TextFade '98
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Please read the Legal & Registration information first.
Examples and information on the program, and its history are after the legal info.
Contact information is at the very bottom of the file.
Semi-Legal Stuff & Registration information:
TextFade '98 is Shareware. You are free to
distribute the unregistered version as you wish, although you may not modify it in any
way. If you want to offer TextFade '98 Shareware for others to download from your web or
ftp site, that is great, however, please let me know via e-mail. This is so that I can
notify you of any updates or changes made to TextFade. After 20 days from your first use
of TextFade (Or the year 300 Billion, whichever comes first.) you must register the
program to keep on using it. Must is a relative term being nothing forces you to register
but it is the right thing to do.
Registration is $10.00 US Currency. This can be paid by
sending a check or money order made payable to:
Joseph DiBiasi
and mailed to the following address:
Joe's Shareware Software
1275 East 86 Street, 2nd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11236
You do not need to include anything but your e-mail address to which the registration code will be sent. However, including your phone number, name, and secondary e-mail address or others means of contacting you would be a smart move in case there is some trouble processing your order, such as a typo in the e-mail address you sent me.
If you pay by money order the registration code will be sent to you within 24 hours of receiving payment. If you pay by check it may take up to 48 hours to receive a registration code. If there is reason for any delay, you will be notified by e-mail that your payment was received, and given a reason for the delay- although the chances of this happening are very slim.
NOTE- By the time you read this it MAY be able to register by Credit Card at the site from which you downloaded this software. Paying by credit card will probably be easier for you, and you will receive a registration code within 24 hours of my notification of your purchase by the site from which you purchase it.
Registering the program will entitle you to ONE free upgrade to the next version of TextFade that is released, IF one is ever released. At this time I fully intend to keep upgrading the program, but there is no guarantee that a new version will ever be released.
Please READ the legal info before purchasing a registration, although any use of the program, registered version or not, constitutes your acceptance of its terms.
TextFade '98 is Copyright (c) 1998 by the Author, Joseph DiBiasi. The author is
not responsible for anything that happens, directly or indirectly, as a
result from using this program. Now, in English that means I've tested it many times,
virus scanned it, etc... but if for some reason the program somehow is responsible for
damaging your computer, I am not responsible. (If you ever have any
problems with the program please contact me, as listed below.) If you think that isn't
fair, maybe, but almost every program in the world has that disclaimer, just not phrased
in that way. Now I know what your thinking "If every program in the world jumped off
the Brooklyn Bridge..." and the answer, quite simply, is that programs can't jump off
the Brooklyn Bridge because the Brooklyn Bridge is only for cars and people.
Now that that's out of the way, a Description:
TextFade '98 allows the user to select a couple of colors, enter text, and then generate
the HTML code needed to slowly "fade" the text from the start to end color. This
is also known as "Original Fade" the process which made TextFade 1.0 Famous (see
history.)
T
his is an example. Text is Faded from Grey to Black.A
nd this is another example with real colors! TextFade '98 also offers other methods, explained in detail here-
"New Fade" This was discovered somewhat by accident. Instead
of fading text from one color to another, directly, it fades text according to values such
as hue and brightness. It provides interesting effects, but the Sample Fade really doesn't
show it well. This Works best with many characters because you can see the fade
"ridges" as I call them. It's hard to explain, so I'll show you:
"
New Fade" Works best with long strings of characters so that you can see it's full effect.Of course the above looks semi-random, which shows its unpredictable side here's a better example-
P
ersonally I like it best when one of the start or end colors is white or black.Here's another. There is a method to its madness, but it will take you some time to experiment with.
x
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Random Colors" ignores any hint of fading all
together. For each character a random color is chosen. There is no way to pick which
colors will be chosen because that wouldn't be random. Hitting "Sample Fade"
will only display yet more random colors in the sample boxes. I was going to make it so
that the random colors could be any color except the ones in the start and end color
boxes, so as to allow the text not to be the same as the background color- but, the human
eye really can't tell much of a difference between #000000 and #000001 and #010000
therefore it would still generate unviewable characters, so I decided to wait for that
until the next release.
I know what your thinking, that "New Fade" looks random
enough for you, and if it does so be it.
O
K, These are RANDOM colors!
Also new in this version is the "Sample Fade" which shows the
user quickly what the faded text will look like by fading the start and end colors across
the window. This works best with "Original Fade" because for the most part it is
independent of the number of characters being faded. "New Fade" greatly depends
on the length of the string, and if the user enters 100 characters in the text area, the
fade may look little, if any, like the 8 colors chosen in the sample fade.
A little History lesson:
In the beginning, man created HTML, and HTML was good. Then Netscape created new HTML
browsers, and that was good. And they rested. Then someone created the FONT COLOR
attribute and saw it was good, and Microsoft saw it was good also and used it too. Then
Joe created TextFade 1.0 and it was Good, and made the Font Color's even better. And the
little children were happy and they would sing songs about the colors... And the parents
were happy that the children were singing songs about colors... and then the parents
noticed the children buying more paint thinner then they could possibly every really
need...
TextFade 1.0 was released in late 1996, making it the first known HTML
text fader.
Text Fade 1.0 For Dos - The original, and by far the most efficient. Suffered having to
output the faded text to a file-The program was written in C.
TextFade 1.0 For Windows 3.x - Was basically the Dos code compiled with Borland's EasyWin
library so it ran in Windows. Had the same limitations.
TextFade 1.5 (Never Released) Was an upgrade to 1.0 that ran in both Dos and Windows, and
was the premier of the "Random Colors" option. Also written in C.
TextFade 1.6 was basically 1.5 but the C code was upgraded in places to C++. Allowed
output to the screen, but there was often difficulty in copying the text so output was
still mainly to file.
TextFade '98 - Created from the ground up using Visual Basic 4, 32 bit. While VB is
certainly a step down from C++, it was by far easier to use. Since fading text doesn't
require much CPU power, efficiency was not an issue. (Although if you try to text fade
your research paper, you'll probably get an overflow error.) All Input and Output is
to the screen, very easy to Copy & Paste. Introduced "New Fade" and the
Sample Fade option.
Currently In Development!! Text Fade Java!
This version of TextFade should ultimately look much like Text Fade '98 but instead of
having to download it, it will be a Java Applet on my web page, forcing you to access my
site fall all your fading needs. I have no idea when this will be released, it is only in
its most early stages.
Contact Info:
If you have any problems installing or using TextFade '98 or have any other questions
e-mail me at: warcry@computer.org
As of the time of this writing my web page is at http://www.bway.net/~warcry/framed.htm
but will be moving shortly to:
http://members.tripod.com/~joeworld/index.html
Joe's Shareware Software
1275 East 86 Street, 2nd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11236
Thanks for using TextFade '98 !