Hands up anyone who hasn't heard of BeOS. If you haven't, go look at http://www.be.com and then email me and tell me how you managed to live on Mars for the last 8 years. I must confess to having a rather soft spot for BeOS, in my opinion it is probably the only operating systems out there which gives AmigaOS a good target to beat (or join?). BeOS features something called the "TrackBar" which is an application list utility. I liked the look, but I wanted something which worked a bit like an application launcher utility, like ScreenTab, with the appearance of BeOS's TrackBar. With this in mind, I made a small MUI program which functioned adequately and then made the fatal mistake of mentioning it on a mailing list! A month and a half down the line and StartPanel is a very different beast to that first program.

The original StartPanel was very basic - just a list of application gadgets, a title button which could be used to show or hide the application gadget list and a clock bar with a status lamp. Once the suggestions started arriving from the betatesters, options like "Backdrop window", "Keep to front window", "autohide" and the rest soon swelled the StartPanel binary from a mere 15k to the 40k it is now. It has been more than worth it though and for once I am actually pleased with something I have written - a rare event indeed. I hope you find it as useful as I do!