X-Launch is a small launcher intended to be a replacement for Apple's Launcher. It is designed to work in much the same way as Launcher and offers similar functionality, while at the same time occupying a smaller footprint and offering some customization features that hopefully make it more aesthetically pleasing. In addition, it features extra conveniences such as allowing the user to reorder buttons and category icons, to navigate folder contents via contextual menu, and to bring the launch window to the front via a hot corner.
Version 2.11 adds category Tooltips, an option to set a bring-to-front hot key, and several other improvements and bug fixes. X-Launch requires a PowerPC Macintosh running MacOS 8 or higher.
X-Launch is freeware, and although contributions are appreciated, they are entirely voluntary. Please read the documentation for more information.
I do plan on developing an OS X version of X-Launch. However, I have not yet been able to upgrade to OS X myself, and although I had a test version temporarily available, it has proved to be too difficult to proceed without being able to test it myself directly. When I am able to restart the project (hopefully by next spring), I will post more details. Thanks for your patience!
Version History:
2.11 (4/10/01)
-added option to set bring-to-front hot key combination
-added option to auto-expand X-Launch when the Finder is in front and the auto-windowshade option is selected
-added option to show Tooltips for category icons
-added "Open Category Folder" item to the category icon contextual menus, to open the corresponding category folder inside the X-Launch Items folder
-buttons can now be moved from one category to another by drag-and-dropping the button onto another category icon
-folder contents menus are now built faster, especially noticable for folders on remote volumes
-invisible folders are no longer displayed in the folder contents menus
-fixed some problems with drag-and-drop behavior, including erroneous handling of some multiple item drops from the Finder
-numerous other minor bug fixes
2.1 (2/20/01)
-added auto-windowshade option to windowshade X-Launch when in the background
-added adjustable button spacing
-added option to disable the command-Q keyboard shortcut to quit X-Launch
-added option to draw button names without the background label
-added option to display X-Launch vertically
-added option to show Tooltips, i.e., show button names by mousing over them
-added pseudo-Aqua theme
-added ability to switch categories using left/right arrow keys, as well as via a submenu in the main contextual menu
-removed dependence on Contextual Menu Extension
-window updates are now done by resizing the window only, not redrawing its entire frame
-contextual menu of folder contents should be generated much more quickly now
-no longer attempts to examine folders on unmounted disks/volumes when generating contextual menu of folder contents, eliminating long hangtimes during the futile effort
-fixed a problem where certain 32-bit icons were left with a dark border around them after a button was clicked if FinderPop was installed
2.0 (4/28/00)
-now requires PowerPC and MacOS 8 and higher
-added support for adding up to 11 categories
-increased button limit to 60 per category
-changes to the button contextual menu: Get Info item added, and changed Open File item to Remove Button
-preferences now provide an option to select "None" for the Hot Corner
-window now makes an attempt to stay in the same relative position on the screen across resolution changes
-more responsive dragging and dropping onto desktop
-labeled icons now appear with their proper color in OS 8.5 and higher
-buttons now hilited when their contextual menu is invoked
-fixed conflict with the extension "Contextual Menu Enabler" that resulted in failure of X-Launch's contextual menus to appear
1.42 (2/21/99)
-fixes for use with MacOS 7.x: "Show Original Item" in contextual menus
now works, and option-dragging an icon to the Finder now properly copies
instead of resulting in Finder error -1708
-default position of window now set relative to bottom of screen
1.41 (2/7/99)
-added ability to change hot corner in preferences
-added "Show Original Item" to contextual menus
-added optional "Platinum Theme", an alternate set of buttons and background color
-faster redrawing
-buttons now look presentable in 256 color mode
-fixed button-sometimes-stays-pressed problem
-fixed problem in which filenames with certain characters would not
display properly in contextual menus
-it is now safe to put hard drives in the launcher (apparently the crashes
were occuring due to an out-of-memory error); building of hierarchical
menus is still slow, however
-added 68k support
1.4 (1/3/99)
First public release
David Yeh
dyeh@kagi.com