Quick Start

These instructions are a brief introduction to The Tilery’s features. To learn more about The Tilery, please read the other chapters in this document by selecting them from the Chapter menu, or by clicking the Chapter buttons at the top of this window. Extensive on-line help is also available under The Tilery’s “Help” menu.

Installation: No installation is necessary. Many people like to put The Tilery in their Startup Items folder so that it is always available, but that’s not necessary; you can launch it at any time.

You also don’t need to uninstall The Tilery. It doesn’t modify your system in any way, except to create a preferences file.

The first time you run any new version of The Tilery, it will display a splash screen when it starts up. The splash screen will not appear again after that, so you don’t have to worry about seeing it every time The Tilery starts up.

Starting up: Just double-click The Tilery to launch it. Tiles for open applications will automatically be displayed, and will appear and disappear as you open or quit the applications.

Application Switching: To bring an application to the front, just click its tile.

Quitting: Bring The Tilery to the front and choose Quit from its File menu.

Selecting Tiles: Some of the commands in the Tile menu are available only when you have selected a tile. To select a tile, hold down the command (⌘) key and click the tile. The tile will become highlighted, and the Tile menu commands which operate on selected tiles will be available.

Remembered Tiles: Normal tiles can only represent applications, and are visible only when the application they represent is running. “Remembered” tiles are always visible, and will launch the application if it isn’t already open, or just bring the application forward as usual if it is open.

There are three ways to create a remembered tile:

(1) Select a tile, and choose Remember Tile from the Tile menu.

     OR

(2) Drag an icon from a Finder window, and drop it on The Tilery’s icon in a Finder window. The Tilery will come to the front and create a remembered tile for the application.

     OR

(3) Drag an icon from a Finder window, and drop it on The Tilery’s tile. The Tilery will come to the front and create a remembered tile for the application. This method works only if your system supports Macintosh Drag and Drop.

Other Kinds of Tiles: You can create remembered tiles for documents, folders, control panels, and the Trash. Use the above methods 2 or 3: just drag the item’s Finder icon to The Tilery’s icon or tile, and drop it. Clicking a document’s tile will open the document, automatically launching its application if necessary. Clicking a folder’s tile will open the folder’s window in the Finder. Clicking a control panel’s tile will open the panel if necessary, and bring it to the front. Clicking a Trash tile will open the Trash window in the Finder.

Drag and Drop: If your system software includes Macintosh Drag and Drop, you can drag document icons from Finder windows and drop them on application tiles to have the application open the documents. If the application is not already open, it will be automatically launched. You can also drag icons onto folder tiles to move or copy them into the folder, onto a Trash tile to move them into the Trash, and so on.

Macintosh Drag and Drop is included in System 7 Pro and in System 7.5 and (presumably) later.

Placing Tiles: The Tilery offers a great deal of control over where your tiles appear on your monitor. See Tile Placement in the Help menu for details.

Finding Tiles: Often your tiles will be hidden behind the windows of other applications. You can easily bring the tiles to the front by moving the mouse into a “hot spot” corner of your screen. The default hot spot is the upper-left corner, but you can choose which corners will and won’t be hot spots by selecting Hot Spots from the Preferences menu. See Hot Spots in the Help menu for details.

Tile Labels: You can change the label on a remembered tile by selecting the tile, pressing the Return key, and then editing the label as usual. Press Return again when you’re done. To restore the default, delete the entire label and press Return.

Tile Info: Turn on Balloon Help by selecting Show Balloons or by pressing the Help key if your keyboard has one, and then just point at any tile. A balloon will appear giving useful information about the tile and its item.

Deference: The Tilery will often wind up frontmost after you quit some other application. You can request instead to have the next application behind The Tilery, or the Finder, brought forward instead. See the Defer menu items in the Preferences menu, and see Deference in the Help menu for details.

Everything Else: Full on-line help is available under the Help menu. You should at least skim the on-line help so that you’ll know what features are available, even if you don’t need to learn and use all of The Tilery’s features right away. It won’t take long to glance through it all, even if you hate reading manuals. Honest!