Maggie's Farm

 
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TweakUI

This is for Windows XP only.  I haven't found a TweakUI-type program for Vista or Win7 yet.

For customized settings you use every time, like font styles and 'Author', you can use TweakUI, a free Microsoft program available here.  It's about halfway down the nav bar on the right.  It's just a quick Next-Next-Next install.  This is a very handy Windows tweaks tool, full rundown is here, about a third down the page.

Open up whatever editor you're dealing with.  Make your custom blank project, including size, fonts, author's name, etc.  Save it somewhere safe and give it the name of the program, like "msword.doc" or "wordpad.wri".

Now open TweakUI and click on 'Templates'.  Click on the 'Create' button and browse to your custom file.  If it's already in the system, tell it to overwrite it.  While you're there, uncheck any program on the panel that you never make a 'New' one of.

In the future, when you use the 'New' feature, either off the File Menu or the right mouse button, your new project should have all of the custom info and styles already in place.
 

The Project File

This is using an already existing project to fire up the program, rather than the program, itself.  You'd put in all of your custom settings, save it in a safe place, then d-r-a-g the icon over to the Start Menu (or pop-out menu bar or Quick Launch tool bar, etc), then use that in the future instead of the regular program icon.

A few examples:

• If you wanted MS Word or Adobe Acrobat to open the 'New' document with 10 pages already in place, this would do it.
   


• If you wanted your graphics program to open with a certain-sized blank pic already in place (like for screen-grabs), this would do it.
   


• Ditto opening up a song-writing program in a certain key, an audio sound file a certain length, an Excel spreadsheet with a prearranged number of columns and rows, a saved game file, etc.

The 'trick' is remembering to save your new project to a different place, lest you (by habit) hit Ctrl-S to temp-save your work, overwriting your original template file.  If it's a program like MS Word that has a built-in save feature every 10 minutes, get it saved immediately and make sure you're working on the new file, not the original.

And, of course, you could keep two (or more) icons around, one for the basic program and one with your customized settings already in place.
 

To sum up, use TweakUI to get the basic settings in place (the ones you'd use with almost any project, like "author's name"), and project files for the serious stuff.
 

Workaround

Let's say a game saves your game stats to a recognizable file, but double-clicking on it doesn't fire up the program.  There's one thing that might work:

• Make a shortcut icon to the main game program.
   


• If the saved game file is in a sub-folder, drag the shortcut icon to the folder and drop it in.  You want the shortcut icon to be in the same folder as the saved game file.
   


• Click on the shortcut icon with the right mouse button and open 'Properties'.  You'll see the program's name in the 'Target' box.  Leave a space, then type in the saved game file's name, including its file extension.  If you aren't seeing the file extensions on your computer (".doc", ".txt", etc), go to any window, Tools Menu, 'Folder Options', click on the 'View' tab and uncheck the "Hide extensions..." box.

Give the icon a try.  If it doesn't work, try putting a minus sign right in front of the saved game file's name, like "coolgame.exe -savedfile.dat".

As a small side note, this sometimes works for commands as well.  For example, if you make a copy of the Volume Control icon, open the Properties of the copied file and add a "-record" after the EXE, it'll open the Record Control panel, instead.