell QS weather child windows should be displayed along with their parent windows. Whichever is setup in the option selection, single-clicking of the right mouse button toggles this setting. The new setting changed by single-clicking is only valid until QS is terminated, unless you save the option setting, . (3) Do not display initial help screen. If checked, the help screen will not be displayed when QS is activated first time. (4) Disable QS activation temporarily. If checked, QS will not be activated even if the right mouse button is held down for a specified period of time. (5) QS Activation timer. QS will activate itself after detecting that the right mouse button is held down for certain period of time specified by this parameter. The timer value should be in milliseconds. (6) Make the changes permanent. If Yes is selected, then QS.INI profile will be updated. If No is selected, the changes will be temporary. 5. QS profile All the setup options in the Option screen will be kept in the QS profile, QS.INI. The format of QS.INI is similar to other .INI files, like WIN.INI. With QS.INI, you can have a primary profile and a secondary profile, whereby the secondary profile is optional. The primary profile should be stored in the same subdirectory with the QS program file QS.EXE. If the primary profile contains IniDir= keyword parameter with valid drive/subdirectory name, QS gets all setup parameters from the secondary profile stored in the subdirectory specified by IniDir= keyword in the primary profile by superseding the setups in the primary profile. The IniDir keyword in the secondary profile will be ignored, if any. This feature is useful in LAN environment so that individual users can maintain their own profile while they can share the QS program file on a file server. Keyword in the profile: [QuickSwitch] This is the section name for QS. Mode: QS mode Mode=List Mode=Icon TopLevelOnly: Display level TopLevelOnly=Yes TopLevelOnly=No InitHelp: Weather to display the help screen at the beginning. InitHelp=Yes Inithelp=No Disable: Weather to disable QS activation temporarily. Disable=Yes Disable=No ActivationTimer: QS activation timer in milliseconds example: ActivationTimer=500 IniDir: The secondary profile drive/subdirectory example: IniDir=H:\INI\QS 6. Irregularity In some cases, an icon in the QS listing may not exactly be the one assigned for that application. Such application includes, for example, a DOS session or Clock in Accessaries of Windows 3.1. This is because these applications may be drawing icons on its own and QS could not identify the icons. In some cases, when a child window's icon is double-clicked in the QS listing, other child window may come up as an active window in the parent window. This is because the activated child window is in a special status, thus switching to the double- clicked window is not desirable. For example, while a WordPerfect document is in Print Preview mode or Figure Edit mode, and if other document's icon is double clicked in the QS listing, the document in Print Preview mode or Figure Edit mode will be activated as a child window in the WordPerfect parent window. This is done by QS to reflect the actual behavior seen in the manual operations of WordPerfect. 7. History V1.0 April 1, 1992 Original V1.01 April 13, 1992 Minor bug fix 8. Registration This is a shareware program. If you think Quick Switch is useful for you please register it for $5 per copy. K. Yoshimura 18 Somerstown Rd Ossining, NY 10562 CompuServe: 72371,3237