As hard drives get bigger and bigger, navigating through them becomes a more and more daunting task. The Macintosh Finder, model of simplicity and intuitiveness, has begun to be cumbersome to many power users. Finding files and applications which are nested in folders several layers deep simply takes time and makes clutter. System 7 has helped by allowing applications and documents to be placed in the Apple menu, but the result of this has been that Apple menus themselves have grown so long that they become awkward to use.
Several new products have come out in recent months which provide solutions to this problem: Tiles, NowMenus, and now HAM (which stands for Hierarchical Apple Menu).
HAM’s main feature is that it creates submenus for folders which have been placed in the Apple menu. (See illustration.) This procedure is automatic; just put HAM the Control Panel folder in your System folder and restart your Mac. Any folders which are in your Apple menu items folder will now have pop-out menus showing their contents. You can even have subfolders, up to five levels deep! This makes getting at a particular Control Panel quick and easy.
HAM’s benefits really become apparent when you begin to take advantage of HAM with aliases. I’ve created folders for often-used applications and utilities. Although I have most of my desk accessories directly in the Apple menu, I’ve also created a subfolder just for those desk accessories which I use infrequently—and a sub-subfolder for those which I hardly ever use! I can still get at everything quickly, but it doesn’t take up space or add clutter to the Apple menu.
So far, these abilities are the same as those offered by NowMenus, a part of Now Utilities 3.0. What can HAM do that goes beyond NowMenus? Perhaps the handiest feature is that HAM’s Control Panel allows you to reorder the contents of the Apple menu. Things normally appear in alphabetical order. You can add spaces or other leading characters to your names to change their order. (We’ve seen some very creative spelling schemes.) HAM, however, allows you to simply drag items up and down the list. You’ll want to put important items near the top where you can get at them quickly. A check mark appears beside those items which show up in the menu. Clicking there will remove the checkmark, and the item will no longer show up.
HAM will also keep track of recently used items: applications, documents, folders, and even servers. It will create a folder with these items and automatically place it in the Apple menu. You can specify how many of each to remember. This feature can also be turned off if you have another utility—such as Super Boomerang—which does the same thing.
Here’s another area that is unique to HAM: a HAMlet is a set of applications, folders, and documents. Creating a HAMlet is easy; just click this button when all of the items are open on your desktop. Later, double-clicking on the icon for this HAMlet will open all of the applications and documents. A further refinement of this handy feature lets you resume a work session the next time you start your Mac. You have to go to the HAM Control Panel to create HAMlets.
Any evaluation of HAM would have to compare it to NowMenus and HandOff II. HAM has many more features than NowMenus; but NowMenus is one small part of Now Utilities, which also includes excellent utilities such as Super Boomerang, WYSIWYG Menus, and others. HandOff II also gives hierarchical submenus, but goes on to add a launch menu, application substitution, and more. HAM provides fewer features than either the Now Utilities package or HandOff II, but it does its job awfully well. These products offer so many unique (and overlapping) features that you’ll have to examine the feature list and your needs carefully before making a decision.
HAM may be used on any Mac which is running System 7. Although it will run on a 2Mb system, it is better suited to those with more RAM.
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