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The jinnee of the lamp

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Welcome to the most powerful desktop in the world - probably!
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Kev Beardsworth, Mark Wherry and Joe Connor all wanted to be first to tell you about this latest commercial desktop for MagiC, so we made them share - what's all the fuss about anyway?...

Following our desktop round-up in AC#2 we were left with the overall impression that if all the best features from each desktop could be squeezed into one you'd have something very special indeed. Just maybe, Manfred Lippert, the author, read our article and took up the challenge but we suspect he must have been working on jinnee (pronounced Genie) long before that! jinnee is commercial software published by Applications Systems Heidelberg (ASH) and distributed in the UK by System Solutions - who are currently translating jinnee into English.

jinnee incorporates many of the best features from Neodesk, Ease, MagXdesk and Thing but also draws some inspiration from Windows 95 and the recently launched Mac OS8.

Over to Kev...

In what can only be described as a blitzkrieg Manfred has programmed features and added functions so powerful I guarantee you'll be amazed! We'll be talking about spring folders, transparent dragging, unrivalled desktop icon creation/management, tree views in windows and so on. Don't worry if that last sentence was gobbledygook it's easy to summarise... within a few minutes of installing the German demo version I knew I'd probably never use another desktop under MagiC again!

Starting from Thing

We're going to use Thing v1.20 as the baseline from which to talk about jinnee, with a few exceptions, anything Thing can do jinnee does better - usually with icing on the top.

There's no point pretending jinnee will appeal to everyone, it's a power users desktop and offers so many options you're pretty much forced to explore them to see what it does before settling on a working setup. Even then the urge to tinker is irresistible.

Mac OS8 reviewers and users were wowed by "Spring folders" so it's great to see this feature on the Atari platform. This feature comes in useful for copying files to folders nested deep inside other folders.
It works like this, select the files/folders to copy/move then drag them over a drive icon and hold them there. After a (user-configurable) delay in milliseconds the drive opens to display its window. Position the files/folders over a folder in your target path and it automatically opens to display a new window, now just keep repeating the process until you arrive at your destination then let go. Don't worry about going too far as you can use the parent icon to travel backwards up the directory tree if you go too far.
After the files/folders have been copied the windows all close themselves and you end up back where you started - it's easier to do than explain!

While we're on the subject of file copying jinnee can use Kobold (versions 2.5 or later). The dialog for setting up Kobold interaction contains some useful entries. Specific drives can be excluded and options to copy long filenames and protect case sensitive filenames are available.

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jinnee showing a text window and drive popup
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File and window management are the two greatest chores a desktop has to perform and jinnee is superbly equipped for these tasks. Two features in particular grabbed our attention:

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* Files can be displayed as a tree view, similar to Diamond Back 3, the Windows 95 Explorer and Mac OS8 finder. Each folder name is proceeded with a small right pointing arrow (although any icon could be designed for this task) which when selected displays the contents of that folder below the folders entry. Similarly, folders within folders can be opened in a similar fashion.

* Background images can be displayed in windows. This seemingly trivial feature, used with a suitable image, can actually enhance text display within windows and offers unlimited customisation options.
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Other windows options include switches to toggle 3D display of the info line, configure the information shown in the info line, switch between text and icon view automatically depending on the number of files being displayed, hide files/folders from view and an option to define the gap between the mini-icons used in tree view and their related text.

Transparent dragging does sound impressive but all it does is makes files transparent while dragging them around the desktop, which makes it easier to see what's underneath and you can switch it off if you're not impressed.

One of the features Ease owners like to show off are the drive popups. Not to be out-done jinnee offers three different popups, one for the drives, like Ease, one for switching between running applications and a finally one for opening icons on the desktop.

Desktop background image handling is streets ahead of the what's currently available. Like other desktops you can display a tiled pattern but jinnee can additionally display another centred image - this is ideal for positioning logos over a patterned background and the image can be drawn in sixteen different ways, including transparent, invisible, black, white, inverse and so on. Normally overlaying images is a recipe for a dogs dinner but a third image can be loaded and used as a mask, which opens up more possibilities than I can get my head around.

If, like me, you like your icons you're in for a treat with more quality icons supplied than any other desktop and an icon manager which is a delight to use.

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jinnee comes setup with the Be OS lookalike icons
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There's no built-in icon editor but since most power users will already have a copy of the Ease icon editor, Interface or Resource Master handy it's not too serious an omission. Any RSC file which contains icons can be loaded and used inside the manager. Like Ease jinnee only loads into memory the icons it uses but unlike Ease it doesn't take forever to arrive at the desktop. While we're on the subject of memory jinnee uses around 100Kb less memory than my equivalent Thing configuration.

One of my favourite hobby horses is icon labels - I don't like them, and some desktops insist on them, happily jinnee doesn't. There is however a whole dialog dedicated to icon management.

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You can configure specific icons to be opened with a single click (even though jinnee supports right click equals double-click). You can also tell jinnee which icons should have drive letters and which drives you'd always like displayed. There's also a multitude of options to change the way icons are displayed on the desktop from the colour of the text to the mask colour.

Here's a stunning feature I stumbled across when testing the intelligent file selector in windows. Like Thing, jinnee is capable of selecting one or many files at once simply by typing in the first couple of characters. Pressing [Return] loads the first selected file into the relevant installed application as you'd expect but pressing [Control O] loads ALL the selected files to their installed applications! For example a window with TXT and IMG files selected could load Everest and Imagecopy and display all the files... neat!

I've haven't mentioned the excellent notepad, internal font handling, quick keys, GEMScript support, comprehensive installed application dialog and the recoverable wastebasket but I'll save these for a full review in a future issue.

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jinnee's comprehensive installed application dialog - in case you're wondering the edit fields do scroll
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If this were a review instead of a preview jinnee would wipe the floor with the opposition but there is still room for improvement. If I told you the preview version was only v1.01 you'd be amazed, well it is - and you should be!

Earth calling Mark!

Back in AC#6 Kev wrote "Finding a desktop which provides the ultimate working environment has been my personal quest for the Holy Grail" - well I reckon the quest is over!

As with most applications launched by ASH you know what to expect, MagiC, WDIALOG and NVDI compatibility, non-modal dialogs, ST-Guide hypertext help in the familiar UDO generated style and BubbleGEM support.

To say jinnee is highly configurable is an understatement, it's almost totally configurable! Happily, once set up, you can forget about the complexity until you have a specific need, in which case you'll find the options are comprehensive.

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There main Settings dialog includes a list of sub-dialogs which each contain an exhaustive range of options. For example the Typefaces dialog lets you select different fonts for the icons, window icons, window text, info line, PopFold, BubbleGEM and the Console window!

The interface is classy albeit with a few rough edges and the program itself is stable - especially for such an early release. In addition to standard BubbleGEM support there's a peculiar built-in help system which displays the exact same help text across the bottom line of each dialog as the cursor passes over each object which I found distracting and unnecessary.
The mask and Quick menu options are also not quite as slick as their Thing equivalents but I suspect it's only a matter of time before these get upgraded!

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One of the few features where Thing remains ahead on points
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Moon on a stick

Why is it whenever we're confronted by something brilliant we always want more? Well I'd like an "Add URL" option which could appear as an icon on the desktop. When clicked on, it would communicate with CAB via the CAB protocol to download an URL as opposed to a local file. I'd also like to see jinnee support OLGA's inplace drawing/activation to enable client programs to be attached to the desktop.

Put simply, jinnee is the best desktop in the world - on any platform! I'd give it 100% for effort in the expectation that by the time the English release comes along the wrinkles will be ironed out and even more features will be included!

Joe sums up

In case you hadn't noticed we're all stunned by jinnee - it's a remarkable achievement! None of us thought the desktop could be improved quite so dramatically - especially for a new desktop at v1.01. 

I really wanted this review to myself but Kev and Mark had already sent in their contributions before I could warn them off. However, I do have an edge, I'm beta testing the English release - which explains why the screenshots in this preview are in English.

Although jinnee is designed for use with MagiC which, according to our survey, is only used by around 15% of our readers, it will run under other operating systems so long as the freeware system extension WDIALOG.PRG is installed in the Auto folder.

As we've seen in the Thing review elsewhere in this issue Thomas Binder has already responded to the challenge and the stage is set for a real battle of the desktops.

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Like Mark, I didn't like the jinnee dialog help prompts but there's an option to turn these off now
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** Product box-out **
Publisher:
ASH
UK Distributor:
System Solutions
Contact
Tel: +44 (0)181 693 3355
Fax: +44 (0)181 693 6936
Email: info-software@system-solutions.co.uk
URL: www.system.solutions.co.uk/cafe/
Cost:
£TBA
Requires:
Any Atari with 1Mb of memory running 640x200 resolution (ST-medium) or higher. WDIALOG required in the Auto folder.
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