Making workbench looks better...

[Robert17]

Hey all whilst my amiga is out can anyone suggest any bits I should download from aminet that'd make the workbench look a bit better (plain grey background at the moment) and any good pd games for workbench?

Robert

[Robert17]

 :hammer:  :bump:

[EdKing]

You can download a lot of different games from here.

Ed King

[Holley]

MUI, Power Icons, and a background pic - that won't eat too much chip mem.  If you run in 8 or more colours there's some nice background pics in the /pix/back area of Aminet there's a good selection (my favourite is 'Esprit' which is 8 colours, but in 800x600 so probably not much use to you).

there's also Birdie, and ... erm ... that other one I don't use, that can add more eye candy to a basic Workbench.

[x56h34]

For starters, he should upgrade to 3.1 roms and OS3.9.

[Robert17]

"For starters, he should upgrade to 3.1 roms and OS3.9"

Gee you know, I never thought of that...  :roll:

[PMC]

There's loads of utilities for improving the look of your WB.  It depends on your config, but if you're running with a decent poky CPU and a GFX card then I can recommend Birdie, which textures all your WB windows.  With matching backdrops this can look quite impressive.

The other prog you can use without a GFX card is VisualPrefs which allows you to change virtually every aspect of the window borders and gadgets etc.  

[leirbag28]

Visual Prefs, Magic Menu and ToolsDaemon are essential

Visual prefs will make the Window borders more square and appropriate, and also you can make your Workbench flicker Ten times less with it.........by selecting light grey as the Shine pen for your window borders and Dark grey for the Shadow of the window borders.you can do this to the buttons too.  Pluss add double borders around them after you change the shine and shadow pens.

 ToolsDaemon will give you something similar to the StartMenu on windows but at the top in the form of Pull down menus.................like the ones you already have, just that you can add all your games and programs to the top menus!  great!!!.  

Magic Menu........simply makes Tools Daemon look ten times better instead of just black and white...........plus you can make the menus float instead of moving the mouse all the way to the top.

None of these take too much memory nor slow down your sytem.

Get them!!!!!
No more opening drawers to loofk for programs

[that_punk_guy]

I suggest looking at the workbench screenshots in the images section of this site and reading up on what others are using to get it looking (and functioning) the way they want.

[alberonn]

I have just set up a couple of 2.1 systems for some of our our club members. One if the things I installed was NickPrefs. I liked the animated busy pointers. Is there someting like that for those of us using OS 3.9?

If you have a gfx card, you can run a really good backdrop without eating too much RAM on the rest of your system.

(I haven't checked out Birdie yet, but I'm headin' over to Aminet after here.)

[Argus]

It's not free, but I believe you can still register to get Magic Workbench on www.sasg.com.  I still use it to this day, it gives you a lot of extra fonts, changes the wb colors, allows you do set up program docks, background picture (w/OS2.1) and generally spruces up the appearance of the Amiga.  I recommend registering it and MUI as well.  These are a must, imho if you have an older Amiga with only 2.04 ROMs in it.  If you have 3.1 ROMs, just install OS3.9 (but you have to pay for that).  3.9 can adjust the color palette of Workbench so Magic Worbench icons look right.  If you don't want to buy 3.9 or MWB, NewIcons works for free on 3.1 and makes things nicer. I never tried PowerIcons since OS3.5 came out with built-in GlowIcons and I never looked back (btw, I think I read redrumloa is selling 3.5 for only US$19.00 right now).

[FastRobPlus]

Wow!  Did not know MagicWB was still around!

-edit-
I looked at the order page. It says "ordering is temporarily disabled, please check back later"

Unfortunately, that message dates to Nov 2001.

[Argo]

What do you have? It depends on how much spare horsepower you have to run the eye candy...

[tolishot]

Hi my friend!i cant work the sb128 pci on my mediator 1200sx.wha to do?any ideas?

[Imerion]

NewIcons if you dont already have it. Or PNG-icons if you got a better system.

Btw, I can't get Birdie to run. I have added the correct commands to mu user-startup and it does not mention any error but the windows are simply not changed. Anyone who knows what might be the cause of it? I have tried to disable QuickDraw in MCP. That did not help.