StartEmUp started out to be an application that launches all selected items in the selected folder. I wrote StartEmUp because I got tired of having to manually restart the items in my Startup Items folder when they were shutdown by Disk First Aid or some installer. Then it turned into "Steve's catch-all" utility... version 2 has a ShutEmDown window that allows you to stop selected processes and a CleanEmOut window to facilitate mass file deletions.
Beta Version
This version of StartEmUp is a beta, meaning that:
a) I've done as much testing as I can, but the hardware and software available to me are limited.
b) A registration code is not required, but this version will refuse to run after a specific date. Before that date there will be a new version posted on my web site.
c) It has "issues" :-) The 2 I know about is that when running on a 68K Mac some of the text in the Preferences window doesn't show properly and the size of the text on the tabs is too large resulting in the Registration tab only showing "Reg". Since neither of these show up on my PPC Mac,I believe these are bugs in REALbasic and I hope it gets fixed soon, but at least it isn't debilitating.
d) I need your help to find problems and verify solutions. I am offering free registration at the end of the beta period to the first 5 testers that are accepted as such by me and actually perform the service. OK, it's not much, but then neither is the cost of the product. If you are interested in doing beta testing I'd like you to send me (schasj@srv.net) the following information: your name, e-mail address, a brief statement of why you are interested in testing, your age, your Mac model and OS version. Once accepted I expect you to try every feature of StartEmUp and report problems and concerns. I will keep the group informed of what has been found by the members and what I'm doing about it.
Shareware
Shareware has become an important factor for computer users. It is a marvelous concept that allows us to try a product that is readily available any hour of any day and decide for ourselves if it meets our needs or wants before we plunk our money down. It also allows us to re-confirm the basic honesty and trustworthiness of humans in a way that is rivaled only by the game of golf.
With version 2.0 StartEmUp is no longer free. Having suffered from the worst case of scope creep that I've personally been a party to, I'm no longer willing to just give this work away. If you have version 1.0, which is very lame by comparison, then you may continue to use it guilt
free. Version 2.0 and beyond are shareware and I expect you to register StartEmUp if you keep it beyond 30 days from when you first acquire it.
I use, and pay for, a number of shareware products myself. I've found that in many cases their usefulness and quality are very good and, with the generally low cost, a great bargain. While I don't expect to be able to quit my day job due to income from shareware, it does make a huge
difference in my enthusiasm for enhancing this product and producing others. Please support all shareware authors whose products you use.
While using an unregistered copy of StartEmUp you will be reminded every time you launch it that you haven't registered with a splash screen that you can't dismiss until it times out. There is no crippling of features so that you can try them all. Once you register, the splash screen will
have a much shorter timeout plus you'll be able to click on it to dismiss it immediately.
You'll only have to register once as all future versions of StartEmUp will be yours at no additional cost. Just download and install them. You won't even have to re-enter your registration code (unless you delete the preferences file).
I'm sorry, but I have nothing set up for on-line registration at this time. I always wrinkle my nose when paying for shareware if I have to send a check so I understand how you feel about this inconvenience. If the volume gets to be large enough I will pursue getting such support
from an on-line registration service, such as Kagi, to name one.
To register StartEmUp please send a $10 check or money order drawn on a U.S. bank to:
Steve Schaeffer
3010 Escalante Ave.
Idaho Falls, ID 83404
Please include your e-mail address and name so that I can e-mail your registration code to you. I will do so as soon as possible upon receipt of your payment, usually within 24 hours, but it isn't unheard of that I'd be away from home for a week so I won't promise a specific turn-around time.
Feature Requests
Please feel free to send feature requests but understand that if there are only a few requestors for a feature it probably won't be implemented.
Balloon Help
You can turn on Balloon Help to get reminders of what you read here while StartEmUp is running.
The Windows...
StartEmUp has 3 primary windows: the StartEmUp window for launching items; the ShutEmDown window for stopping running processes; and the CleanEmOut window for deleting or trashing files.
The StartEmUp Window
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This window lists all the files in the selected folder that are neither hidden nor a folder itself and allows you to check any or all items. The selected folder will be Startup Items the first time you run StartEmUp and whenever the "Startup with this Folder" box is not checked, otherwise the selected folder will be the last one you chose.
To select a folder, click on the drop-down menu (shown as "Startup Items" in this screenshot) and you will see a list of commonly-used folders and a "Choose a Folder..." item. Selecting any of the system folders will take you directly to them while selecting the last item brings up a dialog box that lets you navigate to the folder of your choosing.
The list of commonly-used folders is: "Apple Menu Items", "Control Panels", "Desktop Folder", "Extensions", "Recent Applications", "Shutdown Items", "Startup Items", and "Temporary Items".
The "Resolve Aliases" checkbox determines whether StartEmUp will treat any aliases as the target, or translate them into whatever they are aliases of. Checking this box will cause StartEmUp to translate, or resolve, any items that are aliases. The Aliases tab in the Preferences window has two checkboxes that define how the aliases will be resolved (see Alises Tab, below).
You can click any one of the 3 list headings to sort the list, in ascending order, by that column.
When the Launch Selected Items button is clicked the items in the list that have checkmarks will be launched. StartEmUp will then quit if the Quit After Launch box is checked, or remain running (but not the active application) so you can continue working with it.
The ShutEmDown Window
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This window lists all the processes on your Mac. You can sort the list by clicking on the heading of the column you want to sort (in ascending order). You can check any item in the list so that when you click the Stop Selected Processes button those processes will be stopped.
I've not yet figured out how to target a single process when more than one have the same creator code. The MacOS won't let you start the same application twice, but if you create a copy of an application you can get around this. If you do this and start both copies up I can't tell you which one will receive the message to quit. So, if you do this kind of thing I don't recommend that you select one of those processes, or you might just get a surprise.
Be careful here! No "Gee, do you really want to?" messages will appear. It is assumed that you know what you are doing and there is nothing in StartEmUp, er, make that ShutEmDown, to save you from yourself if it really wasn't such a good idea to kill file sharing while your spouse was saving their term paper from your other, networked, Mac. I won't even send flowers to your funeral.
There is one safety net... in the Preferences you will find a checkbox that makes the ShutEmDown window ignore the Finder if it is checked in the list of Running Processes. Since the Finder is kinda the "master application" I figured it was a fairly safe bet that you don't want to shut it down. Although you can kill off the Finder you won't be able to start it back up by launching it in the StartEmUp window. I'm not sure why (or, why not). The good news is that if you accidently stop the Finder the System will start it back up (always has for me, anyway) when the last application is stopped.
When the Stop Selected Processes button is clicked the items in the list that have checkmarks will be stopped in the order they appear in the list except that the Finder, if selected and not protected, will be stopped last. StartEmUp will then quit if the Quit After Stop box is checked, or remain running so you can continue working with it.
The CleanEmOut Window
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This must be a bug in OS 9, but I've noticed that the Temporary Items folder, which is a hidden folder, no longer gets cleaned out by the system as it has with earlier versions of MacOS. By the time I noticed this (because I wasn't getting "Items Rescued from..." in the Trash after a crash) I had quite a load of junk in this folder. "Steve's catch-all" utility to the rescue! and the CleanEmOut window was born.
Then I remembered that I hate having to clean out orphaned aliases from the Recent Applications folder in the Apple menu so I added this folder to the list of folders to select from and added the the Check Orhaned Aliases button. This button causes all of the aliases in the current list of files that no longer point to a valid item to be checked.
You can also quickly check every item in the list with the Check All button or remove the checkmarks from every item with the Check None button.
When you have finished putting checkmarks by the items you want you can move them to the Trash with the Trash Selected Items button or delete them completely (careful here!) with the Delete Selected Items button.
The default folder for the CleanEmOut window is the Temporary Items folder. Otherwise, the operation of the list and checkbox inside the Folder Selection area is the same as the corresponding items on the StartEmUp window (see above) although the remembered folder is separate so that you can have different defaults for the two windows.
The Preferences...
There are tabs in the Preferences window for setting the default behavior of each of the windows and for entering your registration code. You get to this window by selecting Preferences from the Edit menu.
Aliases Tab
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Here you tell StartEmUp how you want alias resolution handled. This affects the StartEmUp and CleanEmOut window behavior. You can specify that you want to attempt to mount volumes that are currently not mounted when an alias points to an item on such a volume. If you have checked that you do want to attempt volume mounts then you also have the choice of displaying or suppressing the dialogs that request offline volumes. Leaving the dialogs off will make the mount attempt much faster and less intrusive, but you won't know that an alias was pointing to an unmounted volume.
StartEmUp Tab
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This tab is where you make your choices about the behavior of the StartEmUp window. The first checkbox determines where the window will be shown when StartEmUp is launched. The next 3 checkboxes are redundant with the ones on the StartEmUp window (see description above).
The 4 checkboxes inside the border tell StartEmUp what types of files you want to be automatically checked for launching. Of course, you can always change the checkmarks, but this feature makes it convenient if you have the desire to save some mouseclicks.
Note that the item "Applications" means both regular and "background-only" applications.
ShutEmDown Tab
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This tab is where you make your choices about the behavior of the ShutEmDown window and ought to be pretty clear by now.
The Protect Finder checkbox, when checked, tells the ShutEmDown window that you really don't mean it if the Finder happens to get into the list of processed to shutdown.
CleanEmOut Tab
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Here you can select various items affecting the behavior of the CleanEmOut window. The first 3 items should be clear by now.
The Check All Files checkbox says that you want all the items in the selected folder to be checked by default. This is real handy if you use CleanEmOut mainly for the Temporary Items folder.
The Show Hidden Files checkbox lets you include hidden files in the list. IT IS PROBABLY NOT A GOOD IDEA TO DELETE A HIDDEN FILE, unless you know exactly what it's there for. You've been warned.
Registration Tab
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This is where you enter your registration code. It would be best if you copy the code from the e-mail message that I send you and paste it in to avoid misreading the code which may have punctuation characters in it. After pasting your code into the field click the Register button to validate the code. When you have entered a valid code and click OK your code will be recorded and you'll no longer have to wait for the splash screen to time out as you'll be able to click it to dismiss it immediately. The display time on the splash screen will be much shorter too. Of course, if you want to see the information there you can always display it from the About╔ item on the Apple menu.
When you have recorded a valid registration code the code entry field and Register button are disabled.
Restore Defaults Button
Clicking this button will restore all of StartEmUp's preferences to their default values, except that your registration code will be left as is.
Window Menu
The Window menu lets you open or move to the front any of StartEmUp's windows regardless of the settings in the preferences that control which windows are opened when StartEmUp is launched.
Localization
English is the only language supported by StartEmUp. I have no plans to change that but if I were to get a truckload of requests (meaning there would be enough profit to make it worth my time) for a version in a specific language then I suppose I'd have a hard time ignoring them.
Legal Stuff
While every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that StartEmUp does what is claimed, and only what is claimed, no warranty is expressed or implied and no liability for loss or damage will be assumed by either Steven J. Schaeffer or Nybbles&Bits. Use at your own risk.