Handy
cat@vv.carleton.ca
http://vv.carleton.ca/~cat/

Description
~~~~~~~~~~~
Handy is a very small program designed to help you with repetitive desktop
tasks such as opening other programs and browsing the Internet. It has close
to no visible user interface, and carries a very small system resource footprint
(after days of continuous use, Peak Private Bytes: 2,228 K and User Time: 1.062 s).

See Hotkeys or the source code for what it can do. IF YOU ARE CONFUSED AND YOU WANT
TO EXIT HANDY, press Ctrl-Alt-X.

History
~~~~~~~
This project was originally a shell replacement for low-performance computers,
called TrayManager. The only additional component was the system tray emulation
shamelessly stolen from Litestep. The project is now made to complement, and not
replace the shell.

ChangeLog
~~~~~~~~~
Nov 26, 2005
 * "Volume" disabled completely, to remove dependency to GDI32.DLL
 * Created Unicode configurations (Win32 Debug Unicode, Win32 Release Unicode)
 * Added detection of D-Link AirPlus 22 Mbps insertion and removal to
   automatically start and stop D-Link configuration utility.

Installation
~~~~~~~~~~~~
None. Just put Handy.exe somewhere.

Configuration
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's the tricky part: there is none. To reconfigure the key bindings, you need
to recompile the project. This project was intended for programmers and other
keyboard-maniacs who I assumed would have the necessary skills and resources to
tune Handy to their needs.

Hotkeys
~~~~~~~
Ctrl-Alt-N	Open C:\WINDOWS\System32\Notepad.exe
Ctrl-Alt-I	Open D:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\Firefox.exe
Ctrl-Alt-P	Open D:\Programs\putty.exe
Ctrl-Alt-V	Open "D:\Programs\putty.exe @vv"
            (Together with Pageant public-key authentication, excellent passwordless
			way of opening a PuTTY session)
Ctrl-Alt-B	Opens default browser at "http://i-cat.blogspot.com/"
Ctrl-Alt-L	Queries the user for a song title (prefilled from Winamp, if active) and
			looks it up on my lyrics site with the default browser.
Ctrl-Alt-G	Queries the user for a search topic and looks it up on Google Canada with
			the default browser.
Ctrl-Alt-D	Queries the user for a word and looks it up on www.dictionary.com
Ctrl-Alt-F	Queries for user for a French word and looks it up on www.le-dictionnaire.com
Ctrl-Alt-R	Queries the user for a command or URL and runs it as in Start | Run
			(If you have your system PATH set correctly, it's by far the most useful
			hotkey.)
Ctrl-Alt-S	Opens the shell Run dialog.
Ctrl-Alt-E	Queries the user for a folder and opens "explorer.exe /e," followed by the
			name of the folder.
Ctrl-Alt-X	Exits Handy.

Note
~~~~
You may see IDM_BUTTON1 and IDM_BUTTON2, mapped to the seemingly arbitrary virtual keys
of 180 and 172, respectively. These are application keys on my laptop keyboard. I have
been trying to add a volume control OSD to Handy, and to use those special keys to
control it. This part of the project is still ongoing in Volume.cpp and Volume.h. Feel
free to improve it - and please do send in your modifications!

This program also detects insertion and removal of the D-Link AirPlus 22 Mbps WLAN
adapter and automatically starts and stops the configuration utility as required,
from D:\Program Files\D-Link AirPlus\AirPlus.exe.