KkMenu 2.80

The original and primary purpose of the KkMenu was (and still is) to decrease the required number of icons docked in the Stardock Object Dock. During the time, a new major functionality has been added: Displaying the file system as a menu tree.

This document should help with the KkMenu installation and use.

This document covers the Stardock Object Dock version 0.95 and the KkMenu 2.80 only.

Please submit all KkMenu suggestions and/or bug reports to the KkMenu comments area at WinCustomize. I will try my best to answer there.

Before e-mailing to me and/or submitting a comment at the KkMenu comments area at WinCustomize, please read this document carrefully and go through the previous KkMenu comments.

Please e-mail any suggestions for improvements of this document to: JiriKrivanek@BetaControl.cz.

Acknowledgments

Content

Legals

The KkMenu is still freeware but if you like the program, why don't you support the further development?

Until I discover any way of how to get the money into Czech Republic effectively (i.e. without a terrible bank fees), you can mail a registered letter with either the $10 or the 10EUR bank note in the envelope to this address:

ing. Jiri Krivanek
Teyschlova 26
Brno - Bystrc
635 00
Czech Republic

Requirements

The KkMenu will only work on Microsoft Windows 2000 or later systems. For more details, see please the Installation section.

Installation

Please follow these steps to install the KkMenu.

Creating new user defined menu

To create a new menu simply run the KkMenuEditor.exe program (please note that the KkMenuEditor.exe remembers the last edited menu) and press the "New menu" button.
The KkMenuEditor.exe should look like this:

For the instructions regarding the menu editing, see please the Editing the existing user defined menu section.

After editting your new menu, please save it:

Editing the existing user defined menu

To initiate the editing of the existing menu please (this example will regard the default KkMenuDrives.ini, which is included in the KKMENU280A.ZIP archive): Anyway, the following window of the KkMenuEditor.exe finally appears:

Please do not forget, that generally, all changes has to be saved prior closing the KkMenuEditor.exe.

Adding a new menu

To add a new menu, please highlight the root (i.e. Menus) item in the menu tree and press the "Add" button (please note that the "Add" button is context sensitive - i.e. it adds different kind of item according to the highlited one). The New Menu appears:

Now, please highlight the New Menu and enter the desired menu name into the "Name" edit-box:

Adding a new menu item

To add a new menu item, please highlight any menu item in the menu tree (e.g. My New Menu) and press the "Add" button (please note that the "Add" button is context sensitive - i.e. it adds different kind of item according to the highlited one). The New Menu appears:

Now, please highlight the New Menu Item and enter the desired menu item name into the "Name" edit-box:

Setting up the separator

To setup the menu separator, please simply check the "Separator" radio button:

Setting up the submenu

To setup the sub-menu, please check the "Submenu" radio button and select the required submenu in the drop down list below:

Setting up the shortcut

To setup the shortcut menu item, please check the "Shortcut" radio button and fill in the necessary informations about your shortcut in the boxes below:

The general rules for entering the command line parameters are exactly the same as with the other system tools. The individual command line parameters are space separated. If you need to enter a single command line parameter containing one or more spaces, please enclose it with quotes (e.g. C:\Program Files\ will be parsed as two command line parameters - C:\Program and Files\ but "C:\Program Files\" will be parsed as a single parameter).
If you would like to explore the various parts of the windows system, please enter the explorer.exe into the "Shortcut" edit-box and one of the following into the "Parameters" edit-box: Please note, that I have taken the list above from the Aqua-Soft discussions (thanks to hydrostereo and fireball) and I have never tested if all of the items do really work. Please e-mail me in case of any inconveniences to: JiriKrivanek@BetaControl.cz.

Setting up the dynamic folder submenu

To setup the dynamic folder sub-menu, please check the "Folder" radio button and fill the desired folder path into the "Folder" edit-box below:

Please never forget to finish the folder path with the backslash character (i.e. '\').

Setting up the root dynamic folder

To setup the root dynamic folder, please create a new menu (see please the Creating new user defined menu section), then add a single new menu (see please the Adding a new menu section) and finally enter a special menu name consisting of:
(e.g. *C:\):

Notes:

Assigning the menu item image

After you selected the desired menu item kind, you can choose an image. To assign the menu item image, please highlight the desired menu item in the menu tree (e.g. My New Menu Item) and press the ellipsis button behind the "Image" edit-box:

Using the following dialog, locate and pick the the image. Please note that the KkMenu currently supports only the PNG image formats (other formats, such as ICO, BMP, JPG, GIF etc. might also be loaded but may look crappy).

In case you selected the image which is located out of the directory where your menu.ini is saved, you will be prompted with the following question:

Now you have to decide if you want to gather all images of the particular menu in the same directory with your menu.ini file, or not. The recommended answer is "Yes". In case you answer "Yes", you will be informed about successfull copying of the image file:

Finally, the KkMenuEditor displays your new image:

Moving and deleting

To move any menu or item, please highlight the desired item and use the "Move up" and "Move down" buttons to move it.
To delete any menu or item, please highlight the desired item and use the "Remove" button to remove it.

Using the KkMenu with the Stardock Object Dock

To popup the KkMenu by clicking a Stardock Object Dock icon please follow the steps below.

The default skin named KkSkinMenuAlfonso.ini and the default menu named KkMenuDrives.ini are expected. Both files are included in the KKMENU280A.ZIP archive.

Command line arguments

The KkMenu command line looks like this (for the working example see explore please the content of the test.bat file):

KkMenu.exe menu_file.ini skin_file.ini [delay [x y]]

This means that the KkMenu has two mandatory and up to three optional arguments:

menu_file.ini skin_file.ini [delay [x y]]

This is a comprehensive description of all arguments:

Performance hints

There are two bottlenecks in the KkMenu performance. Both of them has to be considered separately.
  1. The KkMenu loading time.
    This depends on the overall speed of your PC as well as on the amount of your RAM.
    The KkMenu does not reside in the memory; in other words, it completely reloads everytime you want to pop it up. Just try to imagine what the KkMenu must do before showing the menu to you:
    This simply consumes a time. See please the To-Dos section to learn my plans of how to speed this up.

  2. The KkMenu re-drawing speed.
    The KkMenu uses some special feature called Layered Windows. The Layered Windows was originally intended for a small but smooth graphical animations. Every animation frame expects the repainting of the entire Layered Window. KkMenu uses the Layered Windows a bit different. I.e. the KkMenu is not a small graphic, actually it can be quite large - and consequently slow. Please note that without Layered Windows there would be impossible to implement the shadows and transparency effects which make the KkMenu so eye-candy (no! I have not omitted the DirectDraw which is terribly complicated to use and more, which is unstable, unreliable and not-easy-to-port to other PCs). The graphical performance would probably be much better on XP based PCs equipped with the graphic card supporting the HW accelerated per-pixel alpha blending.

What's new in Kk Menu 2.80 - 2003-07-18

History

Kk Menu 2.70 - 2003-06-27

Kk Menu 2.50 - 2003-06-25

Kk Menu 2.01 - 2003-06-18

Kk Menu 2.00 - 2003-06-16

To-Dos

The following problems still have to be solved and the new features still have to be implemented.