Introduction to workbench for a newbie?

[ThePerfectK]

Hello,
I'm not exactly new to the Amiga as a games playing or even productivity machine, but I've always been fascinated by the exotic workbench setups I see online and in pictures. I have a bog standard A1200 and have mainly been running Workbench 3.0 since I got it. 99% of my time, I've played games, so I never had much of a need to dink around with workbench, but I'm curious as to what neato stuff was available to amiga users who did use workbench as their main OS Shell back in the day.

I have access to Workbench 3.9 and 4.1, but have never really installed them. I need to get a CD-Rom drive working with my amiga before I can really dive into those.

My question is mainly related to things like wallpapers and launchers and stuff of that sort. Like this picture:

The little launcher bar thing at the bottom with the marble looking texture for the window -- what is that called? How do I set it up? Is it only Amiga OS 3.9? What about icons? All my icons look way more primitive than this. And I've never been able to really set a background pic, all I can find are ways to set a background color?

Basically, what sort of things should someone know if they want to play with Workbench and make it look a bit more modern?

 

[ajk]

That screenshot looks like Workbench 3.9, which uses the "GlowIcons" style and that bar at the bottom is "AmiDock". You can get similar results by installing "NewIcons" and e.g. "ToolManager" in earlier revisions of Workbench, or of course just install 3.9 assuming your system meets the hardware requirements (a bog standard A1200 doesn't, really, you'd want to have some more RAM at least). 4.1 isn't an option at all without a PowerPC CPU upgrade.

You can set a backdrop in the WBPattern prefs by switching the type to "Picture" instead of "Pattern". It will recognize file types you have a so called data type for; it's probably simplest to use ILBM format pictures at first. But again with a basic A1200 with only 2MB of RAM all of it is quite precious and a backdrop image can eat a lot of it.

Personally, I use a pretty lightweight setup with lower-end machines; regular icons, maybe a low-colour backdrop and "ToolsDaemon" (which allows you to create custom menu items) instead of a graphical dock. Here is for example my A600 (which does have plenty of RAM, though, and the Indivision ECS scandoubler):

 

[mfilos]

ThePerfectK the dock bar you see on the screenshot provided is AmiDock and it's a part of OS3.9.
On a stock A1200 even with extra Fast RAM I wouldn't advise an OS3.9 setup as it would be ok but not so pleasant. An accelerator 030+ with extra Fast RAM would be ideal for Workbench experience.
CDROM is not a necessity as you can mount everything under WinUAE make the whole setup there from your PC and transfer the whole system back to the Amiga
Also you can experience with different setups, OS3.9 and decided what suits you best.

For stock setups a ClassicWB setup or a WB3.1 tailor made with MUI, VisualPrefs and MagicWB iconset/palette can make all the difference.
You can check the last 2 guides on my blog to see what you can do easily... http://www.mfilos.com/p/guides.html

 

[ThePerfectK]

I'm actually in the process of towerizing my Amiga and also upgrading to an ACA1233n (just shipped it off back to Amigakit because my first one arrived dead) so perhaps in the future I'll try 3.9. I'm actually specifically towerizing my Amiga because I want to play CD32 games on my A1200 -- I have an Amiga CD32 already but I constantly fear the laser dying, so building a system with a replaceable modern-ish IDE CD-ROM drive is a big plus for me.

I'm super interested in hearing more about ToolsDaemon, though. It adds drop down menu selections?

 

[ajk]

Yes, it allows you to add custom menu entries to whichever programs you like. It's available on Aminet, you'll have to check what the minimum requirements are but it's fairly lightweight. Random screenshot from the web:

 

[ThePerfectK]

Yes, it allows you to add custom menu entries to whichever programs you like. It's available on Aminet, you'll have to check what the minimum requirements are but it's fairly lightweight. Random screenshot from the web:

These menu actions are interpreted as CLI commands? That sounds excellent.

Another question -- mind you, I come from a Windows 3.1 background, that was the first shell I ever used with a mouse having grown up in the US. How does workbench deal with, for example, desktop shortcuts? If there is a program I use repeatedly, is there a way to add a shortcut to launch that program directly do the desktop? I guess ToolsDaemon would be a work around for this problem if that's not possible.

How about a right click menu like something from classic Gnome or KDE or similar? Does something like that exist for the Amiga, where I could right click on any non-window background and get a context quick-start menu?

EDIT: I love the look of your A600 btw!

 

[ajk]

Thanks

The menu items added via ToolsDaemon can point directly to executables, or scripts, depending on what you want to do. Combining it with shell (or ARexx) scripts can be very powerful.

There is no direct analog to desktop shortcuts in Workbench. The workbench window is a virtual construct and not a physical directory found anywhere on the hard disk. You can use the menu item "Leave out" to keep icons permanently in the main window like I have done to "Shell" in that screenshot. Importantly, however, these represent the original file so if you delete something, the file is truly deleted (the "Put away" option returns it to the original directory instead). You can of course create your own shortcuts, e.g. a script which starts some program and leave that out instead. But it will be a manual process.

There is a program called "MagicMenu" which allows you to pop up the menu with a right click. It doesn't make the menu context-sensitive, though, but you can certainly put actions such as "Extract archive" in your menus to achieve a similar result. That is what I usually do for all the commonly used operations.

 

[ThePerfectK]

Thanks

The menu items added via ToolsDaemon can point directly to executables, or scripts, depending on what you want to do. Combining it with shell (or ARexx) scripts can be very powerful.

There is no direct analog to desktop shortcuts in Workbench. The workbench window is a virtual construct and not a physical directory found anywhere on the hard disk. You can use the menu item "Leave out" to keep icons permanently in the main window like I have done to "Shell" in that screenshot. Importantly, however, these represent the original file so if you delete something, the file is truly deleted (the "Put away" option returns it to the original directory instead). You can of course create your own shortcuts, e.g. a script which starts some program and leave that out instead. But it will be a manual process.

There is a program called "MagicMenu" which allows you to pop up the menu with a right click. It doesn't make the menu context-sensitive, though, but you can certainly put actions such as "Extract archive" in your menus to achieve a similar result. That is what I usually do for all the commonly used operations.

This is really interesting information regarding the file system. So if I open a drawer and drag it's contents to the desktop, it is still technically in the folder that the drawer represented originally in the file system, even though I now see it on my desktop instead of the drawer?

 

[ajk]

Yes, exactly. If you go to a shell and list the contents of a directory there, nothing changes regardless of whether a file is (visually speaking) on the workbench or not. Only if you drag something to, say, another partition does a copy operation take place (or, within the same partition, a move operation).

The main Workbench window is temporary, or virtual or however you wish to look at it. Drives/media are automatically displayed on it as they are inserted and removed. The "Leave out" system works by writing a text file (to the root of the drive) that lists all files that have been "left out". Otherwise, a file you drag to the workbench will go back to where it was when the system is rebooted.

Programs can also create temporary "app icons" while they are running. This is often used for example by programs that generally run in the background, but present an icon should you wish to e.g. open a user interface, or open files by dragging icons to the app icon.