BeTips.net

Many people like to keep the BeMail status window visible so they can see the communications between BeOS and the POP server. Unfortunately, the status window isn’t minimizable, and is in the way most of the time.
Rather than showing it always, just click in it and hit Alt+W to close it. Next time you check your mail (say, by right-clicking the mail icon in the Deskbar) the status window will spring back to life. This way you can just monitor communications when they’re happening, and keep that window hidden the rest of the time.

As useful as the GoTo menu is, it doesn’t help if you need to open or save a file from/to a location that’s not already in the GoTo menu. If the folder you need is buried many folders deep, or on another partition, your only choice is to navigate the entire hierarchy until you get there, right? Wrong. If the folder in question is already open, just drag any file out of that folder into your file panel. This won’t move or copy that file to the location of the file panel. Instead, it will change the location of the file panel to equal the location of the dragged file. This is only useful if that remote folder is already open — but when it is, it’s an excellent time saver.

The tip about sharing a single collection of fonts between Windows and BeOS is great, unless you’re using Adobe Type Manager 4 Deluxe in Windows. This software creates shortcuts in the C:windowsfonts directory which BeOS (R3.2) can not not deal with — the system hangs after boot. If you get burned by this, see the tip Disaster Recovery.

Terminal inherits a lot of features from bash, some of which work in an unexpected way in a windowing environment.
CTRL-D in the olden days of VT100s and the like was the equivalent of logging out of your session with whatever mainframe your terminal connected to. It still works, even though it’s not there in the menus. (Typing logout also accomplishes the same task.)
Try hitting CTRL-D while using Terminal. Poof! In fact, if you watch carefully, it even types „logout“ for you just before it quits.

If you need to determine the height and width of an image (which is especially important to Web developers) use Thumbnail to make icons for your image files. Their height and width will be written to Tracker attributes, so you can see all of your dimensions at a glance, without even opening them — something you can’t do on any other platform.

Got a copy of kColor? SoundPlay’s interface accepts dragged colors from 3rd party color pickers, in case you’re bored of the default grey.
SoundPlay can also be embedded as a Replicant in your desktop. When you do, the interface adopts the desktop’s color and the window borders vanish, so its controls appear to „float“ in mid-air.
But coolest of all is the fact that SoundPlay can wear standard WinAmp skins.

If your modem is always reporting the „connection“ speed as the port speed you have set in the modem options and you would like to know the true connection speed instead:
1. Find out the modem „Report DCE“ command. On some modems (Rockwell/Hayes variants) this is ATW2. For other modems, consult the manual.
2. If your modem is using the preconfigured setting, go into the SerialConnect application and connect to your modem. Issue ATZ and the modem should reply with OK. Send the command from step 1 and once you have got the „OK“ response, type AT&W to write these back to your modem’s configuration.
3. If you’re using a modem configuration from the built-in list (ie. Not preconfigured), then you will need to edit the initialization string and add the part after AT to the command after the first ATZ part. e.g.
atz&k3&r1&c1
atzw2&k3&r1&c1

By using the Mail-It Tracker add-on, you can send files via Mail-It directly from the Tracker, without having to launch Mail-It first
Click and hold the left mouse button on the file you wish to send. From the window that pops up under your mouse, select Add-Ons->mailto Mail-It.
This will launch Mail-It and create a new message with the selected file already included as an attachment.

To delete the currently displayed message and display the next message in the same window, hold down the Option and Alt keys and press either the up arrow (previous message) or the down arrow (next message) on your keyboard. Nail this shortcut and you’ll be able to rip through spam and other net noise without even blinking.

Importing Messages from Adam and BeMail

You can import existing email from either Adam or BeMail by dragging and dropping the desired messages into Mail-It. The dropped messages will be added to your Main Mail-It window.

Exporting Messages to BeMail and Adam

If necessary, you can export your mail to Adam or BeMail. To do this, highlight the mail messages to be exported and select File.Export from the main menu. Mail-It will place the exported files into your home/mail folder. To open the files, either double-click on them or drag them into an open BeMail window