New Menus for Windows 1.46

The kernel of the program is a replacement for the Program Manager in a popup menu format, which you can popup at any time with the right or middle mouse button. This popup menu can have as many submenus (like subdirectories in a file system) as you like. The menu items can be programs, documents or function calls. But the popup menu is not a simple, normal, windows popup menu. It doesn't look like one and it behaves differently. An icon and description are displayed for all programs and documents Ad libitum. These icons can have a size of 32, 24 or 16 pixels - it is even possible to represent menu items as animated icons. By default the icons of the programs, or of the applications associated with documents, are shown. You can also customise the icons. The font and font size is also configurable. For each submenu, you can choose to display the text only, the icon only or both.

To frame a menu item, you can choose between 4 styles, of which one simulates the Design of Motif and another of OpenLook. From OpenLook, another idea is implemented for Windows: every (sub-)menu can be stuck onto the desktop.

You can install new menu items similar to the Program Manager Menu Groups or Menu Items. Installation of new menu items is supported by dialogues or via drag'n drop. During installation, the Program Manager groups are converted into menu items. When working with documents, you do not have to install each file as a menu item. New Menus for Windows supports wild cards, which automatically fill submenus with matching files. It is also possible to include parts of a file system into the menu structure: The subdirectories are submenus and all files are menu items. These dynamically built menu items can be sorted by name, extension, date or size (also in reverse order).

If you stick a (sub-)menu on your desktop you can use it as a button bar, which also supports drag'n’drop with the File manager. With a menu item you can do more than launch a program or open a file: You can declare Keyboard macros or you can call a system-function of Windows or of another DLL. Whole submenus can be executed as batches. In a Tasks-Submenu you can switch between your running applications - which are shown with their icons and titles - hide windows, or terminate the applications. In another Submenu you can switch between your installed printers, invoke their property-dialogue or drag files to print on a specific printer. In a submenu called History, all executed items are listed as a command history. Other special features are only listed by name: Rebooting Windows, rebooting DOS; quit Windows - execute DOS-program - restart Windows, Save all documents in all programs; Close all applications; the layout functions of Taskman; Save Desktop (window positions); Kill a window; etc. The access to Submenus is highly customizable, several mouse button / keyboard combinations are supported (also an emulation of the middle mouse button). You can assign a global hotkey to each submenu or menu item (in combination with keyboard macros you can also redefine your keyboard layout). To jump quickly from one Submenu to another, you can use shortcuts.

From the X-Window system, two more ideas are implemented in New Menus for Windows. With a built in Virtual Desktop you can magnify your desktop into 64 virtual desktops. You can access any one of the virtual desktops by clicking in the Virtual Desktop viewer.

Known by OpenLook and Motif, is the possibility to activate a window just by moving the mouse cursor. With one mode of the XMouse feature you can automatically bring the window up to the front of all other windows by only moving the mouse into any part of the window. With the other mode, the window under the mouse cursor will be activated, but the order of the window stack will not be changed.

If you select a normal drop down menu of a windows application with the right mouse button (e.g. the "Edit" menu in Write) you get a new designed menu. Besides the nicer (customisable) look of this menu you can stick it onto the desktop and use it as a button bar. That is, if you have to switch between several documents in a multi-document based program often, you can stick the menu "Window" onto the desktop and have quick access. The System menu is also enhanced - here is the key to a nicer and more functional System menu with the right mouse button. The standard functions in the System menu are also illustrated with icons. Instead of the item "switch to..." you get a Submenu with all Tasks. You can hold each window at the top of the desktop (like the clock). You can append more menu items and submenus to the system menu.

Enhancement of windows controls with

More and more applications use the right mouse button to give a quicker context sensitive access to objects the mouse points at. New Menus provides some context sensitive menus which are 'forgotten' by Windows:

Edit controls (e.g. notepad): Copy; Cut; Insert; Undo; Mark all; Search; Save (ANSI, ASCII, UNIX); convert all lower or higher case; statistics. Format paragraphs with left margin, left, middle, center or right and left align.

List boxes: Copy the string of the marked item.

Scroll Bars: Up, down, left, right.

File-Manager: Copy marked files / directory as text string (which

you can use as arguments for other programs); Load file in FileViewer

or FileEditor; Print File; file operations (copy, move, etc.).

DOS-Box: Mark; Copy; Insert

New Menus for Windows supports different configurations for different users and network administration. A password protected user login is available. For the different users different restrictions can be configured.

New Menus has very lean runtime resource requirements. It needs at minimum ca. 40kB non discardable RAM and 2% of the system-resources, which does not depend on the size of the menu structure. What you need is Windows 3.1(1) or WfW. New Menus supports all mice and trackballs, but you can also use the Menu without a mouse.