3D Windows is a ’WDEF’- a Window DEFinition function, which is a small piece of code which draws windows on the Macintosh desktop. The WDEF is called by the system when required, and in theory it can be made to display a window of any conceivable appearance.
3D Windows draws coloured windows with a 3D appearance on a Mac II, a user interface enhancement which brings the Mac desktop up to date.
Version 2.0 of 3D Windows has been completely rewritten in THINK C, which vastly improves it’s efficiency, more than halves it’s code size, and fixes a couple of bugs in version 1.0x.
Installing 3D Windows is quite straightforward, and is accomplished using the control panel 3D Windows installer. 3D Windows is not an INIT. Although INITs are easy to install, they often cause problems by eating up system heap space, and slow the Mac operating system down in use. Because 3D Windows is a pure WDEF, it is totally compatible with the Mac OS. The system thinks it is accessing it’s own WDEF, and there are no known compatibility problems.
The 3D Windows installer has also been rewritten, and is now much better at installing windows than before! The old version only installed on Macs with known ROM version numbers, which meant that when the IIsi and LC came out, it failed to install 3D Windows on those machines. Version 2.0 now ‘thinks for itself’ when installing, and should work no matter what Apple do in the future!
To install, select the Control Panel, and click on 3D Windows icon. Select whether you want to install the 3D Windows, or restore the original Apple ones (who would want to after seeing this!?). Then click Install. Installation necessarily has to perform a restart of the Mac, so you are asked to confirm installation. Please save any work before Installing, as unsaved work will be lost when the Mac is restarted.
Comparison of version 2.0 with 1.0.
Code size. 3DWindows now turns in at just under 5K, whereas version 1.0 was nearly 15K!
Zooming bug. Formerly, version 1.0 would zoom to zero size (i.e.disappear!) when the zoom box was clicked in certain applications. It now works correctly in all applications tested.
Grow icon. For compatibility, version 2.0 now draws the scroll bar delimiting lines in response to a DrawGrowIcon call. Version 1.0 ignored this message. The appearance of the grow icon has been altered to illustrate it’s function more obviously.
Colours. Version 2.0 defines its own colours. Version 1.0 used an external clut resource which caused havoc if it ever went missing! Also, version 2.0 is more fully compatible with the window colouring mechanism for standard windows. You can define the title, title bar and content region (background) colours in the standard way using a wctb resource. Version 1.0 used the background colour only. The colours of the window frame are defined by the WDEF itself, and can’t be changed.
Compatibility. Because 3D Windows is not an INIT, it is more compatible than many desktop modifying programs. The price you pay for this is a slightly trickier installation method. 3D Windows has been tested with most current popular applications, and works just fine. In fact no problems at all have surfaced with version 2.0 in over a month of daily use, which is more than can be said for many of the applications themselves! The following is a sample list of applications that 3D Windows is known to work with:-
Finder MultiFinder ResEdit
Pixelpaint 2.0 Illustrator 88 Aldus Freehand
Aldus PageMaker Adobe Photoshop LetraStudio
THINK C Compiler Turbo Pascal compiler Hypercard
Supercard LogicWorks Macromind Director
MacWrite II Claris CAD FileMaker II
Quark XPress etc etc!
The only problem I do know about is with programs that change the hardware colour palette when running on a Radius big screen. Nothing really bad happens, but sometimes windows get left with lurid coloured borders! This doesn’t seem to occur with Supermac video boards, only Radius. Why? Only the great video card god knows! The problem is not in the WDEF (honest!) as coloured Apple windows exhibit the same effect.
3D Windows is freeware, but I would appreciate any comments, suggestions or (heaven forbid!) bug reports. My address is:
