OS/2 Tips

We scan the Web, Usenet and the OS/2 mail lists looking for these gems. Have you run across an interesting bit of information about OS/2 recently? Please share it with all our readers. Send your tips to editor@os2voice.org

Editor's note: these tips are from OS/2 users and in some cases can not be verified by myself. Please heed this as a warning that if you are not sure about something, don't do it.

September 21, 1999 - From the POSSI list, here is a heads up from D. Scott Katzer on a great web search engine http://www.google.com:

You've got to do some tricks to have it find OS/2. It's even listed in the help under the "details" link:

Stop words

Google ignores common words and characters, known as stop words. Google automatically disregards such terms as "http" and "com," as well as all single digits and single letters, because they rarely help narrow a search, while slowing searching significantly.

Use the + operator to include stop words in your search. Be sure to include a space before the + operator. Include the + operator in phrase searches as well.

To find pages about OS/2:

"os/+2" Google Search

September 22, 1999 - Communicator for OS/2 4.61 is now GA, and a lot of problems have been stamped out with this release, and some features added (like better Dragn'Drop support). Unfortunately there are some new problems. one revolves around the default font. Specifically a problem where text entry boxes on forms don't appear or appear as a single line. Jeff Kobal, of the IBM netscape Team, had a solution on comp.os.os2.apps:

It's not an underline... it's a 0-height input box. The problem is that we are defaulting to the "Courier New" font, but that font doesn't exist on your machine, for some reason... so when the input box is created, the font height is queried as 0. If you switch your default Fixed Width font to something else (such as "Courier"), all should be well.

Jeff's team member Mike Kaply suggests the same thing on comp.os.os2.apps:

If anyone is having a problem where web pages that have fixed with pages display blank, change your fixed width font from Courier New to Courier. It appears that with the Matrox driver, Courier New is unavailable for some reason.

September 22, 1999 - Since Communicator for OS/2 is on everyone's mind at the moment, I thought I'd throw in a list of control keys:

Ctl-A Selects all text
Ctl-B Shows Bookmarks (bookmark.html)
Ctl-F Pops up the Find box
Ctl-H Brings up the History
Ctl-I Shows Page Information
Ctl-M Message Composition Screen
Ctl-N Starts a New instance of Navigator
Ctl-O Pops up Open Page box
Ctl-P Pops up Print Page box
Ctl-Q Quits Comm/2
Ctl-R Reloads page
Ctl-S Pops up Save As box
Ctl-U Shows Source for page

Ctl-Alt-F Brings up the Fish Cam site
Ctl-Alt-S Toggles the Status line on/off
Ctl-Alt-T Pops up a display box showing Connections Open, Active URL's, URL's waiting for an open socket and URL's waiting for fewer active URL's.

September 22, 1999 - For most of you long time OS/2 users, who fondly remember WebExplorer and the ability to change the WebEx
OK, I mentioned it on the chat, here are the details for making your own throbber.
Create two bitmaps, one for small and one for large.
The small bitmap is composed of 16x16 pel frames in a horizontal strip.
The first frame is the still frame, while the rest of the strip is the animation.
The large bitmap is the same as the small; the only difference is the size of the frames - 32x32.
Before adding these lines to your prefs.js, BACK IT UP! If you make a mistake, you could lose it.
Add these lines to your prefs.js:
user_pref("toolbar.logo.frames", 33); // Number of frames - your number could be different
user_pref("toolbar.logo.win_large_file", "d:\\webexl.bmp"); // Location of large bitmap - don't forget to double your backslash
user_pref("toolbar.logo.win_small_file", "d:\\webexs.bmp"); // Location of large bitmap - don't forget to double your backslash

NOTE: You MUST have all three lines!
In my example, I have created a 32 frame animation with one extra frame at the beginning for the still frame. I have two files for the animations. Now when you start Netscape, you get a custom animation. I have attached two animations to get you started. You can experiment if you like - the frames do not have to be square, and they do not have to be 16 or 32 pels high or wide.
Enjoy!

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