aka "full path", a complete, unambiguous pathname, as opposed to
a relative path. The absolute
path of a local file or folder begins with a drive-letter, followed by
":\". UNC paths are another form of absolute path that is
available in a networked (LAN) environment, and URLs are a kind of absolute
path used in an Internet/intranet environment.
a Microsoft Windows programming technology for special types of controls
that can be used to incorporate features from one application into another,
based on Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM).
For example the WebBrowser ActiveX control allows applications to
utilize browser windows based on Internet Explorer's core programs.
logic that uses application-specific knowledge to provide
enhancements that can not be achieved entirely through generic
features. Montage uses application intelligence to do a better
job oflaunching and detecting applications, and to provide extended state-saving
and restoration capabilities. For example, Montage understands
and uses the COM capabilities of certain
applications, and Montage employs an internal database of application-specific
launching and detection parameters, some of which can be manually overridden
via its Advanced Properties
page.
in the Windows operating system, an association is defined through
the registry, telling the Windows
Shell to associate a particular program with a particular filename
extension. Thus, for example NOTEPAD.EXE might be the default program to
open .TXT documents, and one would use
MONTAGE3.EXE to open .MO3 files (montages).
When Windows doesn't know what to associate with a given extension, it prompts
you to point it to the right program. You can review and change
associations through Window Explorer's
Folder Options dialog.
(as opposed to synchronous) describes an activity that proceeds
concurrently, independent of the state of progress of another
activity. For example, most separate Windows applications are running
at the same time in asynchronous processes.
a Montage Shortcut feature whereby the presence
of the target application window is automatically
detected and monitored,
even though it was not launched by this Shortcut.
An Auto-detected Shortcut has a distinctive mode of highlighting, and
it can be used to control the target window, even though
this Shortcut doesn't "own" the target. This capability is
particularly useful for exclusive
document applications. For example Montage uses auto-detection
in Shortcuts to other montages, and a
variation called lazy auto-detection
for Shortcuts to Word documents.
a widely supported Internet protocol for identifying a visitor before
granting or denying access to password-protected web resources. All
popular browsers support this protocol, typically by displaying a login dialog
requesting username and password, with an option to "remember" these
credentials on future visits. Montage's facility for
dynamic fetching of
content from password-protected sites uses basic access authentication
programmatically, without requiring any user interaction, For added
security, basic access authentication can be combined with a secure
communications protocol, i.e. using HTTPS URLs.
divisions of a browser window into sub-windows, each called a frame,
sometimes separated by movable bar to adjust their sizing. (The
Montage web site and Help file support
an optional framed mode of viewing, which can be turned off by clicking on
an unframe link.)
a temporary local repository of data whose function is to transparently
speed up access to frequently used items, which would otherwise have to be
obtained in a much more costly manner. For example, Internet Explorer and other browsers rely
on a cache of recently referenced web pages and images to avoid the
expense of repeatedly retrieving the same files across the Internet.
Montage uses a similar but somewhat different scheme from conventional
caching in its dynamic
Internet fetching capability, to achieve comparable improvements in
performance. Montage also uses a sort of
icons cache to avoid incurring the overhead of determining and extracting
icon resources more than once. The Windows operating system itself also
makes extensive use of caching to reduce the need for disk accesses by keeping
recently used portions of files in memory. When Windows write-caching is
enabled, there is a greater risk of file corruption in the event of a computer
failure, so it is advisable to save your files and ensure that the cache is
"flushed" on a regular basis.
something
that is created by, contained in, or "owned" by a parent,
in some sense. For example a child window typically means a window
that is inside another window (its parent), and a child application is one that
was launched by a parent application. In programming, the concept of parent-child
relationships means that each entity has at most one parent, but a parent may have any number of children.
a type of unique identifier, used in the Windows
Registry, to refer to special system folders (among
other things). A class identifier may be written as a series of numbers
(actually hexadecimal digits) surrounded by curly braces, prefixed by a
double colon. For example ::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} is
the CLSID syntax that represents "My Computer". Pathnames may
also be constructed from a series of such class IDs, separated by
backslashes, for example ::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\::{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}
represents the Windows Control Panel. Note that some CLSIDs are
universal, some depend upon the version of Windows or a particular
application, and others are completely unique to your machine. Montage
supports the CLSID syntax (as well as other forms of pathnames) in its Shortcut
target specifications.
Microsoft's broad architecture for inter-operability between applications
running in the 32-bit Windows programming environment. COM objects,
including ActiveX controls, can provide a
convenient way of exchanging information and directly controlling one
application from another. One of the aspects of Montage's application
intelligence is its awareness of the specific COM
capabilities of certain applications, and its ability to use these COM
interfaces appropriately.
a programming term for just about any object
on screen other than a form or other type of
window. For example, textboxes, images, and Montage
Shortcuts are types of controls.
a popup menu that appears when you right-click over an object
on the screen. This is also sometimes referred to as a "shortcut
menu", but we avoid that terminology so as not to further confuse the
concept of shortcuts. The Montage menu system
includes both a main menu and a number of context
menus.
the ability to obtain help from within an application, where one is taken
directly to the appropriate topic related to the current
context. In Montage this is supported through the F1 key, the menus,
and the "What's this?" help facility (e.g. in the Shortcut
Properties dialog). Note that the functioning of Montage's context-sensitive
help features depend upon proper
installation of VFP's runtime support of HTML Help.
refers to a Montage Desktop window when
used in proper case (i.e. with the first letter capitalized), as contrasted to the Windows desktop
(i.e. your entire computer
screen), when this term is specified in lower case. A Montage
Desktop is actually a top-level window residing within the main Windows desktop.
determining that an application that has been launched, and correctly identifying its main window, so it can be monitored and controlled. Due
to intricacies of the Windows programming environment, instancing
complications, and the fact that many applications are not well-behaved,
detection is a non-trivial problem for application launchers.
Montage employs general heuristics, coupled
with application intelligence
to achieve reliable detection over a wide range of applications.
Montage also supports a feature called auto-detection,
where some types of pre-existing openings are automatically detected, as
indicated by a distinctive highlighting of their Shortcuts.
a feature supported by Windows and most modern Windows applications,
enabling objects to be moved, copied, linked, or opened with a simple mouse
action. In the most basic form of dragging and dropping, the
left mouse button is depressed over a source object, which is then dragged
while holding down the mouse button, and finally dropped onto a target
object by releasing the mouse button. Special key combinations may be
supported to indicate the choice of copying (typically via the Ctrl key),
moving, linking, or performing other types of transfer operations. Generally you can
cancel a drag-and-drop while it's in progress by pressing the Esc key, or
clicking the other mouse button.
Another mode of dragging and dropping uses the right mouse button instead of
the left one. In this case, a context menu
appears when you perform the drop (i.e. release the right mouse
button). This gives you an opportunity to choose the desired
operation, or Cancel, without having to touch the keyboard. Montage
supports both modes of dragging and
dropping Shortcuts.
the capability of automatically retrieving missing files from across the
Internet, based on the existence of a corresponding .URL type of link.
If such a link exists, it indicates the file is fetchable
from the specified URL. Montage supports dynamic
Internet fetching for its wallpapers, icons,
and target files.
a Montage Shortcut parameter that has been
defined in terms of a functional expression, rather than a literal
value. When the value of a Shortcut property (for example the target,
arguments, or directory)
is specified with a leading equals sign (=), the remainder in treated as a Visual
FoxPro (VFP) expression, which can include built-in VFP functions,
user-defined functions,
and other types of internal variable and function references. This is
an advanced feature (unique to Montage) that can be useful as a way of
increasing portability, as well as
providing greater flexibility and power in general.
a symbolic substitution that can be used (in some contexts) to construct
pathnames and command lines. Some environment variables are
pre-defined, some are Windows version-dependent, and they can also be
user-defined, e.g. via the SET command in a DOS window. The percent
(%) character acts as a delimiter when expanding a string of text containing
environment variables. For example the string "%windir%\EXPLORER.EXE"
typically would expand to "C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE", because there
exists a standard environment variable named windir, which is
automatically initialized to the path of the main Windows directory on your
machine. On some machines, the result may be different, because the
Windows directory path might be C:\WINNT, or something else. Montage
supports the use of reserved environment variables (M3_ICONDIR,
M3_SAMPDIR, and
M3_AUTHDBF) to specify some of
its global configuration options.
Environment variables also can be used in specifying basic
Montage Shortcut properties, not only as a convenient abbreviation, but more
importantly as a means of achieving portability.
an application with the instancing
restriction that it can have at most one opening. Many applications
allow any number of instances to be open concurrently, but some (like the Windows
Registry editor, REGEDIT) are exclusive applications, limited
to one window. Some MDI applications, like the Adobe Acrobat Reader,
support multiple openings, but only in the limited sense of creating
additional child windows within a single main application window. Exclusive
document applications are somewhat less restrictive, in that they
permit multiple top-level window instances, but no more than one opening of
a given document.
an application with the instancing
restriction that a given document can have at most one opening. This
applies to Word documents (when opened through Microsoft Word), as well as
various other applications, including exclusivity
in Montage. On the other
hand, depending on which text editor you use, a text file may or may not be
treated as an exclusive document. For example NOTEPAD will allow any
number of openings of the same text file, which is sometimes handy, but also
could lead to problems if the file is edited. Montage supports a
unique auto-detection feature, which
can be useful with exclusive document
applications.
when used in
proper case, Explorer generally refers to Windows Explorer,
although there may be some ambiguity as to whether the term is meant to
include the closely related Internet Explorer.
As a generic term, an explorer (lower case) is program for navigating
and viewing an organized body of information.
relative to Montage, an external application is an independent
Windows program running in its own exterior
window on the Windows desktop, as a
separate process. This is contrasted to Montage's
internal forms, which run in the same process, some
in interior windowsand some in exterior
windows. The window belonging to an external application is
referred to as an external window, and a Shortcut
to an external application is termed an external Shortcut.
a window belonging to an external
application, i.e. owned by a different process.
In Montage, an external
window is generally also an exterior window,
but the converse is not necessary true, because an exterior window may or
may not belong to the current process. An external window is the
opposite of an internal window.
a file is fetchable if it may be retrieved from a known URL,
using Montage's mechanism for dynamic
Internet fetching. By convention, an Internet
shortcut(i.e. a .URL link) with the same name and in the same folder as a given file indicates that the
file can be retrieved from Internet address specified by that link.
The existence of such a link is taken as a sign of fetchability, but
this is not a guarantee that the specified URL is valid or that an attempt to
access it will be successful.
the place where the user's attention is currently presumed to be, at the active
control in the active window.
For data entry fields, this is where the cursor is displayed to indicate the
destination of any keyboard input. For other types of controls,
the current focus may be indicated by some form of highlighting
and/or a prompt message in the status bar.
used as a noun, refers to a browser frame,
i.e. a single pane within a framed browser window. Used as a
verb, toframe a page means to load that page into a framed
arrangement within the same browser window. The opposite action is to unframe
a page. (Montage web pages and its Help
file support a common set of framing
conventions.)
techniques that tend to work in some cases, but are not rigorously assured
of success in general. One may be compelled to resort to heuristics
in order to obtain practical solutions to difficult problems. For
example, Montage employs heuristics to improve its detection
of some applications that are not well-behaved.
Microsoft's preferred vehicle for delivering documentation, which has become
the de facto standard for building full-featured help systems since its
inclusion with Internet Explorer 4.0. The
Montage Help file, MONTAGE.CHM,
uses HTML Help, and you can obtain information
about setting up HTML Help on the Montage installation page.
the type of link that appears in a web page as a highlighted or underlined
piece of text specifying a URL (web address) to
which you can jump by clicking on it in a web browser, such as Internet
Explorer. You can drag-and-drop
hyperlinks, as well as other types of files, folders, and links
into Montage, to create corresponding Shortcuts.
aspects of how programs and program objects are instantiated, and any
restrictions placed upon multiple instances (occurrences) of an application or document
window. For example exclusive applications permit only a single instance
of themselves, while other applications may allow any number of instances to run
concurrently. Exclusive
document applications, like Word and Montage, support multiple
instances of the application program, but not more than one concurrent opening of a given
document. Instancing restrictions are typically enforced by
performing a pass-off (e.g. via DDE) to an existing window,
rather than creating a new instance. Another variable instancing characteristic is whether
each instance belongs to a separate process, or shares
its process with other instances
(which may be a significant factor in the ease of detection).
as contrasted to an exterior window, an
interior window is one that is "physically" contained within
the Montage Desktop window. An interior
window is bounded by the window that contains it, moves with its parent
window, and so on. Interior windows are nested
within one or
more levels of surrounding windows that fully contain them.
a window that belongs to a given process, as opposed to an external
window. In common usage, an internal window is
sometimes regarded as what we refer to as an interior
window, i.e. a window contained within another window.
However, we prefer to confine our use the terms "internal" and
"external" to describe the logical parent-child relationship of containment
within a program or process. In that sense, a form
may be internal to an application, even though its window happens to be an exterior
window (as in the case of Montage's Shortcut
Properties dialog). A Shortcut to
an internal window, e.g. referring to a built-in
viewer form, is referred to as an internal Shortcut.
Microsoft's web browser, originally integrated into the Windows
Shell as a type of Shell Explorer,
which may be used for navigating and viewing folders in the Windows filing system.
(As of Windows Vista and IE version 7, however, IE is no longer integrated
into the Windows Shell.)
Internet Explorer is the program named IEXPLORE.EXE, residing in the
directory where IE was installed, typically C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer.
a type on Windows link, stored in a file
with the .URL extension, specifying an Internet address (i.e., a URL)
as its target. Montage employs Internet
shortcuts in conjunction with its dynamic
fetching features. Montage also has its own internal type of Shortcuts,
which are roughly equivalent, but offer some advantages. For example,
Montage Shortcuts support a flexible description and tip,
but Windows' Internet shortcuts do not. (A confusing feature of Windows
Explorer is that the .URL extension is not displayed, even when
Windows has been configured to display all file extensions. You can
see this more clearly by issuing a DIR command in a DOS window.)
a variation of Montage's auto-detection
feature, where the presence of an already-existing opening is not
immediately detected until the point where
an attempt is made to launch that Shortcut. This avoids the overhead of
monitoring for the window's spontaneous appearance, as is done for normal
(non-lazy) auto-detection. (Montage uses lazy
auto-detection for Word, which is an exclusive
document application.)
a Windows shortcut, which is represented by a special type of file having
either the .LNK or .URL extension. To avoid confusion with Montage Shortcuts, we use the term link as the preferred way of referring
to Windows "shortcuts". The .URL flavor of links are also
referred to as Internet shortcuts.
loosely, a metafile is a file that contains data
about data, i.e. intermediate information that describes another kind of
information. Many types of programs use some sort of metafile as an
internal representation of data not directly seen by end
users, e.g. the Windows Registry is a sort of metafile.
Montage
creates its own special type of metafile, referred to as a montage
(lower case),
to store configuration information in a more portable,
modular way. Unlike the Windows
Registry, there may be any number of montages, each
corresponding to an alternate view.
An entirely different usage of the term metafile refers to a type of vector
graphic file, called a Windows Metafile. These files have the .WMF
extension, and they really aren't metafiles in the usual generic sense
(because they are the data). To avoid any confusion, we never
refer to WMF files simply as "metafiles", despite the popularity of
this unfortunate misnomer.
(as contrasted to modeless) a modalform
requires you to finish with it before you can access other forms or the main
menu (within the same application).
(as contrasted to modal) a modeless
form is one that allows you to go away and come back to it. You do not
have to close a modeless form to deactivate it, and you can access the main
menu while the form is active.
the design feature of being cleanly divisible into separate modules than
can be moved, replaced, or adjusted more easily and independently than would
otherwise be possible. Modularity is generally desirable,
because it contributes to both program maintainability and data portability.
a Montage metafile, containing the stored representation of a saved Montage
Desktop configuration, including the states of all the objects
(e.g. Shortcuts) it contains. Note the use of lower case, to distinguish
montage (the metafile) from Montage, the
program. A montage actually is composed of multiple files, but the
primary one has a .MO3 file name extension, and this is the file to which one normally
refers. Strictly speaking, "montage" refers to a metafile, but we
sometimes use the term more loosely to mean an opening of that metafile, i.e.
the Montage Desktop window associated with the open metafile.
As a generic term, a "montage" is an arrangement of images (static
or moving pictures) into a single larger image. In that sense, Montage
(the program) is indeed a way of creating conventional montages, but it
extends the concept of images to include live applications, running on your computer.
the directory in which Montage was installed on your computer, typically
C:\MONTAGE3. This is where the program, MONTAGE3.EXE, and the help
file, MONTAGE.CHM, would normally reside. See more
about the Montage
program directoryon the Montage installation page.
an arrangement of interconnected instances of Montage where one montage
has opened one or more other montages, which in turn may have opened still
more child montages. When a parentmontage
is closed, it closes its children, so the entire arrangement can be closed
simply by closing the top-level parent. Unlike most parent-child
relationships, those that hold between montages can vary, depending
one which one opened the other.
an arrangement of windows where there is a parent
window, which contains one or more child
windows, which may contain their own children, etc. A child window is
confined to the space within its parent window, and the children move with
the parent.
we use the term normalize to mean
putting a window into its "normal" zoom
state, as opposed to using the even more confusing and ambiguous
Windows terminology of restoring a window (not to be confused with state-saving
and restoration). (Normalize has many other meanings in
different contexts, but this definition applies only to the state
of a window.)
a programming term for a single "object-oriented" entity, e.g. a control
or a form. Objects typically correspond to
visible screen elements, but Montage also uses some non-visual objects, e.g.
a timer and other internal "classes"
of objects.
a type of one-to-many logical relationship of ownership, containment, or
causation where there exist parent entities,
which may have some number of children, and each
entity is the child of at most one parent. For example parent-child
relationships apply to windows, folders, and montages.
Depending on the type of relationship, there may be some ambiguity as what
is meant by parent and child. For example a top-level window may have
no parent (or the parent is the Windows desktop) in the sense of physical
containment, yet the window may "belong to" or be subordinate to
another application window. For example, Montage's Shortcut
Properties dialogs are top-level windows, but they are internal to a
Montage process. In the context of nested montages, the
determination as to which is the parent and which is the child depends upon
how they were opened: the one that opened the other is its parent.
This implies that a montage may sometimes be the parent of another, and
sometimes be its child, but never both at once.
the action of passing control to to an another Window when an attempt is
made to open an application or document. This is often done as a way of
enforcing instancing restrictions, such
as those for exclusive applications
and exclusive document
applications. For example, when a given Word document is
already open, and you attempt to open it again, Word does a pass-off
the the previously opened instance, as opposed to opening a second window on
the same document. (Often DDE is used to implement this
behavior.) Montage generally detects pass-offs in well-behaved
applications, with the result being that the existing target
window is simply activated, but the Shortcut
remains un-highlighted. Montage also supports lazy
auto-detection for some types of pass-offs (e.g. for Word), allowing
the target window to be monitored and controlled from this Shortcut, even
though the target is not its true child.
the ability of an application and its data to be moved easily to a
different location or environment. This includes portability in
the sense of moving to a different path in the filing system, a different
user profile, a different
version of the operating system, or to an entirely different computer.
Montage supports a number of features
aimed at providing a high degree of portability.
an operating system resource that embodies an independent task or
executing program, which runs concurrently with other processes on your
computer. Most well-behaved
applications run within their own separate process, reducing
the risk of a failure in one application causing problems in another
application, or another instance of the
same application. Since some additional overhead is required to
support each separate process, some applications (especially older ones from
Microsoft) have been optimized to support multiple instances within a single
process, in a way that is usually transparent to the user. This
implies that each running instance of an application does not necessarily
have a unique process ID, a fact which
greatly complicates the problem of detection
in application launchers, like Montage.
a number that uniquely identifies each running process
on your computer. In Windows these numbers are unique only for the
duration of the process, i.e. after a process terminates, its process ID
may be reassigned to a new process.
a form of incomplete pathname that represents a filing system location
relative to the current directory or drive, as opposed to an absolute
path. The special characters "." and "..",
when specified at the start of a path, represent the current directory and
the parent of the current directory,
respectively. (Also a local pathname without a drive-letter +
":\" prefix is interpreted as being relative to the current
directory.) For example, Montage allows the user to specify the target, initial directory,
or icon path of a Shortcut
in terms of relative path (relative to the location of the montage),
as a method of achieving greater portability.
In addition, Montage supports a Relative
Paths option, which automatically puts pathnames into relative or
absolute form by default, without requiring this to be done manually.
a general programming term for the outermost layer, i.e. the user interface,
of an application or the operating system itself. The Windows
Shell (sometime referred to simply as the "Shell", in
proper case) is one example, as are the various shells available for
Unix/Linux, and other operating systems. Montage is in some respects like a shell
for the Windows Shell.
an application for viewing and navigating through the Windows filing
system, integral to the Windows
Shell. There are two basic types of Shell Explorer
windows, those belonging to Windows Explorer,
and those belonging to Internet Explorer
(IE), but the differences are
fairly technical and not readily apparent. Adding to the confusion,
there are version-dependencies and no consistent, widely accepted terminology for making this
distinction clear, so Shell Explorer may be taken by some to mean
specifically Windows Explorer. However, we use the term Shell
Explorer to mean either Windows Explorer or IE.
A Shell Explorer window may be split into two panes, with a collapsible TreeView
(folder navigation) pane
showing the directory structure on the left side, and a
pane showing the current folder's contents at the right. (The
more basic "cabinet" mode is single-paned, without a navigation
pane.)
The primary folder contents pane displays a list of files and sub-folders in one of several view
modes, e.g. Large Icons, Small Icons, List, or Details mode. (Montage
cansave and restore both the TreeView ON/OFF mode and primary pane's view mode for Shell
Explorer windows, in addition to the window's sizing and placement.)
most applications have a short name by which they can be referred to in
some contexts, even if they do not reside in the Windows directory or on the
default search path. The short application name is the program
name, without its explicit directory path, and possibly without its .EXE
extension, for example the short name of Internet
Explorer is IEXPLORE.EXE (or just IEXPLORE will do). For no
apparent reason, Windows links do not support
such short names, although Windows' Start, Run... command does.
Montage also supports short application names in its Shortcut
target specifications, in order to provide a greater degree of portability.
refers to a Montage Shortcut when used with
proper case (i.e. with the first letter capitalized), as opposed to meaning a Windows link when
this term is used in lower case. A Montage Shortcut resembles a Windows
shortcut as displayed in Explorer's "large icons"
view mode, but it resides within a Montage Desktopwindow. Some Montage commands make the distinction between internal
and external Shortcuts, the difference being that internal Shortcuts
launch Montage forms, such as built-in
viewers, while external Shortcuts launch arbitraryexternal
applications.
a flexible kind of tooltip that Montage
displays when you hover the mouse over a Shortcut.
This feature is controlled by options on the
Tips page of the global Shortcuts
dialog, in combination with the Shortcut's description
and/or basic target information.
Shortcut tips may be displayed either in a wait
window, or the status bar, or both.
the condition of something, i.e. its arrangement or configuration. The
state of a computer, for example, describes what it is currently doing,
i.e. which applications are running, and the states of those
applications. The state of an application refers to how it has been
adjusted, its layout, what options and parameters are in effect, the states of
its constituent objects, etc. (Also see state-saving
and restoration.)
the ability to capture the state of a program,
retain it, and later restore it. Many
programs support some such capability, based on a variety of approaches.
The required information may be stored along with the primary data or
documents upon which the program operates, or it may be stored separately, in
some sort of metafile. For example, the
Windows operating system and many applications use the registry
as their repository for saved state information. Instead of using the
registry for this purpose, some applications (like Montage) employ their own
specialized type of metafile.
the gray region along the bottom edge of a Montage Desktop
or other application window, where prompts, tips, and assorted transient
messages are displayed. (Montage has a menu command for toggling the status
bar ON/OFF setting, and
another toggle option that controls whether to display Shortcut
tips in the status bar.)
the opposite of asynchronous.
Activities are synchronous if they require some form of
synchronization. For example when a program calls another program and
waits for a result before proceeding, the invocation is synchronous.
the designated file, folder, or URL associated
with a Montage Shortcut
or a Windows link. When a Montage Shortcut is
open, the target window is the one belonging to the external
application
or form launched by that Shortcut. You can
examine or change the setting of a
Shortcut's target via the Properties dialog.
Note that there is a difference terminology between Montage and Windows as to
the target of a Shortcut. In Montage, the target is just a path
to a file, folder, or URL, with any optional arguments being specified
separately in a second Args field.
In the Windows shortcut properties dialog, the field labeled
"Target" contains the combination of these two components, forming a
complete command line.
An entirely different meaning of target applies in the context of drag-and-drop
operations: the "drop target" is the object onto which the thing
being dragged (the drop source) is dropped. For example the drop source
could be a Shortcutor a link, which has its
own fixed target. The target of a link or Shortcut is not the same as the target of
the drop, which depends on where you choose to drop it.
a brief, descriptive message that appears when you hover the mouse over a control,
such as a command button or a textbox. This feature can generally be
turned on or off. For example Montage has a tooltip
toggle command that affects its Shortcut
Properties dialog. Also see Shortcut
tips, which are similar to tooltips, but apply to Shortcuts
themselves.
a graphical Microsoft ActiveX control for
displaying and navigating a dynamic, collapsible outline of headings and
subheadings. TreeViews are integrated into Windows' Shell
Explorer to support the familiar, split-panedTreeView
mode of Explorer windows, where the
TreeView (folder navigation) pane at the left shows the filing system directory structure, and
the pane at the right displays the current folder contents in one of various
view modes.
the split-paned mode of a Shell Explorerwindow, where the directory structure is displayed in the left (folder
navigation) pane and
the current directory contents are displayed in the right pane. When TreeView
mode is turned off, the Explorer window reverts to its single-paned
mode, which simply displays the contents of a single folder. Microsoft
discontinued support of TreeView mode for
Internet Explorer as of version 7, and in versions of Windows Explorer subsequent to Windows XP.
(See MKB00004 for additional details.)
to remove the browser frame
surrounding a given page, causing that page to be reloaded by itself in a
normal, unframed browser window. This is essentially the
opposite action to framing a page.
a way of addressing information on the Internet or a local intranet.
The most familiar types of URLs are web addresses, beginning with
"http:", where http stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol.
Different prefixes are used for other standard URL protocols, for example: file
(host-specific file), ftp (File Transfer Protocol), https
(Secure HTTP), mailto (electronic mail), news (USENET news), outlook
(Microsoft Outlook), and a variety of less common protocols. (An
authoritative reference on URLs can be found in this
article by T. Berners-Lee.) Montage supports URLs in the
specification of target and directory
paths for Shortcuts.
a machine-independent way of referring to files, folders, and other shared
resources in a Windows networked (LAN) environment. UNC
pathnames have a syntax of the form \\servername\sharename\pathname, where servername
is the name of a server on the network, sharename is the name of a
specific shared resource (e.g. a drive or a printer), and the remaining pathname
is of the same form as used in a local file system path. Montage
supports UNC syntax in the specification of target
and directory paths for Shortcuts.
the entirestate or configuration of a Montage
Desktop and the application windows it controls. This includes the Desktop window's sizing and placement,
option settings, the layout of its Shortcuts, viewers,
and other forms, and the state of any external applications
it has launched. The view is what you see when you open
a montage; it does not include elements
of the Windows desktop and other application windows that were launched outside
of the control of this montage.
speaking generally, a viewer is a program that displays some type of
"document" or data file. In Montage, the concept
refers to Montage's built-in viewers, which are
program components that show the contents of a file within a control
residing in a form window. The term also
may be used in a somewhat looser sense, in that a viewer might be an editor, and
Montage itself could be regarded as a sort of recursive, multi-windowed viewer.
the Windows Shell Explorer attribute
that specifies the display mode for viewing a folder's contents, e.g. Large
Icons, Small Icons, List, Details, Thumbnails, etc. Exact terminology
and available choices depend upon the version of Windows, for example
Windows XP has a "Tiles" mode corresponding to what was previously
called "Small Icons", and XP's "Icons" mode corresponds
to the earlier "Large Icons" mode. Montage saves
and restores this setting, and also provides a field
for selecting a view mode in the Shortcut
Properties dialog.
A powerful, object-oriented, Microsoft programming language, used in the
implementation of Montage. Visual FoxPro (VFP) is especially
well-suited to dynamic, data-driven applications, because of its tight
integration with a high-performance, local database. VFP is compatible
with every version of Windows since Windows 95, and its self-contained runtime
requirements facilitate installation and help to ensure application portability.
A floating, gray text window used by Montage to display various transient
messages, including Shortcut tips.
Usage is similar to the status bar prompt
area, but wait windows are more conspicuous. Depending on
context, a wait window message may disappear automatically upon the
completion of some action, or a residual message may remain only until you
move the mouse, or the message may persist until you click the mouse or
press a key.
an application that is easy to launch, detect, monitor, and control,
without requiring special knowledge about its peculiarities. From
Montage's perspective, well-behaved applications are those without instancing
complications or unusual window characteristics. Detection is easiest
when each instance of an application runs in a separate process,
but there are a number of important applications (especially from Microsoft)
which require exceptional treatment. Montage has a certain amount of
built-in application intelligence
to cope with special cases automatically, and Advanced
options may be used to assist Montage with any ill-behaved applications
that it doesn't yet know about.
a standard way of accessing program help by pointing to a specific form
or control and clicking the mouse. This
is done by first entering into What's This mode, e.g. by clicking on
the "?" symbol in the right-hand corner of the window title bar,
whereupon the mouse cursor takes on a special appearance until you click on
something. (Montage supports What's This help for its Shortcut
Properties and global Shortcuts dialogs, along with other integral
help features.)
aka simply the "Clipboard", an integral component of the Windows operating system that supports copy
and paste operations between different applications, including both text and
non-textual information.
aka just "Explorer" (but not to be confused with Internet Explorer),
is the primary
Shell Explorer interface to
the Windows desktop and filing system. Windows
Explorer is the program named EXPLORER.EXE, which resides in the main
Windows directory.
aka simply the "registry", a system file containing all sorts of information about the Windows
operating system itself, along with global default configuration information
for any number
of specific applications installed on your computer. (Instead of relying
on the Windows Registry, Montage uses its own metafiles
to store program configurations in a way that is more modularand portable.)
the scripting facility built into recent versions of Windows (since Windows
98) and Internet Explorer (since IE 4.0), supporting VBScript and
JScript. WSH also provides general Windows filing system
functions that are useful to Montage. Information about setting
up WSH can be found on the Montage installation page.
the interface to the Windows desktop and filing system,
including a collection of program libraries and functions related to the way that
applications are launched, documents are opened, etc. The primary user
interface to the Windows Shell is a Shell
Explorer, which may be either Windows
Explorer or Internet Explorer. The
abbreviated term "Shell" (proper case) generally refers to the Windows
Shell,
as opposed to the generic concept of a shell(lower
case).
sometimes referred to as just the "System" directory, this is the
primary subdirectory of the main Windows directory, where various libraries
(e.g. .DLL files) are stored. The actual path of the Windows System
directory may vary, depending on the version of Windows and how it has been
set up, for example C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM would be typical under Windows 95,
whereas it would usually be C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32 under Windows 2000, or
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 under Windows XP.
A standard setup of Montage updates
(and registers) all of the required files in the Windows System directory. If you perform a
manual quick-install, certain Montage
features, i.e. context-sensitive help, may not be available unless you
manually install (and register) the necessary System files.
the central portion of the Windows desktop screen area, where icons and
open windows are displayed, but not including the Windows Taskbar and any
toolbars that are docked around the edge of the screen. Since users
can customize the appearance of Windows, e.g. by turning off, moving, or
auto-hiding the Taskbar, the dimensions and offset of the Windows
workspace can vary. Montage saves and restores window positions
relative to the Windows workspace coordinate system, to achieve the greatest
degree of portabilityacrossdifferent
configurations of the Windows desktop.
a program installation procedure that simply entails copying one or more
files into a directory structure, without the need for manipulations of the Windows Registry or other complex
registration steps. In other words, XCOPY deployment can be
accomplished entirely through the DOS XCOPY command. A
quick installation of Montage can be
performed in this manner, except for optional support of context-sensitive help, which can be
achieved by a separate
registration step.
the sequence of layering or stacking visual objects
to achieve a 3-dimensional effect on a 2-dimensional display, i.e. the
ordering along an imaginary z-axis, corresponding to depth. In a group
of overlapping windows, for example, the one that is behind all of the
others is at the bottom or back of the z-order and the foremost
window is at the top or front of the z-order. Montage has commands to send
a Shortcut to the back or send its target
window to the back of the z-order.
ZIP files (i.e. files with the .ZIP extension) are the most widely
used format for compact storage and distribution of files, and this is the
format used for compressed montages.
There are numerous ZIP utilities available, including an integral "Compressed
(zipped) Folder" facility built into Windows XP. One popular third party ZIP
tool is WinZip,
but you can use any equivalent file compression utility (many of which are
free) that supports the standard ZIP format. A ZIP file can contain many
files, and these can be further organized into any sort of directory structure
within the ZIP. When extracting the ZIP contents, it is important to be aware
of its internal sub-directory structure, because you will generally want to
preserve that organization, relative to the primary directory into which the
files are extracted. (Using WinZip, for example, you would check the "Use
folder names" option to preserve the sub-directory structure.)
whether a window is minimized, maximized, or in its "normal"
display mode (aka normalized).
(Montage uses a distinctive method of highlighting
Shortcuts to indicate the zoom state of the associated
application window.)
