Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Launcher tricks
The Launcher dates back to the first Performas running System 7.1p and has not changed much since System 7.5. But I still find it useful for kids, both at home and in the school iMac lab. You can accomplish some of the same stuff using Favorites and Button view in System 8.x and later. For computers used by both kids and adults, I put the adult programs in Favorites and the Kids stuff in the Launcher.
My wife teaches grades Pre-K through 6 in her computer lab and has lots of programs. She learned the trick of making separate categories for the different grades from another computer lab teacher: create sub folders in the Launcher Items folder with a bullet (option-8) as the first character of the folder name. To keep them in order by grade, she has bullet-space-space-Pre-K, bullet-space-K, bullet-1st, ... bullet-6th. Then put all your program aliases in those subfolders (none in Launcher Items to avoid having a "Main" category).
Getting things into the Launcher is easy: select an item in the Finder, drag it to the open Launcher window, and an alias is automatically created for you. For a web site, first drag your browser address bar to the desktop or a Finder window which creates a web location document. To delete or move items we open the Launcher Items folder in the Finder and drag them. We put an alias to Laucher Items into the Apple Menu Items folder to make it easy to get to, plus an alias to Launcher itself so you can easily get the Launcher back after you close it.
Little kids really need different icons on the Launcher buttons. But the Launcher does not respect custom icons pasted onto items in the Launcher Items folder or category sub-folders. The solution is to put the original item somewhere else, and paste the custom icon onto that original. Then make an alias of that original and move it to Launcher items.
Custom icons for CD-ROM programs and applications on servers tend to be forgotten by both the Finder and the Launcher. One solution is to copy the application file in question to some out of the way location on the hard disk. This is just to get the Mac desktop to remember its icons. You still run the program by an alias in Launcher Items pointing to the CD-ROM or the server, not your out-of-the-way copy. Another solution is to use a chain of 2 aliases: make an alias to the CD-ROM or server app, place it outside Launcher Items, and copy and paste the icon onto that alias (even though it appears to already have that icon!). Now make an alias of that alias, and put the 2nd one inside Launcher Items.
Occasionally the Launcher window will become very tall, with the resize box hidden below the bottom of the screen. You just need to close the Launcher and discard Launcher Preferences.
My wife teaches grades Pre-K through 6 in her computer lab and has lots of programs. She learned the trick of making separate categories for the different grades from another computer lab teacher: create sub folders in the Launcher Items folder with a bullet (option-8) as the first character of the folder name. To keep them in order by grade, she has bullet-space-space-Pre-K, bullet-space-K, bullet-1st, ... bullet-6th. Then put all your program aliases in those subfolders (none in Launcher Items to avoid having a "Main" category).
Getting things into the Launcher is easy: select an item in the Finder, drag it to the open Launcher window, and an alias is automatically created for you. For a web site, first drag your browser address bar to the desktop or a Finder window which creates a web location document. To delete or move items we open the Launcher Items folder in the Finder and drag them. We put an alias to Laucher Items into the Apple Menu Items folder to make it easy to get to, plus an alias to Launcher itself so you can easily get the Launcher back after you close it.
Little kids really need different icons on the Launcher buttons. But the Launcher does not respect custom icons pasted onto items in the Launcher Items folder or category sub-folders. The solution is to put the original item somewhere else, and paste the custom icon onto that original. Then make an alias of that original and move it to Launcher items.
Custom icons for CD-ROM programs and applications on servers tend to be forgotten by both the Finder and the Launcher. One solution is to copy the application file in question to some out of the way location on the hard disk. This is just to get the Mac desktop to remember its icons. You still run the program by an alias in Launcher Items pointing to the CD-ROM or the server, not your out-of-the-way copy. Another solution is to use a chain of 2 aliases: make an alias to the CD-ROM or server app, place it outside Launcher Items, and copy and paste the icon onto that alias (even though it appears to already have that icon!). Now make an alias of that alias, and put the 2nd one inside Launcher Items.
Occasionally the Launcher window will become very tall, with the resize box hidden below the bottom of the screen. You just need to close the Launcher and discard Launcher Preferences.
