Screen Saver Setup

To set up a screen saver, you must first configure AutoLaunch Pro so that it knows which projector you would like it to launch while the Macintosh is idle.  This section explains how this is done using the AutoLaunch Pro Setup application.

To set up AutoLaunch Pro:

1.  Locate AutoLaunch Pro Setup and launch it by double-clicking on its icon.

2.  Select a copy of the AutoLaunch Pro control panel using the Open command from the File menu.

or

1.  Drag the AutoLaunch Pro control panel icon onto the AutoLaunch Pro Setup icon as shown below.

 

Installing a Screen Saver Projector

When you do this, a setup dialog like the one below will appear.  To utilize your Macromedia Director projector as the screen saver application, click on the "Choose..." button.  In the resulting dialog box, find and open your projector.

If you have not scripted your projector to automatically quit when there is mouse or keyboard activity, turn on the "Quit on wakeup" checkbox to let AutoLaunch Pro quit the projector for you.

Remember that when distributing your finished screen saver, you must give users copies of both AutoLaunch Pro and your projector.  AutoLaunch Pro does not make a copy of the projector.

 

Customizing AutoLaunch Pro

To customize the AutoLaunch Pro control panel with your own logo or graphics, use the "Control Panel..." and "About Box..." buttons in the Custom Artwork section.  A file dialog box will prompt you for a PICT file in each case.  You can create these files using any graphics program that saves PICT format files, including MacDraw, Photoshop, ColorIt, ClarisWorks, and Canvas.  If you have QuickTime 2.5 installed, you can also open Photoshop files and QuickTime movies directly because of QuickTime's translation features.  Several sample files are provided in the "Sample PICTs" folder which accompanies AutoLaunch Pro and its documentation.

The images you use for custom artwork should be of approximately the dimensions shown in the dialog box - 220 x 90 pixels for the control panel and 450 x 200 pixels for the About box.  AutoLaunch Pro will display images of any size, but making them too large will cause the edges to be clipped off in the control panel or will make the About box too large.

In order to minimize the size of the AutoLaunch Pro control panel, we recommend that you use 256 or fewer colors in your PICT images.  This will also ensure that the images display well on 256 color monitors.  You can reduce the number of colors in an image by changing to an "indexed color" image type in Photoshop, ColorIt, or other image editing application.

Entering Your Registration Code

After purchasing a license for AutoLaunch Pro, you will need to enter the license code using the "Enter Code..." button.  Without a license code, AutoLaunch Pro will display a warning at startup once a day, indicating that it is an unlicensed demo.

Operational Details

AutoLaunch Pro is capable of finding your screen saver application anywhere on the user's hard disk.  It does this using the Finder's Desktop database.  Since the Desktop database only tracks applications with a BNDL resource (this is the resource that defines the application's icon), you cannot use AutoLaunch Pro to run applications that have a generic icon.

AutoLaunch Pro finds the application in the Desktop database using its creator type.  If more than one application with the same creator type exists (multiple copies or different versions of an application are on the hard disk, or multiple applications have the same creator, as is the case with Director projectors and AppleScript applets), AutoLaunch Pro will compare the names of those applications and runs the one with same name as the one specified with the "Choose..." button.

If there is not enough memory to run the screen saver application, the application is missing, or some other error occurs, AutoLaunch Pro will use a built-in screen dimmer to dim the screen, and will display an error message when it wakes up.