Author Topic: Improving OS/2 Desktop Experience? What do you use?  (Read 7992 times)

Martin Iturbide

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Improving OS/2 Desktop Experience? What do you use?
« on: August 13, 2016, 06:33:15 pm »
Hi

I was wondering what does OS/2 users uses to improve their experience with the OS/2 Desktop and use of the GUI.
This is more about personal choice and there is not right or wrong answer.

I was wondering if anybody will like to answer one or several of this questions:
- What user interface improvement related software do you like to use on OS/2?
- How do you like to personalize/configure that software? or In which way do you like to use it?
- Do you have some preferred way to organize the icons on the desktop?
- Any other trick/tips/teaks that you recommend doing on the OS/2 GUI?

If you want to share an screenshot you are welcome too.

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Martin Iturbide
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Joop

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Re: Improving OS/2 Desktop Experience? What do you use?
« Reply #1 on: August 13, 2016, 07:53:08 pm »
- What user interface improvement related software do you like to use on OS/2?
I use XWorkplace, but its a real pain to install or de-install this program. Its some kind of bottle neck. I ended up with total reinstall my desktop from scratch. And its very hidden in the structure of OS/2.  The version I have does screw up now and then. I thought it would give more then what was delivered with OS/2, wrong. Things I like to see in it is more grip on the machine and system. For instance what is sending out on the line to the router, in other words more control. Now I only see a graph. Few things are really difficult to install , not well described within OS/2 and therefore not much used. And last but definite not least, English is not Dutch and some message can be translated into Dutch in more then one way and all make sense. So what is OS/2 telling me, most of the times this happens when something is going horribly wrong and choices are important. Wrong choice and you can start all over. So I'm not pleased with that the new version (Blue Lion)will come almost one year AFTER the English version. Reason they can't do all languages in one time, but I don't buy that.
- How do you like to personalize/configure that software? or In which way do you like to use it?
Don't know what you want to hear,. but I think there must be some sort of setup.
- Do you have some preferred way to organize the icons on the desktop?
None, simply because your programs which you use are already on the desktop, so all icons are hidden. Its more management of your desktop which is the problem, I have Xpager, but don't use it too much then only 1 slide occupied.
- Any other trick/tips/teaks that you recommend doing on the OS/2 GUI?
Recommend is a big word. When all programs are closed you see only the background. With hiding XWorkplace active a visitor don't have a glue how to proceed. The only thing I can recommend is to kick your mouse in the bucket (RSI, also if you don't feel anything, its a slow growing problem and when you feel it, its already too late.) and get a tablet. You then point direct to the things you want to do instead of dragging the pointer to a specific place (which causes the RSI). I was amazed by the fact that my Wacom Bamboo package is downloaded about 10-15 times each month!

ivan

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Re: Improving OS/2 Desktop Experience? What do you use?
« Reply #2 on: August 13, 2016, 11:45:54 pm »
Martin, you know that you will get almost as many different answers as there are people using OS/2.

- What user interface improvement related software do you like to use on OS/2?

XWorkplace and win95key

- How do you like to personalize/configure that software? or In which way do you like to use it?

For XWorkplace I have a standard set of options for number of desktop archives, modifying program objects with icon pages.
win95key setup depends on which keyboard I use and how many extra keys they have.
 
- Do you have some preferred way to organize the icons on the desktop?

See screenshot of my home desktop which also gets used for testing.

- Any other trick/tips/teaks that you recommend doing on the OS/2 GUI?

The things I do to setup the desktop are, I expect, very different from what anyone else would do so I don't have any thing to recommend here.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Improving OS/2 Desktop Experience? What do you use?
« Reply #3 on: August 15, 2016, 06:22:12 pm »
Thanks for sharing.

A tool that I also like is lSwitcher to replace the Alt+Tab menu on OS/2.  I don't use it's "taskbar", but just the "Popup Window". I like to set it as "sticky" so I can also use the arrows to select to which app to switch.

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Martin Iturbide
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roberto

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Re: Improving OS/2 Desktop Experience? What do you use?
« Reply #4 on: August 19, 2016, 02:54:55 pm »
Hello
It has several advantages , with one clik , you can bring up your entire desktop.
It lets you have exe files in the newdesktop smoothly.
In fact the w10 , has a button on the taskbar to bring to the front desktop .

I send my desktop and the folder newdesktop. 
Saludos
Roberto

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Improving OS/2 Desktop Experience? What do you use?
« Reply #5 on: August 22, 2016, 07:38:54 pm »
Hi. Let me know any other "widgets" that you like to use on the desktop.

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Martin Iturbide
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Greggory Shaw

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Re: Improving OS/2 Desktop Experience? What do you use?
« Reply #6 on: August 23, 2016, 06:20:09 pm »
Zip/Unzip & many other features from Desktop Wizard:

http://os2notes.net/os2dwizard.html


Martin could you send me the code for zipzap now that it's open source.


Greggory

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Improving OS/2 Desktop Experience? What do you use?
« Reply #7 on: August 23, 2016, 07:43:46 pm »
Hi Gregg.

Thanks for sharing.

I have the source code of ZipZap also on the Github. https://github.com/OS2World/UTIL-WPS-ZipZap

Or the full package at hobbes. But I really like github since you have fork it and do whatever you want with it, and share the source code at the same time.

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Martin Iturbide
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xynixme

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Re: Improving OS/2 Desktop Experience? What do you use?
« Reply #8 on: March 25, 2019, 04:43:32 pm »
Can someone reproduce at least the the main binary of ZipZap with any of both *.MAK files?

Here it fails with the toolkit's 4.52 SOM header file syntax errors, AFAIK, after replacing all "H:\ZIPZAP"s in both make files by an own subdirectory.

Apart from maybe modernizing ZIP args (-y), it may be quite easy to translate this WPS app. Hence the question.