Desktop Wizard 1.41 Review

By User:SXwamp

The primary goal of Desktop Wizard 1.41 is to make the OS/2 user more productive by adding new items to the pop-up menus of files, folders and the Desktop, and it adds excellent zip/unzip integration to the desktop.

Unzip and ZIP files
The most useful and natural feature is the unzip menu. Clicking this entry causes the contents of the zip file to be placed in a new subdirectory of the main unzip folder that you specify. The name of this new subdirectory is the same as the name of the zip file, but without the .zip at the end. This makes it easy to unzip any zip file - Desktop Wizard does all the rest, even opening the related directories, if so desired. It can also create a shadow on desktop for easy access, click on image below.

Drag/Drop on ZIP file adds files
Forgot that one file? This setting allows adding files to existing zip files simply by dragging and dropping the files to be added onto any existing zip file. Folders, including all their subfolders and any files the subfolders or the main folder may contain, can also be added, simply by dropping. If a shadow of a file or folder is dropped, the original file or folder is considered to have been dropped.

Menu Filtering with Recall
Tired of 26 items on your system menu? Enabling this item allows all the items in the Menu Filtering section which are checked to reappear on the pop-up menu when a modifier key is held. In the graphic, F2 is selected as the modifier key. The possible choices for modifier keys are F2-F9. To see the entire menu, hold down the modifier key which you have selected while getting the pop-up for the file. If this particular key is not being held while the menu is called, then the items with check marks on the Menu Filtering list will not appear.

Drag/drop auto-prompt dialog box
Enabling this setting causes a dialog box to pop up every time an object is dragged and dropped from one folder to another. The default for OS/2 is to move an object which is dragged and dropped. Instead of moving the object, Desktop Wizard causes a dialog box with five buttons on it to pop up. The five choices are "Copy", "Move", "Shadow", "Migrate program object to folder" and "Cancel". No action is taken until a button is pressed.

The auto-prompt dialog can be overridden by using the keyboard at the same time the object is dragged and dropped. The keys used are the same as the standard keys for copy and shadow as OS/2 normally uses:  = copy;  = create shadow). To move a file without the prompt,  is used.

Other Features
What are the features and functions Desktop Wizard adds?
 * Use 4OS2.EXE (OS/2) and 4DOS.COM (DOS) for command line a popular alternatives, due to its more numerous features.
 * User selected icon for all ZIP files


 * Unpack/show packed files menu support (uses unpack.exe included with OS/2)
 * Built in menu support for disk image files (requires makedskf.exe, loaddskf.exe, and xdfcopy.exe)


 * Automatic display of statistics in the titlebar of a folder (not recursive)
 * Pop-up item for statistics for folders (recursive or not recursive) or files
 * Pop-up item for command line opened from object's directory (OS/2 or DOS windowed/full-screen)
 * Pop-up menu item for the Get Files dialog, which allows opening remote folders (4 different views), copying - deleting - moving files, creating program references or shadows, and removing attributes from files

It's best to just stay with the main features until you READ THE MANUAL! And there are many different ways to configure the features, so read everything!

Conclusions
Desktop Wizard is everything that should have been in OS/2 from the beginning. I have been using it for about the last ten years when it was called NFNF. Unfortunately the author no longer supports it, but since OS/2 is not changing, there should be some years left for this program!