Your questions are right on target. In the heyday of classic Amigas, we (or at least _I_) was working without Reaction, and managing all the GUI stuff in a very simple way. It was easier to learn, but it was limiting. If you read the older SDKs, or download old examples, you'll see about "Gadget Structures" and how to work with them. With Reaction came lots of very nice changes.. Personally I am "old school" and classes and Objects are not my favorite topics, mostly because they seem to lack documentation by hiding the internals. The Reaction macros looked nice, but they don't adapt well to change. Personally, I could not get a grip on Reaction until I read the rather excellent guide to Reaction programming that Trixie wrote. Once I decided to take every one of his suggestions as rules, everything started making sense. I'm not an expert, but I highly recommend his examples as _THE_ starting point, and the other people here as helpful guides along the way. Like many others, I have put together my own "starter project" that includes lots of stuff that is common to most of my projects. I have standard code for opening all the libraries, devices, and classes. Code for parsing command line arguments and tooltypes, and some other common things. I also have a set of routines for dynamic string management, which eliminates fixed string lengths in almost all cases. If you'd like to see my "starter project", I'd be happy to share it. Not as "the way", but it works as "my way" for my own needs. And good luck with your project. It could be valuable to a lot of people! LyleHaze