One other new feature found in AmigaOS is the ability to place GIF animations (with default tool:AnimatedIcon) onto the desktop. It allows AmigaOS users to easily personalize their desktop environment -- for instance, by having a rotating boingball somewhere displayed on the desktop. With the use of Tooltypes you can also assign such animations to programs so they act as real animated GIF icons. A very welcome novel idea in my opinion. Also, generally speaking, AmigaOS is extremely modular and customizable, so you can make it function and look similar to most common operating systems in use today. For example, you can add pop up menus, use textures in windows borders, add or change window gadgets or add whatever GUI functionality desired. You could for instance make AmigaOS look more like QNX so to achieve a more unified appearance when using Amiga XL. I recommend downloading the GPLed version of Directory Opus4, as it offers very powerful filemanager functions. Hundreds of such workbench enhancing utilities can be found on Aminet, the world`s biggest collection of freely distributable Amiga software. Files uploaded to Aminet are generally archived in lha format, a with AmigaOS XL included unpacker tool called Unarc supports lha, lzx, arc, arj, zip, zoo and tar archive files. These and many more filetypes are already recognized by AmigaOS XL through the use of a pre-configures file type recognition program called DefIcons. It is a powerful and flexible program and can be found in the preference drawer.
Now for some other handy tips: The Amiga key function is generally assigned to the Windows key on a PC keyboard. Pressing both "Amiga" keys simultaniously together with the Control key will result in an AmigaOS reboot. AmigaOS reboots very quickly into its GUI, more so then any other mainstream OS currently available. During an AmigaOS reboot, QNX and Linux hosts won`t reboot themselves, thus I was able to reboot into a standard AmigaXL configuration with 16-bit 1024x768 GUI in around 12 seconds on my 700 Mhz Duron/ATI Rage Mobility AGP/128MB test desktop system. Copy & pasting of text is done by pressing the right "Amiga" key in combination with "C" or "V" respectively. Pressing the left "Amiga" key together with the letter "M" allows you to page through Screens (workspaces). Pressing the left "Amiga" key in combination with the letter "N" will always bring the Workbench Screen into the forefront. The Command Line Interface is started by double clicking the "Shell" icon located in the System:System drawer. Upper and lower case differences are preserved and displayed within AmigaOS, but the system is not case sensitive. With the up-arrow key, you can bring back previously given commands, and the down-key allows you to go back to given commands in the other direction. The left and right arrow keys will move the cursor left or right without altering the given text. Powerful wildcards can also be used and XTerm-like features can easily be added. Command files for use with the CLI are stored in C: (actually this is the same as System:C), so any new commands can be easily added by dropping a new CLI program in the System:C drawer. The Startup-Sequence scriptfile is located in S: and editing this file is also a method of changing the startup behavior of AmigaOS.
Now for some Amiga XL specific features: When paging through Screens (workspaces) with AmigaXL, you will notice that the QNX RtP desktop is considered as just an ordinary workspace. The QNX desktop environment all the sudden has an AmigaOS title bar with a Depth gadget, pressing this Depth gadget will immediately take you back to AmigaOS. Also Haage&Partner wrote a special program located in C: called QNXLaunch, when using this program as a default tool for an icon it allows you to specify QNX programs to be launched when double clicking the specified icon. For instance if you insert the following in Tooltypes "COMMAND=phplay" a double click of the icon will result in AmigaOS switching to the QNX RtP desktop environment and launching QSSL`s Mediaplayer. This feature greatly adds to the feeling of a very well integrated and powerful AmigaOS emulation. One feature supported by Amithlon and not by AmigaXL is that you can burn CDs with software like BurnIT or MakeCD.
