There are many convenient ways to launch frequently used applications: aliases, palettes, menu additions, popups, and so forth. But PPPop's Launcher may offer an additional advantage to you: it responds to the state of your PPP connection. You may have applications or scripts which you like to start after a connection is open. There are likely some which you would like to automatically quit when the connection is closed. You may even want to run scripts or programs right after a connection closes.
PPPop's Launcher does all of these things.
The Launcher can also help in another situation: many people have experienced the wonder of catching their Mac dialing up and connecting all on its own (see the PPPop FAQ). To solve this problem, it is often enough to change a specific option in your PPP control panel: in OpenTransport's PPP or Remote Access control panel it is "Connect automatically when starting TCP/IP applications", in MacPPP 2.5 "Disable Auto Connect", and in FreePPP "Allow applications to open connection". Once you changed that option however, you would find that applications such as Netscape or NewsWatcher will not be able to open a connection anymore if you launch them alone. In that case, PPPop's Launcher can still get you there: it can open a connection and start the application for you.
Some software, such as Daemonkiller, should run at this time.
窶「 be killed whenever PPPop closes a connection ("Auto Kill" flag)
This is a handy way to quit any application which you do not need anymore once you have closed the connection, e.g. NotifyMail or NCSA Telnet.
Launch "Auto Open" Items
Launches all of the Launcher items which have been set to "Auto Open". It enables you to launch a suite of applications manually with one command.
"Launch 'Auto Open' Items" does not open a PPP connection, although some of the applications you launch may try to do so.
To reduce your time online, you could use this feature to start all your regularly used Internet programs with one keystroke before opening a connection.
Kill "Auto Kill" Items
Quits all of the Launcher items which have been selected for "Auto Kill".
Disable Auto Launching
When selected PPPop ignores all "Auto Open", "Auto Kill", and "Auto Close" settings. At that point you can still manually start and quit these Launcher items with "Launch 'Auto Open' Items" and "Kill 'Auto Kill' Items".
"Disable Auto Launching" does not affect the individual start of Launcher items, you can still manually start them as usual via their keyboard shortcuts or by selecting them from the Launcher menu.
Launch From PPPop Only
When a connection is opened or closed from another application, PPPop will not operate its Launcher. This has the same effect as "Disable Auto Launching" unless you are opening or closing a PPP connection from within PPPop.