Haxial Launcher Notes

About

Haxial Launcher is a program designed to make it faster and easier for you to launch/open other programs, documents, folders, or URLs. Launcher allows you to create buttons with menus that contain the items you want quick access to for launching. Alternatively you can setup abbreviations for items, for example, type "ml" into the text box, hit return, and your mail program will open (if that is how you configured it). You can also assign system-wide Hot Keys to open programs etc. For example, wherever you are, merely hit the F9 key and your web browser will open (if that is how you configured it).

Creating a Button

Click the icon that looks like [/////]. This is known as the Window Menu. Then click the "Create Button" command. This also creates a folder inside the folder named "Menubar Items" in the same folder as the Launcher program. The folder is automatically opened for you so that you can start creating aliases/shortcuts in it. The contents of the folder will appear in the menu when you click the button.

After you have finished filling the folder, go back to the Window Menu and click the "Reload Folders" command. The buttons and their menus should now reflect the contents of the "Menubar Items" folder.

You can click a button to show a menu, then drag & drop onto an item in the menu (for example, to make a file open using a certain program).

Option-click/alt-click a button to open that folder.

The buttons are optional, if you don't need the buttons, but you do want the text box launching, then just leave the "Menubar Items" folder empty and no buttons will appear, only the text box.

To delete a button, go into the folder "Menubar Items" and delete the folder corresponding to the button. Then do the "Reload Folders" command.

Abbreviation Launcher

The text box at the bottom of the main Launcher window is the Abbreviation Launcher. In order to configure it, first find the folder named "Abbrev Items" which is in the same folder as the Launcher program. Create aliases/shortcuts to programs/folders/documents/URLs in this folder and name them according to what text you would like to type in order to launch/open that item.

For example, if you create an alias/shortcut in this folder to your mail program and name it "mail", then if you type "mail" into the text box in Haxial Launcher, then hit the return key, it will be as if you had opened the alias/shortcut yourself.

Processes Window

This feature is only in the MacOS version because I do not know how to do it on Windows.

Click the Window Menu (looks like [/////]), then click the "Show Processes" command. This shows a window which lists your running programs (processes). Click one to bring it to the front. You can also drag & drop files onto a process.

Command-click an item in the Processes window to show the program file.

Hot Keys

This window lets you assign Hot Keys to open programs etc. The Hot Keys are system-wide. That means they should work from anywhere within the system, NOT only when Launcher is at the front.

Click the Window Menu (looks like [/////]), then click the "Show Hot Keys" command. Click the "Add HotKey" button to add a new Hot Key. In the window that appears, type the hot key that you want. Remember that this hot key is system-wide, so if you choose a hot key that is used in another program, Haxial Launcher will override it. Click the "Choose" button to select a program/document/folder/URL to open when the hotkey is pressed.

When you click "Save", your new hot key will appear in the list. If you later want to change or delete it, click it once.

Also in the list is a special item "Bring To Front". If you assign a hot key to this item, when you press the hot key, Haxial Launcher will bring itself to the front. This is useful when you want to use it but it is buried under other windows.

MacOS: Unfortunately, MacOS does not allow you to register a hot key without a modifier key (command, control, option, or shift). This is particularly annoying for the Fn keys. So you can have a hot key command-F8 but not F8 by itself.

MacOS 9: The Hot Keys will not work unless you have Carbon 1.5 or better installed. Earlier versions of Carbon had a bug that made the hot keys crash horribly.

Launching URL's (webpages)

You can use Haxial Launcher to launch URL's too. Open Internet Explorer, go to a webpage, then to the left of the URL you will notice an icon (a little document or a "@" icon). Drag & drop this icon and it creates an URL file which can be opened to go to that URL. You can then use this with Haxial Launcher.

MacOS: If you are using iCab, you can drag the URL from the text entry box to the desktop and it too creates a URL file. If you are using Netscape, it has a little bookmark icon next to the text box that you can also drag & drop to create an URL file.

Starting Automatically

You can make Haxial Launcher start automatically when your computer starts.

MacOS 9: Find the folder named "Startup Items" inside your "System Folder". Place an alias to the Haxial Launcher program into this folder.

Windows: In the Start menu, click "Programs", then double-click "StartUp". The StartUp folder opens when you double-click it. Place a shortcut to the Haxial Launcher program into this folder.

Changing the Appearance

Launcher supports special Color Scheme files that change its appearance. To use Color Schemes, first you need to obtain some Color Scheme files. You can download Color Scheme files from the Haxial website (www.haxial.com), or you can make your own Color Scheme using the Color Scheme Editor, which you also download from the Haxial website.

Once you have a Color Scheme file, in order to use it, first close the Launcher program. Then copy the Color Scheme file into the same folder as the Launcher program. Then rename the file to exactly "ColorScheme.dat" (with no space).

Keyboard Shortcuts

Anywhere the Command key is used following, you may also use the Control key instead.

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