nivia
NIVIA 2.0 - Personalized Screen Saver for Windows

Welcome to NIVIA 2.0, the personalized screen saver for Windows. Here are some of benefits and features of NIVIA.

- Displays your favorite images, hand-picked by you.

- Supports many image formats.

- Uses the same familiar Windows screen saver procedures to setup and activate.

- Easy installation program lets you click and sit back.

- Password protection to safeguard your sensitive data.

- Libraries with visual feedback allow you to set up groups of images that can sure fit different occasions at home or office.

- Fully compatible with VGA cards and up. You get live colors even with 16 color VGA.

- Many customization and fun options.

Operation

Registration

Version History

Main Setup Dialog Box (Sensitive Graphics)

Library Dialog Box (Sensitive Graphics)

Questions and Answers


Operation

NIVIA starts just as any other Windows screen saver by overtaking the whole screen after a period of inactivity picked by the user. It will first display the NIVIA welcome screen (this can be de-activated in the registered version) accompanied by the NIVIA startup indication voice. (The voice will broadcast if you have chosen the "sound" checkbox in the setup procedure and have a sound card or the PC speaker sound driver.)

After a short period, NIVIA begins the slide show of the image files. The images are displayed one at a time, according to your library selection until all the images have been shown. At this point NIVIA starts the image slide show over again. This sequence continues until NIVIA is terminated by the mouse movement or keyboard activity.

If you do not have  "Password Protected" enabled, you are returned to the Windows environment immediately; otherwise, you will be presented with the password entry dialog box. NIVIA will continue to run in the background until you type your password and select "OK". The characters will echo as "*" to preserve the password secrecy. If you enter an incorrect password, NIVIA will complain by presenting you with a message indicating the wrong password entry. Type in the correct password and select "OK". When the system has determined the correct password entry, you are immediately returned to the Windows environment.


Registration

The NIVIA Screen saver is provided to you as a shareware trial copy. You are requested to try it out for a period of 30 days and if you find it a worthwhile product, please register it for 11 US Dollars or 16 Deutsche Mark.

If you have email, save an extra 4 dollars (shipping and handling costs) by receiving the registered version electronically. You will receive all files, zipped and encoded, through email for 7 USD or 10 DM. (You require a "uudecode" program to decipher the transmitted data. It can be obtained for free from sources such as CompuServe or the Internet.) Shop around; if you find a product in NIVIA's class with lower price, we will meet or beat their price.

NOTE: Registered users of NIVIA 1.10 pay half price. You may round down the decimal in your price calculation. There are also discounts for quantity orders.

Personal checks, bank checks, and money orders made out to:

Robert Hashemian Ent.

Mozartweg 44

64287 Darmstadt

Germany

Phone: 49-6151-712724

Fax	: 49-6151-715808

email	: st000555@hrzpub.th-darmstadt.de

If you prefer bank account funds transfer, here are the bank accounts:

In Germany:	In United States:

Bayerische Vereinsbank Darmstadt	G.E. Credit Union, Plainville, CT

Robert Hashemian	Robert Hashemian

Kontonr. : 3010210	Account # : 319360-04

BLZ      : 50820292

The registered version is a fully functional product with all features enabled and is shipped with GIF and JPEG handler files (DLL's).

Please let us know about the following

- how did you find out about us? or, where did you find the NIVIA trial copy?

- What kind of equipment do you use?

- Are you planning to use NIVIA at home, work, or both?

- Other personal screen-savers we should worry about that you know of?

- Your suggestions for improvement.

We thank you for trying out and registering NIVIA.


Version History

Version 2.00

- Bug fixes including 16 color images causing a program freeze when using VGA switch mode and image not appearing in the library selection preview box in rare cases.

- Support for new image formats, GIF, JPEG, RLE, PCX. (GIF and JPEG supported in registered version)

- Ability to de-activate logo screen. (registered version)

- Libraries can contain image files from any subdirectory.

- User specifies image slide show order for a library.

- Image color inversion option.

- Help facility

- More features, explore and find them.

Version 1.10

- Several bug fixes including a problematic input freeze during library setups.

- Smaller program size (almost 40% reduction from original version)

- Sound selection capability

- Display Style selection

- Video switch option for 16 color VGA

- More attractive user interface

- Lower registration fee

Version 1.00

- First release, only BMP files supported.


Questions and Answers

*Problem : NIVIA Installation Box reported "Error Installing NIVIA files !" What went wrong?

=Solution : The following problems might have occurred. Fix the problems and attempt the installation again.

1) Hard disk space is full. Delete or compress unnecessary files.

2) Windows directory is read only. Remove the read only attribute

3) Low Windows resources. Quit one or two programs or restart Windows.

4) FILES or BUFFERS in CONFIG.SYS may be too low. Increase their values and reboot the PC.

*Problem : NIVIA does not appear in the "Screen Saver" group of the "Desktop" dialog box.

=Solution : Ensure that NIVIA is installed, and use the drop down list to check for its existence. Look for "NIVIA" in the drop down list. Ensure that there is enough room in your PC's hard disk to install NIVIA correctly.

*Problem : NIVIA only displays its logo and does not cycle through any slides.

=Solution : Ensure that there are image files present in the correct subdirectories.

*Problem : NIVIA displays an error message indicating an unknown image format or missing file.

=Solution : NIVIA can display files with BMP, RLE, PCX, GIF, and JPEG (JFIF flavor) image formats. Ensure that your image files are not corrupted, modified, or deleted by matching their dates and sizes to those supplied originally. You may want to reinstall the images, if problem persists. Also ensure that the image formats match one of those described above. NIVIA cannot display image formats other than the mentioned formats. Additionally GIF and JPEG are only supported by the registered version.

*Problem : An error message box regarding missing DLL files appears when NIVIA screen saver or setup is started.

=Solution : Ensure that the files "DISPDIB.DLL", "CTL3DV2.DLL", "NIVIAJPG.DLL", and "NIVIAGIF.DLL" are present in the "WINDOWS" or "WINDOWS\SYSTEM" directories. ("NIVIAJPG.DLL"  and "NIVIAGIF.DLL" are supplied with the registered version only. Do not look for them if you have the trial version.) If not, search the original NIVIA distribution files for these four files (they have ".DL_" extensions) and copy them as ".DLL" files to the Windows directory. The ".DL_" files are not compressed. Do not try to decompress them.

Note: File COMMDLG.DLL is assumed already present as a standard part of Windows.

*Problem : You are switching your display driver from 16 color to 256 or vice versa. What steps should you take to ensure correct operation by NIVIA?

=Solution : Absolutely nothing. NIVIA automatically detects your driver type and displays the images accordingly.

*Problem : How many images can be placed in a library?

=Solution : Up to 20.

*Problem : Why do the images are magnified or shrunken on different systems?

=Solution : This is simply the function of the pixel resolution. The higher the resolution, the smaller the image is shown.

*Problem : On some VGA 16 color displays, after the logo, all you see is a dark screen or intermittent flickers, or the pictures are shown very rapidly followed by long delays before the next picture.

=Solution : First, in case of the constant dark screen or just flickers check for the correct installation and library selection. If the installation is OK, the problem may lie in the efficiency of your VGA driver. This problem may be more evident when using larger monitors (e.g. 17 inch or above).You can contact the display driver manufacturer and ask for new releases that may speed up screen paintings. Otherwise try to increase the "Time interval" value to allow enough time for the images to be setup and shown. Also keep in mind that some images take longer to process. For example JPEG images require more processing time to decompress than that of other formats. High color resolution images (e.g. 24 bit format) also take longer to display due to a lengthy color map matching process.

*Problem : You selected a library to be shown, yet NIVIA displays all images from the Windows subdirectory. why?

=Solution : There may be 3 reasons why that is happening. 1) You may have forgotten to choose "OK" in the "NIVIA Setup Box". Instead it is possible that you closed the box using the control menu on the top left or the "Cancel" button. 2) You may have selected the "Reset" buttons before choosing "OK" in which case NIVIA returned to its default state showing all available images from Windows directory. 3) Your selected library might be empty, in which case NIVIA ignores the library and shows all available images from Windows directory.

*Problem : You selected the Random Display Style, yet the images are displayed in the center.

=Solution : 1) If you have a standard 16 color VGA adapter and the "Switch video" checkbox is enabled, 256 color images are forced centered due to the mechanism of the display. 2) If your image is larger than or the same size of the monitor screen no random placements are possible. The image may seem smaller than the monitor screen, but it may have a large dark border. Check the image with an image reader (such as Paintbrush) and eliminate the unnecessary border.

*Problem : Image appears to have grossly distorted color characteristics.

=Solution : you most likely have a standard 16 color VGA adapter, the "Switch video" checkbox is disabled, and 256 color images. 256 color pictures cannot be correctly handled by standard 16 color VGA in Windows. You must enable the "Switch video" checkbox to have full color display. Also check your display driver list for 256 color drivers. Installing a 256 color driver allows much higher flexibility with colors. Use the "Windows Setup" application from the "Main" program group to inspect or install new drivers. You can also do the same from DOS in the Windows directory using the SETUP program.

*Problem : The images are larger than the monitor screen and they are cut off.

=Solution : NIVIA handles larger than monitor screen size images by showing as much of the image as it can from the center out. You can use several programs (e.g. Paintshop Pro, Hijaak Pro, etc.) to resize the images to a smaller scale.

*Problem : Why do some images take longer to appear on the screen?

=Solution : There could be 2 reasons for that. 1)Some compressed formats (especially JPEG) use complex mathematical functions to achieve file size reduction. By the same token it takes a complex and lengthy procedure to reassemble the original image from the compressed format. The weaker your PC, the longer this process takes. 2) Images with more than 256 colors (for example 24 bit images) require longer time to display due to lengthy color matching schemes. Try to increase the "Time interval" value to allow enough time for the images to be setup and shown. You may also consider converting such images to lower color resolution (e.g. 8 bit resolution).

*Problem : The negative option does not achieve a true color inversion.

=Solution : The negative option renders a pseudo-negative image. It matches as many inverted colors to the picture's real color map as it can. Inverted colors that cannot be matched are approximated.

*Problem : Why there is no startup sound when NIVIA starts?

=Solution : First you must either have a sound card or the PC speaker sound driver installed. If you do not have a sound card, you can obtain the PC speaker driver for free of charge from Microsoft. It is available on CompuServe and multiple archives on the Internet. (Let us know if you need assistance in obtaining the speaker sound driver). Make sure that the "Sound on/off" option in NIVIA is enabled and your selected ".WAV" file is a valid wave file.

*Problem : Why are there flickers between slide changes on a 16 color VGA driver?

=Solution : If you have a standard 16 color VGA and have the "Switch video mode" option enabled, the system switches the video mode when encountering 256 color image files. It switches back to the normal mode when handling other image files. This change of display mode is the cause of flicker. To reduce the number of flickers, group the like image files (especially the 256 color images) together when setting up your libraries by placing them next to each other. This way NIVIA will switch the video mode only twice; before starting to display the 256 color image files and after finishing with them. At best, when all of the images in a selected library are 256 color format, you should experience no flickers, since the video mode would not require switching.

*Problem : Some images just flash momentarily on the screen. Why?

=Solution : Some image formats (especially JPEG's and 24 bit bitmaps) require longer processing time than others. Increase the "Time Interval" value to give these images a fair chance to remain on the screen longer.

*Problem : What Windows versions is NIVIA compatible with?

=Solution : Practically all Microsoft Windows releases starting with Windows 3.1. NIVIA has been successfully tested on Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95, and Windows NT 3.5.

*Problem : Why GIF and JPEG files are not handled correctly?

=Solution : GIF and JPEG images cannot be handled by the trial version of NIVIA. The registered version is shipped with handler files (NIVIAJPG.DLL and NIVIAGIF.DLL) to deal with these image types.

*Problem : You have pictures that would like to display with NIVIA or other programs but do not know how or where to process them.

=Solution : You can buy a scanner or ask someone to scan the pictures for you. You can also send the pictures to us and for $1.25 USD (2 DM) per picture (minimum 4 pictures) processing, you will receive professionally scanned pictures on a floppy disk together with your originals.


Main Dialog Box
Main Setup Dialog Box

Click on a desired part of the dialog box to get help.


Library Dialog Box

Click on a desired part of the dialog box to get help.


Time Interval

Set it to the desired number of seconds between slide changes. The legal values are between 5 and 120. Increase this value if some of the image files require longer processing time and as a result do not get sufficient display time. The default value is 10.


Sound...

Click on this button to select a desired sound (.WAV) file to be played every time NIVIA is started. A dialog box appears allowing you to navigate the PC's file system and pick the desired sound file. The selected sound source appears to the right of this button.

You must have a sound card or the PC speaker sound driver for the sound to be played. Additionally the "Sound on/off" option must be enabled. The default value is the "Default NIVIA" sound.


Library...

Click on this key to work with the NIVIA image libraries. The NIVIA Selection Library dialog box appears allowing you to construct up to 5 libraries of images or choose for NIVIA to display all known image files in the Windows subdirectory.

The last library selected in that dialog box before closing becomes the current library. The selected library appears to the right of this button. The default value is "Win Images" which instructs NIVIA to display all known image files in the Windows directory.


Center

NIVIA will center all images on the screen if this option is enabled. This and the "Random" options are mutually exclusive. The default value is enabled.


Random

NIVIA will display images in random locations on the screen if this option is enabled. Images are kept intact and are not clipped. Images that are longer and/or wider than the screen dimensions will be centered. If the display driver is a 16 color VGA and the "Switch video mode" option is enabled, 256 color images will be forced centered due to the mechanism of the switched display.

This and the "Center" options are mutually exclusive. The default value is disabled.


Set Password...

Click on this button to set a screen saver password. This password is shared among most standard 16 bit Windows screen savers. A dialog box appears allowing you to set or reset the password. Type the old password , followed by the new password and a retype of the new password for confirmation. Use the <Tab> key to move between fields. Click "OK" to activate the new password. If there are no existing passwords(meaning that the screen saver password is a blank), The "Old Password" field will appear disabled (grayed) and will not require an entry.

This button will not respond (indicated by a gray color) if the "Password Protected" option is de-activated. In that case NIVIA will not enforce password protection.


Password Protected

Enable this option to arm NIVIA with password protection every time it is activated. Enabling this option also enables the "Set Password" button allowing for setting or resetting the screen saver password. If this option is enabled but there is no existing screen saver password, the password is a blank. Thus one can simply terminate the screen saver by leaving the password field blank and clicking "OK" when prompted for the password. Disable this option if you do not want password protection. The default value is disabled.


Show negatives

Enable this option for NIVIA to invert the colors of the images as they are displayed. This option does not necessarily produce absolute color inversion. It matches as many inverted colors to the picture's real color map as it can. Inverted colors that cannot be matched are approximated.

If the display driver is a 16 color VGA and the "Switch video mode" option is enabled, no color inversion will be performed for 256 color images due to the display mechanism. The default value is disabled.


Sound on/off

Enable this option for NIVIA to play a specified sound file every time it is activated. You must have a sound card or the PC speaker sound driver for the sound to be played. Use the "Sound..." button to select a desired sound file. The default value is enabled.


Show logo at startup

NIVIA will briefly display its logo on every activation, if this option is enabled. You can use this option to verify that NIVIA is the current screen saver and check on its launch status. Disable this option to bypass this feature. The default value is enabled.

Note: This option is functional only in the registered version.


Switch video mode when standard VGA

If you have a 16 color VGA driver and would like to see 256 color (8 bit) images in full color, enable this option. Doing so will switch the video resolution to 320X240 every time a 256 color image file is encountered.

The "Show negatives" and "Random" options are invalid during the switched mode. This option has no effect for other types of display drivers. The default value is enabled.


INFO...

Pops up an informational message box about NIVIA.


Help

Launches the NIVIA help window.


Cancel

Dismisses this setup dialog box without saving any changes. All options in the setup dialog box are returned to their previous values. To save the options, Click on "OK". Canceling does not however reset or erase any libraries.


Reset

Return all options in the setup dialog box to their default values. You must then click "OK" to save the options or "Cancel" to discard the changes made by "Reset".


OK

Click on "OK" to save the options as you see them and exit the setup dialog box. Otherwise click on "Cancel" to ignore any changes.


Directories

This is a read-only field displaying the currently selected drive and directory. The library dialog box always starts out with the Windows directory as the current path. Images within the current path are displayed in the "Available Images" list box.


Directories

This list box contains all available subdirectories within the current path. The current path appears on top of this list box. Double click any entry to enter that subdirectory. Double click on [..] (if present) to move up one directory level from your current path.


Directories

Use this drop-down list to select a drive for the current path. The subdirectory list box, the path field, and the "Available Images" list box will change to reflect the current drive selection.


Available Images

This list box displays the available image files (according to the drop-down selection filter) in the current path. Click on any item to view it in the image preview box or before using the "Add ->" button.

Note: GIF and JPEG are only supported by the registered version.


Available Images

Use this drop-down list to filter displayed image files according to their formats. Choose "Known formats" for all known image formats, or choose from Bitmap, GIF, JPEG, PCX, or RLE formats to only have files with that particular format to be displayed in the list box.


Image Preview Box

Displays a reduced sized picture of a selected image file from the "Available Images" list box. This gives you a chance to preview the image file before deciding on including it in a library.

Note: GIF and JPEG are only supported by the registered version.


Add ->

Click on this button to add the current selection from the "Available Images" list box to the current library. The image file is added before or after a selected item in the library list box depending on the insert mode. If there is no selected item in the library list box, the image file is added before or after the entire contents of the current library depending on the insert mode. If there is no selection in the "Available Images" list box, this button has no effect.


All >>

Click on this button to add all entries from the "Available Images" list box to the current library. The image files are added before or after a selected item in the library list box depending on the insert mode. If there is no selected item in the library list box, the image files are added before or after the entire contents of the current library depending on the insert mode.


<- Del

Click on this button to delete a selected item from the library list box. If there is no item selected in the library list box, this button has no effect.


<< All

Click on this button to remove all entries from the current library.


Library

Use this drop-down list box to select a library. There are five libraries (Library 1 to Library 5) and an extra entry, "Win Images", to select from. Selecting "Win Images" will prompt NIVIA to display all available image files in the Windows directory. It will also de-activate (gray out) all library editing controls.

The other libraries must be constructed by the user. Each library can hold as many of 20 image files.

If you attempt to switch to another library, you will be prompted to confirm this action if the current library is manipulated and not saved.


Library

This list box contains the contents of the currently selected library. Each library can have as many as 20 entries. Use the library edit controls to the left of this list box to fill the current library with the desired image files from the "Available Images" list box. Use the "Save Current Lib" button to save all the edits for the current library.

If "Win Images" is selected, all available images from the Windows directory are selected into this list box. You cannot modify the contents of the list box in this case.

Note: GIF and JPEG are only supported by the registered version.


Before

Use the "Before" insert mode for the new entries to be added before the currently selected item in the library list box. If there is no selected item in the library list box, the image files are added before the entire contents of the current library(inserted at the beginning). This and the "After" options are mutually exclusive.


After

Use the "After" insert mode for the new entries to be added after the currently selected item in the library list box. If there is no selected item in the library list box, the image files are added after the entire contents of the current library(inserted at the end). This and the "Before" options are mutually exclusive.


Save Current Lib

Click on this buttons to save the contents of the currently selected library. If you attempt to "Close" this dialog box or select another library before saving the current library, a message box will prompt you to confirm your intention to discard all modifications to the current library. You will then have a chance to back out and save the current library using this button.


Close

Closes this dialog box and passes back the currently selected library to the setup dialog box as the current NIVIA library. You will be prompted to confirm the "Close" action, if the current library is manipulated and not saved.