Category : Files from Magazines
Archive   : V12N03.ZIP
Filename : RCLICK.DOC

RCLICK.EXE (VERSION 1.0) Copyright (c) 1992 by Douglas Boling
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First Published in PC Magazine February 9, 1993 (Utilities)
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RCLICK:
RCLICK is a pop-up menu program for Windows that replicates a
menu bar for a window and displays it right where your cursor is. You
can configure RCLICK to work only with certain programs.

Are you tired of walking your mouse? That's what GUI (graphical
user interface) veterans call it when you have to pick up and carry your
mouse back to its starting point because you didn't have enough desktop
space to move the cursor far enough in one motion.

I've put on most of my mouse mileage moving the cursor to and from a
menu in order to select an item there. All those trips to the menu bar
made me wish that the menu choices could be brought to the cursor rather
than vice versa. That's what RCLICK does. With RCLICK active, any time
you press the right mouse button, a duplicate menu will pop up right at
the spot where your Windows cursor is currently located.

RCLICK can be configured not to pop up over the few Windows programs
that use the right mouse button. The utility will remember the names of
these programs, so that you have to teach RCLICK only once.

To work from the source files, you'll need either the Microsoft
C 6.0 compiler and the Windows SDK, or Borland's C++ 3.0 compiler.

USING RCLICK

To install RCLICK, just copy the RCLICK.EXE and RCHOOK.DLL files
into a directory on your path. Then select the File|Run menu item in the
Program Manager and enter RCLICK. If you want RCLICK to start each time
you bring up Windows, simply add the RCLICK icon to the Program Manager's
Startup group, using the File|New menu selection. (If you're still using
Windows 3.0, you'll have to add the RCLICK program name to the
RUN= statement in your WIN.INI file.)

The only change you'll see on your desktop when RCLICK starts is the
addition of the small RCLICK icon at the bottom of the desktop. The real
action begins when you press the right mouse button over a window that
has a menu. A pop-up menu will appear that contains all the items on the
menu bar plus one additional item that calls up additional RCLICK
options. When you click on a menu item, a submenu containing all the menu
items for the main menu item will appear. Selecting any one of these
items will perform the same action as if you had moved the cursor up to
the menu bar and selected the item there.

For example, if you press the right button over the Program Manager,
you'll see a menu containing the items File, Options, Window, Help, and
an item labeled RClick. Clicking with the normal left button on the File
item will reveal a submenu containing the items New, Open, Move, Copy,
Delete, Properties, Run, and Exit. Clicking on the New item will cause
the Program Manager to display the New Program dialog box. That's just
what would have happened had you selected the File|New menu item from the
menu bar. The difference is that you didn't have to move the cursor up
to the menu bar and back! Note that if you pop up the RCLICK menu by
accident, clicking with the mouse anywhere on the desktop outside the
menu will make it go away.

RCLICK builds the appropriate pop-up menu each time you right-click.
Clicking on the RClick menu item produces a submenu with two items,
Configure and About. Selecting Configure displays a dialog box with
three buttons that allow you to configure RCLICK. The first button,
labeled ``Do not pop up on Window,'' allows you to tell RCLICK never to
pop up over any window from that program again.

The second button, Disable RCLICK, allows you to disable the utility
for all windows. The Cancel button closes the Configure dialog box
without any action taking place. If you accidentally disable RCLICK you
can reenable it using the RCLICK main dialog box, which will be
discussed below.

Selecting the RClick About menu item displays the About dialog box,
which contains the name and version of the program, along with the
copyright notice.

Clicking on the RCLICK icon and then on Restore reveals RCLICK's
main dialog box. The list box contains the names of all the programs
RCLICK has been told to avoid. Again, the Disable button disables
RCLICK for all windows, but in this case when you disable RCLICK,
the text of this button changes to Enable. Pressing it will reenable
the utility. The Remove button allows you to remove program names from
the No Pop list simply by selecting the program name and clicking on the
Remove button. The About button displays the same About dialog box that
is available from the RClick pop-up menu. The final button, Exit, closes
the RCLICK window and ends the program. When the RCLICK program
terminates, it saves both the No Pop list and the disable/enable state
in its configuration file, RCLICK.INI.
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DOUGLAS BOLING IS A CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO PC MAGAZINE.