Amiga World Official AmigaDOS 2 Companion - eBook-ENG

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Workbench Basics

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You can also copy entire disks by dragging disk icons. If you drag the icon for a floppy disk to the icon of another floppy disk, you will copy the contents of the first disk to the second, erasing the latter's contents. If you drag any disk icon to the icon of a hard-disk partition, Workbench creates a drawer in the hard-disk partition with the same name as the source disk and then copies as much of the contents of the source disk into the new drawer as will fit.

Extended Selections Although you can have only one active window at a time, you can have more than one icon selected at a time. If you wanted to move several icons from the System drawer to the Ram Disk, for example, you would not have to select and move them individually. You could select them all and then move them as a group, simplifying the process of copying a series of related files. Workbench also offers menu functions that work on multiple icons simultaneously. You can select more than one icon with the selection button via two procedures. Once you've selected one icon, you can select another without deactivating the first by holding down either of the Shift keys while you click on subsequent icons. To see how this works, open the System drawer on your boot disk and select the DiskCopy icon. Now, hold down one of the Shift keys and singleclick on both the NoFastMem and SetMap icons. When you are through, you'll see three selected icons. New to version 2.0, the second method of activating more than one icon is called drag selecting. To demonstrate, press the selection button while the pointer is inside the System window but not over any icon. Hold the button down and move the pointer. Note the rectangle that follows the pointer. Move the rectangle so that it encompasses a number of icons. When you release the button, all the icons that fall partially or completely within the box are se lected. Note that even with many selected icons, the next time you click on an icon, all the others will become inactive unless you use the Shift key.

The Menu Button A graphical user interface not only lets you select and open objects easily, but it also gives you the ability to send commands to programs without great effort. The right mouse button gives you this capability. It lets you control your Amiga's pull-down menus, and is thus called the menu button.


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