Date: Tue, 26 Oct 93 16:08:31 +1000 From: G. Paul Savage Subject: [*] startupscreens-deskpictures.faq This is an update to the startupscreens and desktop pictures FAQ. =-=-=-=-=-=-=- Over the last year or so I've posted quite a few startupscreens to info-mac. One consequence of this is to get a flood of email asking questions about how to use the screens, how to create them and so on. The following is a list of answers to the most common questions. Frequently asked questions about startupscreens and desktop pictures. 1) I have a startupscreen, how do I get it to work? A-- Rename the file to "startupscreen" (no quotes) and put in in your system folder. The next time you reboot it will be displayed. 2) I tried that and the startupscreen looked terrible on my SE/30. All black and horrible. A-- You probably downloaded and tried to use a *colour* startupscreen. These look pretty poor on B&W screens. There are some decent B&W startupscreens around, why don't you try one of those? Or you could always make your own. 3) Great, so how do I make my own startupscreen? A-- The easy way is to use one of the painting/drawing applications that are able to save files as startupscreens. PixelPaint, SuperPaint, and GifConverter are a few examples of the many applications that can do this. 4) I tried using GifConverter to save as a startupscreen and all I got was an ugly black and white screen. Why? A-- When you save a colour GIF using GifConverter you must first go to File Settings... under the Special menu, choose Startupscreen from the pop-up menue and make sure to set the "Mac II format" radio button. BTW, don't forget that GifConverter is shareware. 5) I have this terrific GIF of Ronald Reagan bungee jumping naked (please don't email me asking for this, I just made it up) but when I made it into a startupscreen it looked terrible. Why? A-- Ronald never looks as good on the small screen, even fully dressed :-) No, the real reason involves the way colours are displayed on the screen. Colour monitors can actually display millions of colours but if you have a computer limited to 256 colours you can only display 256 different colours *at the same time*. GIF programs select the 256 colours to best represent the GIF being viewed, which means for a picture of someone's face the 256 colours might be mainly various shades of skin tones. Some GIFs look as clear as photographs because of this. Startupscreens use the 256 predetermined colours of the system palette. Thus, any GIF that has many shades of the same colour will usually make a poor startupscreen. For example, a person's face using 100 different shades of brown will be converted to the dozen shades of brown in the system palette with loss of resolution. I have found that generally the best pictures for startupscreens are those with limited numbers of colours (eg. cartoons). 6) I have a bunch of cool startupscreens, can I use them as desktops as well? A-- Yes. Several utilities can do this. Deskpict, Backdrop, and Decor (all in the Sumex archive, though just where depends on the current state of reorganisation of the archive) are shareware examples. A commercial version of Deskpict (a control panel called Deskpicture) once came bundled with several other very useful utilities in the Now Utilities package (3.xx) but has since been dropped from Now Utilities 4. There are other commercial extensions that do this also; shop around for the package that suits you best. Each of the above comes with instructions on how to get the deskpicture displayed. Beware, both Deskpict and Backdrop are quite old now and may not run well with system 7 and some extensions. By the way, if you're having trouble finding this or any other stuff in the Sumex archive (I know I do), download the all-files.txt and/or the all-abstracts.txt files and search for the items in question. 7) I've downloaded Deskpict from Sumex and now have a great desktop but my hard disk icon keeps disappearing, what gives? A-- You get what you pay for :-) Seriously, this is a known problem with Deskpict-11 and it has been solved with the commercial version (Now's Deskpicture) but is unlikely to be fixed with the old shareware version. Solutions? Put up with the missing/chopped-up icon or try one of the others. 8) I have dozens of great startupscreens/deskpictures -- can I get a random one on each startup? A-- Yes you can. Now's Deskpicture is a control panel that allows random deskpictures on multiple screens. Or if you want to save a few bucks get Randomizer or Random-Startup (both in the Sumex archives) and follow these simple instructions. Create a folder in your system folder called Screens and put all your startupscreens in there (they can be named anything). Next you need to put a screen in the system folder (called startupscreen). Then when you restart the startupscreen will be displayed and randomizer will select a random file from the Screens folder and rename it to "startupscreen" and overwrite your original screen ready for the next restart. Random-Startup does much the same thing by playing with path names -- use whichever you prefer. For those who like to play with ResEdit, you can open up Randomizer, open the STR# resource, then open the STR# resource 2001 (Files then Folders). You will be presented with a list of strings with first the filename then the folder name (eg. for startupscreens the first string is startupscreen and the second is :Screens). You can add to these such things as Deskpicture and :deskpicts (to randomly choose a deskpicture from a folder called deskpicts), and sound and :soundfiles (to randomly choose a sound from a folder called soundfiles), and so on. While you have Randomizer open you can open the LAYO resource and set the "Pick files randomly" bit to either 1 (random) or 0 (sequential) depending on your taste. 9) OK, I braved ResEdit and did all that but now I'm not getting either a startupscreen or a deskpicture -- what happened? A-- You forgot to put an initial startupscreen and deskpicture in your system folder. Randomizer will only *overwrite* a file that's there, it will not create one from scratch. 10) My startupscreen is coming out black and white and looks gross, what gives? A-- I don't know why the technical reasons why this happens (and who cares anyway:-) but this is how you fix it. Go into the monitors control panel and set your monitor to black and white and then back to 256 colours. Next time you reboot all should be well. 11) Now my mac looks awesome and my pee-cee friends are green with envy. How can I share my joy with the rest of the mac world. A-- If you find or create an especially nice startupscreen why not post it to info-mac and share it with everybody. Or perhaps you could post the original GIF. 12) Well I decided to post a great GIF I found but when I stuffed/compacted the GIF it came out larger! What did I do wrong? A-- GIFs are already a compressed format (this is too complex to go into here) so trying to stuff them is like trying to stuff a compact pro archive -- it gets you nowhere. Post the binhexed GIF directly or, if you prefer, create the startupscreen and stuff/compact that and post it. 12) Where can I find a good supply of GIFs? A-- This is getting off the topic a little but wuarchive.wustl.edu stores several hundred GIFs (in binary format) if you want to look through them. Have fun. Paul Savage paul.savage@mercury.chem.csiro.au ... 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