ButtonMenu 1.23

by Oliver Roberts

"There are plenty of `launch pad' utilities available for the Amiga - programs which allow you to run your most commonly-used applications by clicking on a gadget or selecting a pull-down menu item rather than having to click through endless directories to find the program's icon. Most of these utilities simply allow you to extend the Workbench Tools menu so that you can run a programby selecting it from there.

ButtonMenu, on the other hand, takes a slightly different approach. It enables you to create a window on your Workbench screen which contains a specified number of buttons, each of which can be assigned to a program. You can, for example, assign a button to DPaint, another to Pixel 3D Professional, another to PageSetter 2 and so on. When you click on a particular button, ButtonMenu then loads that program into memory.

Included with the program is a separate editor to create a file containing all the information for your buttons. Thanks to this utility, setting up your own custom button window is easy. ButtonMenu is a brilliantly-executed utility."

(Review by Jason Holborn, Amiga Format Issue 65 - November 1994)

ButtonMenu was also listed in the Amiga Shopper PD Top 100.

However that was a review of V1.00, and the current version has progressed somewhat, so here is a brief list of the significant new features:

• Keyboard shortcuts are now supported by each button
• Each button can now do 2 things (eg 1 - load prog, 2 - load doc)
• New look menus when running on KS 3.0 (or higher) systems
• Zoom gadget on menu windows created
• Added Workbench support
• ButtonMenus can now act as a kind of requester (ie one choice)
• Added a Test option to the ButtonMenu creator
• As well as the window opening in the top left of the screen, you now have the option to make it open in the centre of the screen or relative to the mouse pointer
• Executable size is now reduced (ButtonMenu executor is now less than 7K)
• The ButtonMenu executor can now be made resident
• A few bug fixes

You might want to have a look at a couple of screenshots of ButtonMenu.

And if that has impressed you you might wish to download the latest version.

• Reviewed in Amiga Format - November 1994 issue
• Appeared on the Amiga Format Subscriber's Superdisk - December 1994 issue
• Appeared on an Amiga Computing coverdisk - February 1995 issue
• Featured in the Amiga Shopper PD Top 100 - March 1995 issue

Last modified: Thu Aug 15 22:22:36 1996

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