PuTTYMenu IS FREEWARE
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PUTTYMENU OVERVIEW
==================
This program is for use in conjunction with the excellent
PuTTY terminal emulation program, written by Simon Tatham
and others and available from
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
Although PuTTY is excellent for use with rlogin and telnet,
it excels particularly when used with OpenSSH which is down-
loadable from
www.openssh.org/
PuTTYMenu provides a re-sizable, positionable front end to
the PuTTY program which is available from the system tray.
This program makes it easier to select from saved sessions
when you have many, since PuTTY only provides a small
non-resizable list.
INSTALLATION
============
PuTTYMenu comes in a simple installer exe file. It is best to
install it in the same directory as PuTTY, and this is the
default for the installer, however it 'should' work from
anywhere.
I find it best to run PuTTYMenu from a Startup Icon.
If you do this then it will be available for every login
session and will appear automatically in the system tray. If you
pick some keys to load in PuTTYMenu, then Pageant is also loaded
automatically.
To use PuTTYMenu, simply click the tray icon for your list of
sessions to pop up. Double click on the required session and PuTTY
is invoked to run that session and PuTTYMenu is minimised
automatically back to the system tray.
CONFIGURATION
=============
PuTTYMenu 'should' manage to configure itself. It expects to
find PuTTY (and all the other programs which come with it)
either in the current PuTTYMenu directory, or else in
C:\Program Files\PuTTY.
If it doesn't find them there then it will prompt for the PuTTY
directory when it starts for the first time and will note it
for use in future.
FEATURES
========
PuTTYMenu remembers its size and position, so place it and size
it how you like and it will appear there the next time you
run it.
PuTTYMenu has a toolbar (which can now be hidden if required) at
the top of the window with several buttons to run various commands.
All of the buttons have a popup tooltip or hint to describe
what they do.
The status bar at the bottom shows how many sessions are
listed. Or if a session is clicked it now shows some
details about the session.
Left clicking the tray icon toggles between Minimized and
Normal.
Right clicking the tray icon or the list of sessions shows a popup
menu with options to run PuTTY, PSftp, PuTTYGen, PAgeant and PuTTY
Help. It also has options for a command-line session, to
Minimize/Restore the program and to exit the program.
Version 0.9.0.84
Now features a tree pane on the left. This allows sessions to be
organised into groups created by the user. The tree pane can be
toggled on or off. If shown then the list view on the right is
determined by which group is selected on the left. If not shown
then all of the sessions are displayed.
You should create your session, select 'All Sessions' in the tree
and then drag and drop the session onto the required tree group.
It will then appear only in that group and groups above it. E.g.
You can have a UK group with Glasgow and Edinburgh sub groups.
A session stored in Edinburgh will be visible when Edinburgh is
selected and also when UK is selected but not when Glasgow is
selected.
There is no help file and I currently have no plans to write
one since it is so simple to use. If anyone disagrees then let
me know.
Update: as of version 1, there is now a help file.
Version 1
I added an export feature. This allows you to save the registry
entries for PuTTYMenu and also all the session entries for
Putty itself to registry files. This can be used to transfer
the settings to another computer.
version 1.0.0.1
Now multiple sessions can be deleted with one key press. Be careful!
SUPPORT
=======
As with my other program NTSend, this was written to fill a
need. I use it every day. If it does what you need as well
then good. If it doesn't have the features you would like or
if it doesn't work, then let me know and I will try to fix it.
My email address is listed at the bottom of this file.
CHANGE HISTORY
==============
12/11/02, Version 0.5
This is currently about three days work. It is at version 0.5.
(Right click the file, select Properties and view the Version
tab) The only change I have made is that originally, clicking
the PuTTY and PSftp buttons brought up the programs with the
selected session. However this meant that PuTTY couldn't be
easily invoked to create new sessions without clearing the
selection in the list of sessions. So clicking the button
now just brings up the programs with no parameters supplied.
Control-clicking will now bring up the programs with the
selected session supplied as a parameter as per the original
functionality.
15/11/02, Version 0.6
Added the ability to hide the toolbar and statusbar for that
minimal look. These choices are saved and restored
on program start. The status bar now shows some useful info
when a session is clicked.
08/02/03
Added new behaviour. The menu now minimises (eventually) when
it loses focus.
13/08/03
Added a new 'Delete' menu item to delete the selected session
15/10/04, Version 0.7
Added a form to specify keys to load at startup using PAgeant.exe
If there are any keys specified then Pageant is started with the
key filenames as parameters.
28/01/2005 Version 0.9
Added some new features...
Now you can hide the title bar et al, so that the application looks
like a plain box.
Made it a single instance application only.
Added a 'Toolbar at the bottom' option so that the toolbar is nearer
the tray icon.
Changed it to minimize when it loses focus.
Made it save it's settings every time the window is minimized.
(Settings weren't being saved when the PC was being shutdown.)
Enabled moving the form by dragging on any point. This helps
when the titlebar is not showing. (Doesn't work on the listview
panel)
28/01/2006 version 1.0
Added an export to file feature. Allows all your settings to be
transferred to another computer via a registry file.
30/01/06 Version 1.0.0.1
Expanded the delete session featuire to allow deleting multiple
sessions at one click.
03/02/2006 Version 1.0.0.16
Added the Debug Unit for troubleshooting.
Sorted the glitch when toggling the form up and down by clicking
the tray menu (didn't always work every click). This required the
OnDeactivate routine to be turned off immediately the traymenu was
clicked and not later in the click handling routine.
Sorted the ALT+Mouse move feature on the Listview panel. (Didn't work
when Listview Multiview select was turned on.) Now multiview is turned
off when the ALT key is pressed and turned back on when the key is released.
05/02/2006 Version 1.0.0.21
Tweaked the OnDeactivate routine some more. Now when the form is
deactivated (loses focus) it starts a timer. When the timer fires
after 150ms the form is minimised. The 200ms gives the tray
menu time to turn the timer off before it fires which it needs to
do to prevent it minimising.
07/02/2006
Turned off the OnDeactivate routine when modal forms are displayed -
(about form and save file form) This prevents the app getting minimised
while there is a dialog box open which would be confusing and non-standard
behaviour.
09/02/2006
Found a bug where if a number of sessions were selected by drawing a
window then it was possible to have a selection but none in 'focus'. This
caused a problem with the information shown in the status bar.
Found a bug in the Listview panel where pressing Alt (which turns off
multiselect) would cause the sessions to display incorrectly. So I made
pressing Alt clear the panel. The sessions are re-displayed on Key-up.
This also prevents mistakenly selecting a session when moving the application.
Retained the toolbar button hints when all panel hints are turned off.
Found out how to make the System tray icon a clean 16x16 icon instead of
the squashed 32x32 I was getting. I also pointed the About graphic at the
application icon to save space.
Rationalised the initial default settings and added an initial dialog -
'No PuTTY sessions found please click the 'RunPuTTY Configuration' button'
if there are no putty sessions available.
Added a help file.
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Known problems
In Win2k, when there isn't another window open and you click on the
startmenu, then the startmenu gets closed when the app gets minimized.
Doesn't happen if another window is open. (?)
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PuTTYMenu is available for download. The binary file is at
www.ntsend.freeserve.co.uk/downloads/pmsetup.exe
and the Delphi 6 source files are available at
www.ntsend.freeserve.co.uk/downloads/puttymenusrc.zip
===============================================================
John Kelly
Stirling,
Scotland,
UK.
jkelly@ntsend.freeserve.co.uk
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