News from the OS/2 World - by Ryan Dill

reetings all, and welcome again to OS/2 e-Zine! 's monthly news update. This column is designed to go over certain topics that e-Zine! 's own News Folder might have missed, or only glossed over.

We still believe our News Folder can't be beat when it comes to up-to-the-minute, accurate information, but it usually contains more "official" things like press releases and such. This column will include a bit more detail about things we think are of interest to OS/2 users everywhere. Grassroots support, off-the-record news and updates -- stuff that other sources may have missed -- you name it, we've got it!

You may remember that last month I mentioned the upcoming "Soundoff With Netscape" event scheduled for late July. OS/2 users present had a chance to ask Dan Libby and Mike Kaply, of the Netscape Communicator development team, various questions. A few cool tidbits were learned:

Communicator will include FTP resume capability. Ever had an aborted FTP transfer with Netscape and had to download a 7-megabyte file all over again from the beginning, cursing as you did so? FTP resume lets you pick up the download where you left off. A number of FTP clients (even older ones like NcFtp for OS/2) have had this feature for a while, and it's good to know Communicator is finally going to have it as well.

Perhaps most importantly, according to Mike Kaply (the head of the Communicator for OS/2 project team) a beta of Communicator for OS/2 could be out sometime near the end of August. (That's right, folks, this month!) The team is also shooting for a third quarter release date, so the final version of OS/2 Communicator is planned to be out near the end of September or the beginning of October. (These dates are definitely not set in stone, but provide a good idea of how far along the product is on the road to GA.) Watch both Netscape's official OS/2 page and its unofficial OS/2 page near the end of the month for the latest updates.

There have been a lot of updates to the IBM OS/2 Device Driver Pack Online recently, especially in the areas of display adapters. Two companies in particular that I've seen mentioned in the newsgroups are Tseng Labs with their ET6000 and Matrox with its DB-style cards (Millennium DB, Millennium II DB, Mystique DB and Mystique 220 DB). I'd definitely advise all OS/2 users to check out the OS/2 DDPak now if you haven't bothered for a while, especially if some of your hardware occasionally gives you problems. You could be missing a driver update which'll save you a lot of grief.

For a while it looked as if Creative Labs had abandoned the OS/2 market altogether, after announcing its discontinuation of further OS/2 support and development. Then a few weeks ago, rumors began to surface that Creative had turned around and was preparing to release OS/2 drivers for its AWE64 sound cards. All around the world, Sound Blaster users kept their fingers crossed. A prerelease of the drivers has since found its way into the public eye, and can be downloaded from Colin Hildinger's AWE32, SB32 and SB16 on OS/2 page.

So the drivers (or at least a prerelease, which means the full ones are in development) are here, right? Sort of. They are OS/2 drivers which allow you to use your AWE64 under OS/2 as an AWE64 (as opposed to the previous method of having to use it as an SB16), but there's more to the story:

The AWE64 is basically just a souped-up version of the AWE32 -- most of its extra functionality is provided through software rather than hardware. The software which adds this functionality is apparently not being ported to OS/2, so the extra potential the AWE64 has over the '32 becomes moot for Warpers.

Fine, but there's one more thing: the dates on the prerelease of these 'new' drivers are January 1997. More than six months ago! In other words, Creative Labs has been sitting on these drivers all this time, not even letting on that they existed. That's just irritating.

If Creative had released these drivers originally, rather than shoving them in a secret closet for six months, they may have slightly appeased many of the OS/2 users who were angry at them with the dropping of OS/2 support earlier in the year. Now, that's just not going to happen.

Of course, there's always a chance that the prerelease package in question has been superseded by a brand-spanking-new set of real AWE64 drivers which Creative is just putting the finishing touches on before making them public...

I'll believe it when I see it...

OS/2 users are beginning to get rather... *ahem*... creative when it comes to artwork. First there was the faux Communicator for OS/2 screen shot a few weeks ago. Now two new shots have surfaced -- the first is of something which appears to be an internal beta version of Microsoft Internet Explorer... for OS/2. (Yes, I know, it sounds unlikely to me too. <g>)

The second is of something many OS/2 users (myself included) have been wishing IBM would develop ASAP -- an emulator for running Windows 95 programs under OS/2! Both screen shots can be seen in a number of places by now, but the original spot is Rick Castle's web page. Rick had the screen shots sent to him anonymously on the 8th, and put them up for public view and discussion.

The majority of the public who's seen the shots feel they're fake. The quality of the shots is good, so whoever did them must have devoted some time to them, but each shot has a enough niggling things wrong with them that it becomes difficult to believe their validity. Rick has posted an update on the same page which lists a few of the things people have found fishy about the shots.

OS/2 is not often known for being 'pretty' like Windows 95 and the Macintosh are, so whenever someone comes out with an application which gives Warp that sort of "ooooh!" look, lots of OS/2 users are interested. Well, prepare to be interested again, Warpers.

There's a new program out called CandyBarZ which adds to your Desktop experience by allowing your PM windows to have gradient-filled titlebars. "What's gradient?" you ask? Basically, it's shading. The color of the title bar will shade from one color into another, much like it does in some of Microsoft's '97 series programs (Word 97, etc.) CandyBarZ shades the title bar from top to bottom, while Microsoft does it from left to right, but the principle is the same.

However you do it, gradients look good. Like other popular Desktop enhancements and add-ons, such as PlusPak: Themes! and X-it, CandyBarZ brings something to the look of Warp that many of us will appreciate. If you want to try it out, download CandyBarZ 1.01 (ZIP, 114k) from the OS/2 Supersite, install, and away you go -- instant eye-candy!

That's it for this month. If you have a tip that you want followed up or a news item you think should be reported, don't hesitate to let us know!

Ryan Dill is a student in Computer Science at Acadia University in Wolfville, NS and OS/2 e-Zine! 's Technical Editor. He is reported to be relieved that, with the advent of Warp 4, talking to your computer is no longer considered a sign of mental instability.

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