
                 Setting up your First Menu


         This file is a brief tutorial to assist you in setting up your first UtilityLaunch menu. If you have received the UtilityLaunch distribution disk, setup is very easy. The folder named SYSTEM contains the UtilityLaunch Program and a file named UL.Menus. The UL.Menus file contains three completely set up menu screens which serve as samples of the types of menus you can create with UtilityLaunch. The UL.Menus.Empty file in the SYSTEM folder is empty, and contains no sample menus. If you have downloaded UtilityLaunch from an on-line service, you will also have the files UtilityLaunch, UL.Menus (with the samples), and UL.Menus.Empty (the empty UL.Menus file). The easiest way to install UtilityLaunch is to use the Install files contained in the main directory with Apple's System 6 Installer.If you do not use the Install files, you will need to rename UtilityLaunch to START using the Finder or UtilityWorks for some of the configurations mentioned below.

         Before you begin, make a copy of your UtilityLaunch disk, and always work with this copy, not your master disk. To give you a better idea of how UtilityLaunch works, place the UtilityLaunch disk (the copy you made) in your disk drive, and open this disk with the Finder. Now double click on the UtilityLaunch program to execute it. In a few moments a UtilityLaunch menu screen will appear that contains sixteen icon buttons. Press the tab key and you will see a UtilityLaunch menu screen full of colored buttons. (If for some reason a screen with a yellow background and full of empty buttons appears, the UL.Menus file is missing and you have entered the UtilityLaunch setup mode because no current menus are present). The buttons for the most part will not be functional on your computer, because undoubtedly your hard disk is set up differently from mine. Therefore, I do not recommend that you actually press any of these buttons. Pressing the buttons will not really do any damage, but some will alter the contents of your control panel, and change your slots, speed, and color settings. The samples are mainly provided to assist you in learning how to create menus. The settings can be printed out or viewed on the screen as discussed in the UtilityLaunch Reference. 

         Now lets set up our first menu. Pull down the file menu in the menu bar and select Open Setup. You will note that the background changes to an orange color (Edit mode). Now pull down the menus menu in the menu bar and select Menu 1. A yellow background (Insert mode) will now appear on a screen containing 40 simple buttons. Now pull down the menu bar again and select Icon Menu. The screen now shows 16 much larger buttons. Click the mouse on any one of these buttons and you will note that a file selection dialog appears. This dialog contains a list of all of the  programs you can launch in the current folder. You can select another folder from the list by double clicking on the folder or by single clicking on the folder and then clicking on the Open button. You can click on the Volumes button to see files available on any other disk. Select a file you want to launch. For a first menu you might want to go to your AppleWorks directory and select AppleWorks. The file is probably named APLWORKS.SYSTEM. Just double click on your desired file. This selects it for your menu. Now another list of files appears allowing you to select an icon for the menu button. The folder shown is the ICON folder in your BOOT volume. You can actually go to any folder, but let's use one of these files for the time being. Select any one of these icon files. You will now see a dialog containing a box in the center which shows the first icon in the icon file you have selected. Click on the H button to go to the next icon in the file and on the G button to go to the previous icon in the file. Some icon files only contain a single icon so this action may have no effect. Find any icon you want to use for this button and click on OK. Now a Name entry box will appear to enter the button name you want to use. Either use the default name or enter your desired name and press OK. That's all there is to it. You have created your first menu button.

         Now let's save the menu we have just created so that we can use it. Pull down the File menu and select Open Launcher. You will see an Alert asking you to Save the menu. Press OK. You will now be asked to enter a menu name. Choose any name you desire and press OK. The menu you have just created is now saved. Press this newly created menu button now and the program will be launched. When you have finished with the launched program, exit it in the normal manner and you will return to the UtilityLaunch menu screen. You will probably return to the original icon button screen you saw when you first ran UtilityLaunch, because this has been set up as the default menu. The default menu can easily be changed as discussed in the UtilityLaunch documentation.

         The above is a quick tutorial to get you started in setting up your first menu. Many more options and capabilities exist in UtilityLaunch. These are fully discussed in the documentation. Most users will never need most of these features, so donUt be intimidated by them. If you donUt need the features donUt use them. But if you do need them, UtilityLaunch provides some of the most powerful launcher features available. 

         You will probably want to move UtilityLaunch to your hard drive. If you want it to become your normal Launcher, replacing the Finder, rename your current START file in the Boot disk's SYSTEM directory to Finder unless there already is a file named Finder in your System directory (which there normally is for System 6), and copy the UtilityLaunch file along with the UL.Menus file to the SYSTEM folder of your BOOT disk. If you are using System 6, installation is easiest if you use one of the installation scripts described below.

     Several System 6 Installation scripts have been included on the UtilityLaunch distribution disk. Simply run the System 6 Installer program with the UtilityLaunch disk on-line in one of your 3.5 inch drives. 

The first script will create a System 6 Boot disk containing UtilityLaunch (renamed START) and an empty UL.Menus file. This Boot disk does contain the SCSI hard disk drivers to permit access to your hard disk after booting this 800K boot disk. 

A second script installs UtilityLaunch on a hard disk already containing System 6 without disturbing the separate UL.Menus file contained on the hard disk. Use this script to simply replace the UtilityLaunch program without having to regenerate the menus. (Note: Menus must be contained in the separate UL.Menus file and not the resource fork of UtilityLaunch to avoid destroying menus with this script). To boot into UtilityLaunch after installing with this script, use the Startup Path Control Panel to set UtilityLaunch as the Startup path.

A third script functions identically to the above script but also copies an empty UL.Menus file to the directory containing UtilityLaunch. This is the preferred script if you are initially installing UtilityLaunch to a hard disk. Just remember that this script will destroy any past menus you have created.

A fourth script installs UtilityLaunch on a hard disk already containing System 6, and replaces the existing START program with UtilityLaunch (renamed START). Menus will not be destroyed unless they are contained in the resource fork of the previous START program. The difference between this script and the second script is that the START program will be replaced by UtilityLaunch (renamed START) rather than creating a separate file called UtilityLaunch. If you have installed the Startup Path Control Panel with System 6, you can have any program be your startup program simply by specifying it in the Control Panel. In this way you don't have to replace the START program. Simplify set the Startup Path to UtilityLaunch.

The above scripts will simplify your UtilityLaunch installation process considerably when running with System 6.




