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User Manual 2.5 |
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Install/Uninstall |
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That is it! Settings have been preconfigured for you. Use shortcuts to activate program features. It is strongly recommended that the computer be rebooted after install to remove any system instability. This program uses undocumented features of the Windows operating system that are known to behave unpredictably sometimes. Rebooting ensures best user experience. Three ways to uninstall.
If one has problems uninstalling, try re-installing program over top of previous install and then try uninstalling again. Problems? Please see FAQ
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Running |
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By default "the Boss" application icon is shown in the system tray at all times. You can change this behavior so the icon will either show briefly or turn off. See the Tray Icon Manager section for details on how to do this. When user shuts down the computer or logs off, if Hide mode is on, then "the Boss" will restore hidden windows and icons. This is done so that if one has to save changes to files or do other clean up, one will have access to programs.
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Settings |
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At the top of the window is the main button bar. Use this to navigate to the setting subsections.
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Black List/White List |
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It is possible that if settings are configured incorrectly that conflicts can occur, leading to unintended behavior. This is the side-effect of having a powerful program. If unpredictable behavior occurs, first check your settings to make sure conflicts are not occurring. A common problem is to have a window listed in both black and white lists but the user intends for the window to hide. Since the window is listed on the white list, and the white list preempts the black list, the window will not be hidden. Management of windows for both black and white lists are done through the Window List form. Below is what it looks like.
One aspect of this program that may confuse new users is how windows are restored. "The Boss" sees 3 groups of windows. There is a black list group, a white list group, and other windows group. When windows are restored, they are restored in group order, then by window order. The design is to give you additional control over the window restore order. One can set the order of these groups in the Desktop settings page. In the below screen capture, the white list windows will be restored first in the taskbar, then the other windows, and finally the black list windows. In addition to setting the group restore order, for the black and white lists one can also set the individual window order. One does this by selecting a window in the Window List and then use the up and down edit buttons to move the window entry up and down in the list. The top entry is restored first, the bottom entry is restored last. Certain features of the program can be turned on/off, such as the black list, white list, tray icons, as well as other parts of the program. This gives you maximum control over the program behavior. You may want to use certain features of the program only at certain times. For example, you may only want to use the black list feature when internet surfing. When a window list has been turned off, a large icon will display to indicate that it has been turned off as shown below. The Window List form will also have its controls grayed and deactivated. The Black and White lists manage windows in the same manner through the Window List form. Below are the options specific to the Black List.
When "Hide all active windows" is selected, a large icon will display to indicate this as shown below. This option will cause the black list to ignore the windows set up in the Window List.
Below are the options specific to the White List.
**NOTE** The XP taskbar includes a feature called "Group similar taskbar buttons". When a certain number of windows are open, then taskbar buttons of the same program type are put together into a special drop-down list. Keep in mind that when this feature is on, windows are no longer ordered in a standard manner. This will cause some conflicts because the XP window manager manages windows differently than "the Boss" window manager. When there is a conflict, the XP window manager will override. If complete control over window ordering is desired, this XP feature should be turned off. Go into Taskbar | Properties to turn on/off. Many users find that once they get used to having their applications ordered in the taskbar by "the Boss" they never use the XP grouping feature again.
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Selecting windows |
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How to use Window Select Tool.
Sometimes selecting only the main window of an application is not enough for the window hide to work properly. For example, with the popular music player Winamp, if one has the EQ and Playlist active, there are 3 separate windows to hide. Other applications sometimes use 2 windows, one visible and one not. Sometimes these other windows are not accessible using the intuitive Window Select Tool. As a solution "the Boss" provides an alternative way to select windows, through the Window Select List as shown below. Two views of windows are provided here. There is a filter view and a detail view. The filter view would be used by most users as "the Boss" automatically determines which windows need to be selected. When you select, all the associated windows get added to the black/white list automatically. The detail view shows all visible windows. Power users would use this for fine control over window selection. Sometimes even selecting the correct window is not enough for the window hide to work properly. The window to hide may have a dynamically changing title where the title stored in the static Window List may not match the current window title. Example of this is with the popular e-mail client Outlook. The window title for this application will change when one opens different folders. At one time one may see "Inbox - Microsoft Outlook", at another time one may see "Outbox - Microsoft Outlook". The Boss" offers a solution to this problem by allowing keywords for the window title. Instead of using "Inbox - Microsoft Outlook" one might edit the title to be "Microsoft Outlook". Since this phrase always exists in the title bar no matter what folder is selected it is ensured that the Outlook window will be detected and hidden. One can go even further with this approach. One can enter nothing for a window title and this will affect all windows of a particular application. When this is done "<any>" will be entered as the window title. This is useful for applications such as web browsers where many webpages may be opened and no one knows what the window titles are going to be in advance. By using "<any>" for the window title, when the window hide is activated all webpages will be hidden.
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Tray Icon Manager |
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Below is what the tray icon settings page looks like.
"The Boss" sees 4 types of tray icons. Which group an icon belongs to is determined by the Show checkbox and selected options.
Icons that are not in the icon list will be left alone unless certain options are selected. If "Hide nonlisted icons" is selected then nonlisted visible icons will be hidden during hide mode. If "Hide all icons" is selected this overrides the Tray Icon List settings and all visible icons will be hidden during hide mode. To add an icon, click the add icon button. A list will display showing all visible tray icons. You also have the option to view hidden tray icons. Like the XP tray icon manager, the icon graphic and caption text is listed. In addition, the associated program class name and program exe name will be displayed. This is useful information for power users and for troubleshooting problems.
If a tray icon fails to hide/unhide or reorder properly it is likely one of two things: 1) icon is a dynamic type; 2) conflicts with the XP icon manager. Dynamic icons are those that update its information periodically. If this is the case, then the special handling checkbox should be checked. This causes an alternative method of icon handling. **NOTE** this checkbox should NOT be checked for all icons. If all icons are special handled, one may run into a similar situation where icons do not hide/unhide or reorder properly. It will take a bit of tweaking to find out what combination of settings works for your icons. If conflicts with the XP icon manager are occurring one will have to adjust icon settings for the two icon managers until issues are resolved. The key concept is to not have both icon managers manage the same icon. To new users, accessing the XP icon manager is not intuitive. Below shows how to access the XP icon manager settings. First click on the taskbar and choose Properties.
Then either uncheck "Hide inactive icons" to turn off the XP icon manger, or select "Customize" to configure.
In the Customize Notifications form, set the icon behavior using the dropdowns. If you want icons to be handled by "the Boss" then set icon behavior to "Always show". If you want icons handled by the XP icon manager, then set icon behavior to "Hide when inactive" or "Always hide". Most confusion regarding the XP icon manager comes when icon behavior is set to "Hide when inactive". This setting should be avoided. Unfortunately this is the default setting for new icons added to the sys tray. If you use the XP icon manager you will have to do periodic maintenance of icons to make sure icons are not set to "Hide when inactive".
Some users, particularly those coming from older versions of Windows, like to turn the XP icon manager off and rely on "the Boss" icon manager because of its predictable behavior, low maintenance, and ability to reorder icons. Some users configure both icon managers so that there are two groups of hidden icons, each controlled by each icon manager. Combined with a group of visible icons, one has fairly sophisticated icon management. **NOTE** The Microsoft Windows series of operating systems- 95 through XP- are known for its unpredictable behavior regarding the system tray icons. Because of this the tray icon features of this program may not work as expected all the time. This is not a program design fault, but an operating system issue. Users may have to occasionally reset the operating system in order to remove unpredictable behavior. By default "the Boss" application icon is shown in the system tray at all times. You can change this behavior so the icon will either show briefly or turn off. To do this first add "the Boss" icon to the Tray Icon Manager (see the Tray Icon Manager section). After the icon has been added, then change the Show checkbox to one of the following states.
You will notice that when the Show checkbox is set to a gray check mark, "the Boss" icon will display differently from other icons with the same setting. Whereas other icons will hide and show in response to hide mode, "the Boss" icon is hidden all the time and only shows briefly to inform you when a shortcut is activated. This is by design."The Boss" icon is treated as a special icon. Users will often turn off "the Boss" icon after they become familiar with the program so that the program runs in stealth. Some users like showing the icon all the time because of the visual feedback it provides. Some users prefer only some visual feedback when shortcuts are activated.
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Data Clean |
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Below is a list of the cleaning presets and what they do. They handle the major and relevant problem areas and provides a data cleaning solution for most users.
This baseline of cleaning can be extended by creating custom clean items. One may have to do some research to learn what has to be deleted for a particular application and then create appropriate delete items. Since settings can be backed up, you will only need to do this once. **NOTE** With these options, chose folders, files, registry keys, and registry values WITH EXTREME CARE. You do not want to wipe out the wrong stuff! Below is a list of the types of custom items you can clean and their options. Custom
Most data will be cleaned immediately when the Data Clean shortcut is activated. But some data cleaning will require restart of applications, log off, and/or shutdown. This is because Windows and programs are not designed to watch for certain data changes. Data is only read whenever a program decides it needs to. Sometimes data is only read once the first time a program starts so it will not update itself again until a restart. Depending on what is to be cleaned, tasks will be performed at one of the following times: 1) immediately; 2) at logoff/shutdown; 3) at shutdown only. Below shows which clean tasks occur at which times. 1. Immediate
2. Logout/Shutdown
3. Shutdown only
**NOTE** Some data may not be cleaned everytime Data Clean is run. This is because the ability to delete data is dependant on whether applications are using the data at the time of cleaning. This restriction is called locking. Sometimes closing applications is necessary in order for certain cleaning to work, such as with Firefox and IE. Sometimes a logoff or reboot is necessary. To help ensure that data cleaning is performed, "The Boss" offers different options to do data cleaning. By selecting one or more of these options, one ensures that all data is cleaned regularly and to suit your needs. The following choices are offered.
Sometimes data is cleaned but there are no obvious signs that it has been done. Examples of this are with the IE index.dat files and the system swap file. These files get recreated each time Windows restarts. When recreated the files may look like they were not cleaned. To verify that cleaning took place you would use third party data viewer tools, or like in the case of IE, test run the program and observe first-hand that data is no longer available to the program. It is suggested that until one gets comfortable with how the Data Clean tool does its job that one periodically look at the clean log and verify that data cleaning is being done as expected. From the log, details about the data location are provided so one can go to the data location on one's computer and verify that data cleaning indeed took place. With time you will intuitively know when and how the data clean tool works with certain kinds of data so there are no surprises. In addition to simply deleting data, one also has the option to obsfuscate deleted data so it is not recoverable by normal data recovery methods. The shredder option will obfuscate files and folders, including contents and their names. You also can set how many shred passes are made to the data. The algorithm used is a random bit pattern. The higher the number the more obsfucation occurs. For most users, (1) overwrite would provide adequate protection. Keep in mind that a performance hit occurs when this option is active. If you have a lot of data to clean this can slow down your computer a bit. However, if you regularly clean your computer and keep shredder overwrites to a minimum, the added time is worth the extra privacy.
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Desktop Settings |
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Change Display is for use with programs that require different monitor settings. Very useful for those that work with legacy software and mainframe computers. You can toggle between your normal display and a custom display of your choice. The camera button takes snapshot of the desktop icons so that one can have a different desktop layout for the custom display. The arrow button resets the snapshot. For set up you would typically change the monitor settings on this page, then activate the change display, then arrange icons on the desktop for the new video mode, then snapshot the layout. Now, when you toggle the change display, you have two different video modes and desktop layouts.
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Program Settings |
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Shortcuts |
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The settings are explained below.
The same shortcut can be assigned to different events. Example, one can assign the same shortcut to the Hide-Restore event and the Change Display event. Keep in mind that if shortcuts used by "the Boss" are used by other programs, unpredictable behavior may result. Make sure that shortcuts used by "the Boss" are not used by any other program, unless that is what you specifically intend.
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Troubleshooting |
Windows
Firefox
Internet Explorer
Folder.
The default option is to delete files in a folder. With the
"Recursive" option one can delete subfolders and their
files. With the "Delete top" option, the folder specified
for cleaning will be deleted too. This option is useful for removing folders
that annoying programs create on your computer that you do not
want.
File. Will
delete single file that you specify.
Registry
key. The default option is to delete values in a registry key.
With the "Recursive" option one can delete subkeys
and their values. With the "Delete top" option, the
registry key specified for cleaning will be deleted too.
Registry
value. Will delete single registry key that you specify.
