Table of Contents

Old Blue Workbench

Old Blue Workbench screen

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Old Blue Workbench is a Workbench replacement for Amigas running Kickstart 1.3 written by<br>Mats Eirik Hansen with the following features:

Enhanced menus similar to Workbench 2.0.

Enhanced Workbench window and drawer windows with support for:

Window menu and Icon menu as context menus.

Lasso for selecting multiple icons.

Default icons for showing all files and drawers.

Arranging icons by name or type.

Configurable backgrounds and fonts.

Cut, Copy and Paste of files, drawers and disks.

Browser windows for browsing the file system with support for:

Optional sidebar.

Filtering by name.

Sorting by name and type.

Enhanced Info windows with support for changing icons and swapping their colors.

User defined menus.

Docks with support for drag and drop of icons.

Support for launching tools at startup.

User defined global hot keys for window management and more.

Requirements

Minimum 1MB of memory.

reqtools.library (version 38.390 for Kickstart 1.3 included).

iffparse.library (version 37.1 for Kickstart 1.3 included).

Default icons in ENVARC:Sys (included).

Installation

The included installation script will copy the required files but some changes must be made to S:Startup-Sequence manually.

Old Blue Workbench requires the ENVARC: assign for locating the default icons so add the following to<br>S:Startup-Sequence if it doesn’t already exist.

C:Assign ENVARC: SYS:Prefs/Env-Archive

To launch Old Blue Workbench instead of the original Workbench when Old Blue Workbench has been installed in SYS:Tools/OldBlue<br>replace the LoadWB command in S:Startup-Sequence with:

C:Assign OldBlue: SYS:Tools/OldBlue<br>C:Run NIL: OldBlue:LaunchDaemon<br>C:Stack 8192<br>C:Run NIL: OldBlue:Workbench STARTUPDRAWER SYS:WBStartup SHOWSTARTUP

The STARTUPDRAWER argument specifies the path to a drawer with tools and projects to launch at startup.<br>The SHOWSTARTUP argument tells Old Blue Workbench to show a window with a progress bar while launching these tools and projects.<br>The STARTPRI tool type can be set for each of the tools and projects to control the launch order.

LaunchDaemon is a background task that is used by Old Blue Workbench to launch tools and commands.<br>It makes it possible to quit Old Blue Workbench without quitting all tools launched by it.

Workbench windows

There are three types of Workbench windows that are used for navigating the file system and share most of their behavior.

Workbench window shows disk icons.

Drawer windows show the content a drawer or disk.

Browser windows are used for browsing the file system and can show all disks and the content of drawers and disks.

Mouse interaction

Clicking the mouse’s select button when the mouse pointer is over the background and dragging will extend a lasso for selecting multiple icons.

Clicking the mouse’s menu button when the mouse pointer is over an icon will deselect all selected icons and select that icon before<br>showing the Icon menu as a context menu. If the SHIFT key is pressed when clicking the mouse’s menu button then no icons<br>will be deselected.

Clicking the mouse’s menu button when mouse pointer is over the background will show the Window menu as a context menu.

Keyboard interaction

Cursor keys can be used to scroll the content of the windows. Pressing a SHIFT key while using the cursor keys will scroll to the end points,<br>and pressing an ALT key will scroll only a single pixel.

Workbench window

Workbench window

The Workbench window shows disk icons and can be a backdrop window or a normal window with a titlebar, resize gadget and scrollbars.<br>Whether the window is a backdrop window or a normal window is set in the Project menu.

By default the Workbench window will position icons without a saved position from top to bottom on the right side of<br>the window but this can be changed in the Workbench Appearance tab in the<br>Appearance Settings window.

The Workbench window also supports opening a browser window by double clicking the background.<br>This functionality is disabled by default but can be enabled in the General Setting window.

Drawer windows

Drawer window

Drawer windows show the contents of a drawer or disk and there will always only be one drawer window for a drawer or disk open.<br>Trying to open another drawer window will only bring the existing drawer window to the front.

By default a drawer window shows only files and drawers that have an icon but this can be changed in the Icon menu.

Browser windows

Browser window

Browser windows are used for browsing the file system.<br>They have much of the same functionality as drawer windows but there are some major differences.

A browser window has a navigation bar with the following items from left to right:

A Back button going back in the path history.

A Forward button going forward in the path history.

A Parent button that can be used for making the browser window show the content of the parent drawer...