ClickChange is an init/cdev that allows the user to fully customize the Macintosh interface. Using the ClickChange control panel, you can customize your buttons, sounds, foreground and background screen colors, scroll bars, windows and cursors. Once you have set the features that you want, operation is completely transparent.
The cursor control offers an array of more than 100 replacements for the arrow, cross-hatch, insertion point and other Macintosh cursors. Many of the ClickChange cursor alternatives are also animated for your entertainment. And if there is nothing in this selection to satisfy your particular needs, this powerful cdev comes with a full blown cursor editor with which you can create any cursor that your heart desires. The cursor editor also allows you add animation to your new cursor, as well as to existing cursors.
The sound control offers you the opportunity to add sounds to specific actions. For example, if you would like to add some oomph to inserting a disk into the floppy drive, you can set your Mac to say “Ah” in a PeeWee Herman voice. You can also set a “chime” to sound every hour, half hour or quarter hour, and if you are bored with the same sound every 15 minutes, you can set a different sound for each chime! ClickChange allows sound to be added to over 30 specific events, and in keeping with its design, fully supports importing additional sounds to its library. ClickChange comes with 37 sounds.
The button, scroll and window control features permit a fairly wide variety of customization options for each of these features. Unlike the cursor and sound controls however, there is no edit features for any of these, and new types of button, scroll or windows cannot be imported. But the more than 10 different options in each of these areas provides a broad selection that can then be further customized with the color control.
Once you have decided on a button form, the size, kind and number of arrows you want in the scroll bar, and how you want your windows to look, if you have a color Mac, you can further customize the display with ClickChange’s color feature. This feature permits you to completely control the colors of virtually any portion of the display that you have just customized! In text windows, for example, you can set the color for the window border, the title bar, the title bar text, and the text hilite color. You can also set the color of the elevator button in your scroll bars, and you can set separate colors for the menubar, the menu items, and the background color of the menu itself!
If ClickChange does not function properly with a particular application, the “Preferences” button permits you to specify applications you want to exclude from its operation. You can also control whether particular custom features are or are not used in a particular application. For example, if your custom made, animated coffee cup cursor flickers annoyingly while in your communications program, you can set ClickChange’s “preferences” to exclude the custom cursor from that application, while including everything else.
ClickChange requires system 6.0.2 or newer. It does not require a color monitor, although on black & white monitors the color features will not be available. According to the documentation, ClickChange may give some anomalous results on 8 bit monitors. I tested ClickChange on a Macintosh IIcx with system 7.0.1 and it worked fine. As with any init application, ClickChange may conflict with other inits already in the system. However, I tested ClickChange with a variety of init configurations using about 20 inits in all, and had no problems. In short, I found ClickChange to work “cleanly” with my system.
ClickChange is a product of Dubl-Click Software. It is available through discount mailorder firms for an average price of $56.
MUG NEWS SERVICE, 1992
Copyright (c) 1992 by Brady Johnson, Motor City Macintosh User Group. Permission to reprint this article is given to MNS user groups. Please send a copy of the newsletter in which this article appears to MCMUG, P.O. Box 2513, Dearborn, MI 48123.
