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Tag: menu

  • Freeware Shorts: Quick Pop Menu (Launcher)

    Freeware Shorts: Quick Pop Menu (Launcher)

    Quick Pop Menu (Version: 1.1.9 as of this post) is a simple launcher that works with shortcuts users choose to add to it. By default it uses the combination of Ctrl and middle mouse keys to pop up in the form of a floating menu on the screen.

    After installing it the program folder will contain two subfolders, one called x64 and another called x86 – for 64 bit and 32 bit computers respectively. Within each there is Shortcuts folder. Adding or dropping any shortcuts, to a file or folder, will create a corresponding item to the Quick Pop Menu floating menu.

    Quick Pop Menu

    The aforementioned hotkey can be changed via the program’s tray icon (Settings —> Set Hotkey). There is also an ‘Advanced Usage’ possibility described on the author’s site for assigning another mouse button to another folder with shortcuts, creating a second menu.

    Quick Pop Menu should run on Windows versions going back to Windows 2000.

  • PowerPro Is The Ultimate Freeware

    I have been using PowerPro for years. It is the grandfather of all launchers, utilities and lots more. There is so much that can be done with it. To list all its features would take pages and additionally its scripting capabilities make it almost limitless. It does have a learning curve and since it has existed for years it perhaps does not rank as the most intuitive. Over the years it has slowly evolved however and offers so much.

    Just to name a few, very few, of what it can do

    • Watch the clipboard
    • Watch recent documents and more importantly recent apps used
    • All kinds of Windows operations like shutdown and minimize
    • Virtual desktops
    • Scheduler
    • Creating bar and menus

    For anybody who is not familiar with PowerPro, it really is the most complete freeware. Be sure to follow the links on the program’s site to the Yahoo! groups listed.

  • CSS-BuMa Generates CSS Menus

    CSS-BuMa Generates CSS Menus

    CSS-BuMa is described by its author as

    CSS-BuMa is a program to create pure Cascading Style Sheet Buttons

    CSS-BuMa is an alternative to the CSS Tab Designer reviewed here earlier in the year or the online CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) menu generators like CSSMenuMaker just to name one. Besides being a lightweight and interesting application it has an advantage over its online counterparts in that it is possible to save menus as re-usable projects. It does not create or generate multi-level menus however as it is limited to creating horizontal or vertical pure CSS menus.

    Entering button captions or text and the accompanying links is the first step in creating a menu, adding them for as many menu items as needed, then collectively for the whole menu or each item individually various settings can be chosen and edited. (Almost) everything can be set and edited including text of course but also font, background color, position, letter spacing, height, width, margin and others. An integrated color picker can aid in choosing a color as well. The same is configurable to control the behaviour of the menu in hover and visited states. Additionally a background image can be chosen for one or all the items and its position and repeat state set as well.


    CSS-BuMa

    In addition to the aforementioned feature of saving a menu as a project, with CSS-BuMa one can also save menus as templates where everything (color, font, etc.) is saved except the menu text. This allows future use while retaining something akin to a theme.

    Finally the “Parse HTML File” tab supposedly extracts (in a “the address”;”description” format) links from an existing HTML file so the link targets can be automatically added to a menu that the user has created using CSS-BuMa. In my test of an HTML page with 10+ links only two links were parsed or shown so I am not sure about the usability of this feature.

    Like many other programs from Sam Francke CSS-BuMa is easy to use even if it is not always updated anymore. It is cardware or freeware and it runs under Windows 98SE, XP and 2000.

  • Create Menus using the CSS Tab Designer

    The CSS Tab Designer is described by its author as

    CSS Tab Designer is a unique and easy to use software to help you design css-based lists and tabs visually and without any programming knowledge required

    Using Cascading Style Sheets to design or code web pages is often an interesting task. It is often an adventure to create beautiful designs and achieve impressive effects as browser support for CSS is peculiar at best. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is maligned for many things, not least of which is security, but for much of its history it has lagged in web standards support which of course means that the support for the different specifications of Cascading Style Sheets has been less than what most web designer would wish it to be.

    One software that is able to create tabbed menus is the CSS Tab Designer. Menus and navigation in general are an important part of a site’s user experience and using a software like the CSS Tab Designer one can not only easily create one of 60 tabbed styled menus but perhaps more importantly one can learn CSS by example through studying the generated HTML and CSS.

    Upon opening the CSS Tab Designer one is presented with around 60 styles to choose from. There one can easily add menu items or additional tabs and then very easily change the number, position, order and the text of the tabs using the Edit menu. The actual relevant or generated code is viewable via a separate tab within the program.

    The program offers information on browser support by providing a sampling of links to popular and important web sites that offer more tools and discussion on everything CSS. CSS tab Designer is a freeware that runs on Windows 98, ME , 2000, XP, and 2003 and is available at www.highdots.com. A couple of recommended and interesting sites on CSS worth mentioning here are Dynamic Drive and A List Apart