Launching applications

The suite consists of a single program. It is started like any other shell program. It can be used to open any application window, but by default just opens the Applixware Iconbar application, which is a strip of icons that can be clicked on to access that program. The icon bar can be set to show any number of icons from one to all of them, and scrolled by either single icons or the width of the bar. The screen shot here shows three copies of the icon bar sans window decorations stacked on top of each other so that all fifteen icons are visible.

Each application window also has a * menu, which by default lists all the programs that are part of Applixware Office. It lists all the applications and most of the tools. It is missing the problem reporting tool, but adds the directory display tool and the icon bar. It also breaks the preferences tool into four different entries that start at different panels of the preference tool.

I found these two methods of starting Applixware applications and tools to be comfortable, intuitive, and non-intrusive. I wish that other large application systems worked as well.