• MultiCX - [MCX280.lha util/cdity 66K]
  This is one of those "does-everything" commodities like MCP, which gives you mouse acceleration, screen blanking, middle mouse button functionality, opaque window moving, a handy requester to assign things that need it, stops your drives from clicking and generally does pretty much everything except make tea for you. MCP does all these and more, but some people regard it as less stable than MCX since it also runs a patch in your startup-sequence affecting a lot more low-levels things than MCX. However, if you use MCP you can get rid of MagicFrames, PowerSnap and CycleToMenu, so it's probably worth a try.

• ARQ - [Arq1_83.lha util/cdity 43K]
  ARQ is a great tool that really should have been incorporated into the OS when Kickstart 3 was being worked on, it's that old. Whenever the system puts up a requester, ARQ makes sure it's centred in the screen and that the keyboard can be used to control it - RETURN for yes or OK and ESC for no or cancel, and if the requester should have more than two choices, the function keys could be used for them. ARQ is a touch flaky these days with all the patches that people run, and in the way that Workbench and DOpus have moved on, but it still runs fine if you use it before any other commodity in your WBStartup drawer.

• CycleToMenu - [CycleToMenu-21.lha util/cdity 52K]
  Cycle gadgets were never really a good idea. Sure they were great if you only had a choice between two or three things, but any more than that and it was a chore to have to click several times in order to get to your choice. CycleToMenu turns cycle gadgets into pop-up menus which makes it much better for long lists of things to choose between.

• MagicFrames - [MagicFrames.lha util/wb 54K]
  If, as a lot of people do these days, you run your machine in a resolution higher than 640x256 (or 200 if you're in the states), you'll know that Workbench puts double thickness borders on the vertical lines of gadgets (in order to make them look as thick as the horizontal lines in said original screenmode). This looks pretty old-fashioned and downright ugly. MagicFrames runs from your user-startup and ensures that all gadgets and border \widths are a proper 1:1 ratio. As a side effect, the current version at time of writing also changes the cycle gadget logo into a right-pointing arrow which looks better for a pop-up menu.

• NewIcons - [NewIcons41.lha util/wb 655K]
  Apart from the icons, you really only need the NewIcons package for two things now that DOpus has internal support for NewIcons. The first is the additional tools for making icons, InjectBrush and the like. The second is the actual NewIcons command if you would like NewIcons AppIcons for your applications.

• PowerSnap - [PowerSnap22a.lha util/cdity 54K]
  If you are running MCX (or MCP) then you'll be able to copy and paste in text field gadgets, which is a good thing. But to be able to take text off the page, as in iBrowse, you either need a program that does this itself, or you need PowerSnap. PowerSnap will attempt to take text from where it wouldn't normally be copyable from. It's not perfect - it doesn't handle proportional fonts at all, and it sometimes gets confused with multiple lines - but it does make everything that little bit easier to deal with...

• TBClock - [TBClock.lha util/time 9K]
  Another one that isn't perfect. TBClock is old, isn't very well programmed and can crash your machine. However, it's better than the built-in DOpus clock in one very important respect - it can appear in the titlebar for any Public Screen. This alone makes the very occasional crash you might experience well worth it.

• WBStartup+ - [WBStartupPlus.lha util/boot 180K]
  Place this über-commodity in your WBStartup drawer together with its two directories and it gives you the ability to select which of your commodities you want to run at startup and even allows you to turn the whole lot off. You also get a prefs program with it that allows you to enable or disable commodities at will and also change their priority. Fantastic!

• HappyEnv - [HappyENV.lha disk/misc 41K]
  Not a commodity but a patch. This is probably one of the nicest hacks I've ever come across. What it does is gets rid of ENV: from your RAM and basically uses ENVARC:. However, it's not a simple reassigning of ENV: to ENVARC: that gets done, since you can still do all the things you would be able to if you still had an ENV:, like only "using" settings from a preferences program. It only copies files to the new ENV: device that gets set up when you use it when they are needed, so a faster boot and more available ram results. Neat-oh!

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