Copyright: Copyright ® 1992-1995 David A. Feinleib


The Windows 3.1 Screen Saver Series

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Select one of the following items to see more information about it.

Random Screen Savers (RandScrn)

Activation Corners (SSActive)

Using Ctrl Key To Change Screen Savers While RandScrn Is Active

Balloons

Bouncing Lines

Circles

Circles 2

Fortune Cookie

Lasers

Marquee 2

Random Pixels

Random Rectangles

Slide Show

About


Random Screen Savers (RandScrn)

Windows 3.1 comes with several screen savers, but it requires you to choose one of those savers to run; unlike other commercial screen saver packages, it does not allow you to use multiple randomly selected screen savers.

RandScrn is a Windows 3.1 screen saver that allows you to select your favorite screen savers.  RandScrn will then alternate among the savers you have chosen automatically, switching from one screen saver to another either after a specified number of seconds or each time RandScrn becomes active.

In addition, RandScrn allows you to select a screen saver directory so that you can put all your screen savers in a directory other than your Windows directory should you choose to do so.


Activation Corners (SSActive)

The Activate corner allows you to make RandScrn active simply by moving the mouse cursor to the corner of the screen that you specify.  If the mouse cursor is moved to the Sleep corner, the cursor will change to look like [image] and RandScrn will not be activated (no screen savers will be run).

To change the Activate and Sleep corners, with Random Screen Savers selected as the current screen saver, choose Setup from the Control Panel Desktop options.  Then select the corners that you want to use for Activate and Sleep.

Note: In order to provide the Activate and Sleep options, RandScrn makes use of ssactive.exe, which is included in this package.  The first time you select corners, RandScrn will allow you to modify the load= line in win.ini so that ssactive.exe will be run when Windows is started.  If ssactive is not run, then you cannot make use of the corners feature.  Once ssactive is running, you may unload it by running it from the Program Manager.  Note that if you at a later time unselect the corners checkbox, RandScrn will automatically remove ssactive.exe from the load= line in your win.ini file.


Using Ctrl Key To Change Screen Savers While RandScrn Is Active

While a screen saver is running, you may hit the Ctrl key to change immediately to another screen saver without waiting for RandScrn to to change the saver.  This is especially useful if you get tired of looking at a certain saver - just hit the control key and a new one will be displayed right away.

Note that this feature is only supported by screen savers that are a part of the Windows 3.1 Screen Saver Series.  If you are a C developer and would like to include this feature in your screen saver, please contact me for more information.


Bouncing Lines

The Bouncing Lines screen saver bounces randomly colored lines around the screen.  You may set the number of trailing lines (up to 75).


Random Pixels

Random Pixels displays pixels in random colors and at random, reasonably evenly distributed locations on the screen.  You may set the number of pixels that will be displayed before the screen is cleared and the display of pixels is restarted.  Enter -1 in the edit box to have an unlimited number of pixels displayed.

You may also set the speed at which pixels are drawn on the screen.


Random Rectangles

Random rectangles displays randomly sized rectangles in random colors on the screen.


Laser Show

The Laser Show screen saver displays moving lasers on the screen.  From the Setup box, you can adjust the speed, laser width, spacing between lines, line width, color change, number of rays, and laser duration.


About

About displays information about the Windows 3.1 Screen Saver Series along with a small description of each screen saver.  If you are a registered user, the About box displays your personal registration information.


Circles

The Circles screen saver displays circles "dropping" on the screen, like rain drops.  You can change the maximum circle size and the number of circles displayed at a time, along with whether the screen should be cleared before the circles start appearing.


Slides
Slide Show

The Slide Show screen saver allows for the display of bitmaps on the screen.

You may choose to have either one bitmap displayed or to have bitmaps randomly selected from a specified directory, creating a slide-show effect.

If you choose horizontal or vertical movement and "multiple bitmaps" is selected, each bitmap will be displayed for one cycle across the screen.  If you choose to have the bitmaps bounced around the screen or kept in one place (static), they will be changed at the interval specified in the Display each slide for edit box.

The Speed option allows you to choose how quickly (or slowly) the slides are moved around on the screen.  This option has no effect if you choose to have the bitmaps kept in one place (static).

NEW!   While Slide Show is running, you may hit the Shift key to change the displayed bitmap immediately without waiting until the screen saver changes it for you.


Circles 2

Circles 2 is a take off on the original Circles screen saver.  Instead of erasing each circle and then drawing another, each circle remains for an interesting effect.

You may choose the maximum circle size.  You may also choose whether or not the screen is cleared before the circles start being drawn.


Balloons

The Balloons screen saver displays balloons flying up into the sky.  You may choose whether or not to have randomly selected "scenery" (evergreen trees, leafy trees, or football goal posts).  If you choose to have scenery displayed, you may also choose to having moving scenery, an interesting effect.


Marquee 2

Marquee 2 is an improved and enhanced version of the Marquee screen saver that comes with Windows 3.1.

Unlike the original Marquee, Marquee 2 does not limit you to one text string: you may enter up to 25 strings of text and have them selected randomly.  In addition, you may set the type of movement; along with horizontal movement, you may select to have text bounced around or moved vertically.

Timed Text.  Marquee 2 provides a unique feature called Timed Text, which allows you to enter a text string to be used only during the selected time.  In the Timed Text dialog box, simply type in the text you want to use.  Then enter the times in the edit box, being sure to choose am or pm.  For example, you might type in Out to lunch.  Back at 1:30. in the text box.  Then in the Time boxes you might type in 12:00 pm as the starting time and 1:30 pm as the ending time.  The text Out to lunch. Back at 1:30 would then be displayed between 12:00 pm and 1:30 pm.


Fortune Cookie (SSCookie)

The SSCookie Screen Saver is modeled after the original UNIX Cookie, which displays a quote or saying when it is run.  The Cookie Screen Saver, unique to the Windows 3.1 Screen Saver Series, bounces quotes and sayings around on the screen.

Note: The screen saver comes with its own cookie file, SSCOOKIE.DAT.  You may be able to use your own cookie file if you have one.  For more information, see Cookie File Format.

NEW!   While Fortune Cookie is running, you may hit the Shift key to change the displayed cookie immediately without waiting until the screen saver changes the cookie for you.

Options that may be set:

Cookie File - The name of the file, with full path, that contains the cookie sayings.  You may select the Browse... button to open the browse dialog box, which lets you graphically select a cookie file.

Time Before Next Cookie Displayed - The number you enter in this edit box times the number of lines of text in a given cookie is how many seconds that cookie will be displayed on the screen.  For example, if you enter 4 in the edit box and a given cookie has three lines, that cookie will be displayed for a total of 12 seconds before the next cookie is displayed.  In other words, you would have about 4 seconds to read each line of text.

Text Movement & Style - Specifies how quickly the cookie should bounce around the screen.

Format Text... - Allows you to format the text (i.e., set the color, size, and font).  Note that some cookies are rather long, so you should select a font size accordingly (extremely large fonts may cause part of a cookie not to be displayed).

Number Of Cookies - Displays the number of cookies in the cookie file.  If you have chosen a new cookie file, you may select Count Now to recalculate the number of cookies.  (Note that if you choose a new file, recalculation will take place automatically when you next configure the screen saver.)


Cookie File Format

The Cookie file format used by the Fortune Cookie screen saver is similar to that of some UNIX cookie file formats.  Each cookie can take up as many lines as needed but is limited to 79 characters per line.  At the end of each cookie is a carriage-return/line feed sequence, followed by ASCII character #1 (HEX 0x01), which signifies the end of a cookie.

If you have a cookie file in a different format, I may be able to convert it to the required format for use with the screen saver; please send me the cookie file on a 3.5" diskette, with your name, address, and phone number on the disk.  In the near future, I plan to release a cookie conversion program that will convert various cookie formats to the one used by the screen saver.