StickyNote Help
StickyNote

Version 2.00

About this program

What’s new in this version

If you have problems

Features

Creating a note

Getting information

Closing all stickies

Hiding and showing stickies

Changing default characteristics

Changing individual note characteristics

Save and autosave


About this program

StickyNote is a simple sticky note program for Windows 95.  It can be used to create colored notes for storage on your desktop.

Each time you start Windows, the StickyNote icon will appear in the system tray.  Double-clicking this icon will create a new sticky, with the default font, font color and window color attributes.  You can change these default values by selecting the desired options on the icon's context menu, which will appear when you right-click the StickyNote icon.

Also available on this menu are a 'Kill stickies' and an 'Information' command.  Kill stickies will close all the stickies on your desktop.  They cannot be recovered.  Information creates a small dialog box which houses information about the current settings of StickyNote, including the number of stickies currently open, the default font, font color and note color.

You can temporarily hide sticky notes, and display them later using the Show command from the system tray context menu.  Hidden stickies are still maintained by the program, and killed if you execute the ‘Kill stickies’ command.  To hide a sticky, choose the ‘Hide’ command from the sticky’s context menu.

You can close StickyNote by choosing the Exit item from its system tray context menu.  When you exit StickyNote, your settings will be saved and the next time you start the program, they will remain as they were set previously.  If you exit Windows and StickyNote is still running, your settings will be similarly saved.

Each note has a caption bar, which is drawn slightly darker than the text window.  You can click and drag it to move a sticky around.  It also has a context menu which appears when you right-click it; using this menu you can change the color of the sticky, the font and the font color.  Changes you make using this menu only affect the current sticky.

Author's note

I decided I wanted a sticky-note-like program for Windows, and I certainly found a number of very impressive ones on the Web, but all were either commercial or shareware.  I didn't feel like spending money, so I wrote my own.  Consequently, I certainly won't charge money for this program as the spirit under which it was created dictates that one of its main features should be its free availability.

I always wonder about programs of this sort.  What motivation (other than sinister) could an author have for distributing a program without reimbursement for his time and effort?  Some street mechanism in me tends to reinforce the addage, "you get what you pay for."  But this program defies that, in a very GNU-esque manner.  The Internet should be a system by which you can obtain information which will benefit you and increase the productivity of your computing experience.  When commerce and

money get tied up, the Internet turns into a carrot-and-stick mechanism, where you have to wait minutes downloading a program, invest hard-drive space in it, spend time playing with it only to be rudely jerked from functionality after 21 days.  This works against that system.  I'm sure there are better notes programs around for certain things- in fact, I've

seen a couple.  I'm sure there are some very intricate codes for doing many things beyond what I offer in this little incarnation.  But I offer something which none of the rest offers: freedom, the GNU ideal.  Thus, it can be said that, perhaps, my program's main feature is its free nature, and further my honest intention in creating it as such was simply to make it better than previous programs through its freedom, to make it different.

This program will run forever, without asking for money or displaying dialog

boxes of the annoying genre, and will not affect your system in any malicious way.  You are basically assured of this anyway; you probably copied it from some large site which tests it forwards and backwards before making it available to you.  But for that last little inkling of guilt for getting something free, I say forget it.  Hug your kids if it makes you feel better, and that will be the repayment to the good of humanity, far beyond what you offer anyone through money.

If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me at ccarrill@fas.harvard.edu.  I try to get back to everyone who writes, and although I guard my language here so that no-one will feel bad if I don't, I've never missed an e-mail.  So be assured that, if you write, you will probably get a response.  I am certainly willing and able to make changes to the program you are interested in as well.  Anything that suits your fancy; just drop me a line.

Thank you for trying my little program.  I hope it works well for you and gives you some enjoyment.  Happy computing and good health.

-Christian Carrillo

 ccarrill@fas.harvard.edu

Also, I'd like to give a special thanks to Ron and Kevin Jou for their great help in designing this program.  Without them, it would not have had nearly half the features it does.

General information

Title:  StickyNote

Version:  2.00

Purpose:  Simple free sticky notes program

Installation:  See below

Status:  Freeware

Limitations:  None, use and distribute freely

Author:  Christian Carrillo

E-mail:  ccarrill@fas.harvard.edu


What's new in this version
What’s new in this version

•	Always on top- Now you can make your notes stay atop all other windows permanently

•	Hide and show- Hide notes, and display them at your leisure with the new hide and show features

•	New options window- The options have now been moved to a single, central window organized into simple tab pages

•	Manual and autosave- If you experience frequent system lockups or power outages, you can manually save your settings or have StickyNote save them every few minutes using manual and autosave.  Available through the options window.

•	Improved memory handling- For complex memory operations, the procedures have been refined to add stability and precision.

•	New help- You’re looking at it.

•	Bug fixes- There were a number of bugs in version 1, including a text-saving problem and a color scheme problem in 256 colors.  All known bugs have been corrected in this version.


Creating a note

To create a new note, double click on the StickyNote icon in your system tray.  The system tray is the depressed region at the lower right hand corner of the screen.  You can also use the context menu; right-click the StickyNote icon, and choose the “New sticky” item.

Having done one of the above actions, a new sticky note will appear on your screen.  It will have all the default characteristics you have specified in the Options window.  For information about changing these characteristics, see Changing default characteristics.  If you wish to change the appearance of this individual sticky, right-click the sticky’s menu bar (the slightly darker bar at the top of the sticky) and choose the appropriate menu item.  See Changing individual note characteristics for more information.

You can type your text right into the sticky.  Click the client area of the sticky to display a cursor.  You can close the sticky either by typing Alt-F4 or choosing the “Close” item on the sticky’s context menu.


Getting information

To display the information window, open StickyNote’s context menu (right click the StickyNote icon in the system tray) and choose “Information”.  A dialog will appear which contains information about the number of stickies currently active (both hidden and shown), the default window color, font and font color.

You can close this window by clicking OK.  The About window is also available through this window.  Click the StickyNote icon at the top left of this window, and choose “About StickyNote…”.  You must close this window before you can open further StickyNote windows.


Closing all stickies

You can close all your stickies by choosing the “Kill stickies” item on the context menu.  To display the context menu, right click the StickyNote icon in the lower right hand corner of your screen.

“Kill stickies” will close both the hidden and shown stickies.  You can close individual stickies by right-clicking the top bar of a sticky window, and choosing “Close” from the menu that appears.


Hiding and showing stickies

You can temporarily hide stickies, and show them later at your convenience.  When a sticky is hidden, it still exists; it is simply not rendered.

To hide a sticky, right-click its title bar to display a context menu.  Then, choose “Hide”.  The sticky will disappear.  To show hidden stickies, go to the main menu (right click the StickyNote icon at the lower right hand corner of your screen) and choose “Show…”  A new dialog will appear.  From it you can choose to show individual stickies, or click “Show all” to display all hidden ones.


Changing default characteristics

The default characteristics apply to each new sticky when created.  You can change these through the Options window, available on the main menu.  The first two tabs, Note and Font, contain default note attributes.  You can select size, color, font size, color and typeface options from these two pages.

When you’re done making your changes, click “OK”.  If you do not wish to save your changes, click “Cancel” instead.


Changing individual note characteristics

You can change the characteristics of an individual note through its context menu.  Right click the title bar (the slightly darker area at the top of the note) to display the context menu.  Then choose the appropriate menu item.


If you have problems

The previous version of this program had some obvious problems.  For instance, the text inside notes was not saved on some machines.  This was, however, not obvious during development because the development machines did not display this error.  It is only through the feedback of users that this became known and eventually corrected.

So if something does not work as it should on your computer, or even as you think it should, please send an e-mail to “ccarrill@fas.harvard.edu”.  Almost always a quick response is generated, and each request is considered in great detail.  Any questions and comments are welcome.  Please feel free to send e-mail.

The one specific problem people have is generally in installation.  When copying the binary file when the current or an old version of StickyNote is running, the setup program generates an error.  This is caused by Windows; when a copy of StickyNote is running, you cannot overwrite it on disk.  So before you run Setup, close all open StickyNote programs.  You can accomplish this through the context menu in the system tray; choose Exit.  Then run Setup.


Save and autosave

The save and autosave features are available in the “Save” tab of the Options window.  To display the Options window, right click the StickyNote icon at the bottom right hand corner of your screen and choose “Options…”.  Then, click the “Save” tab.

It is important to note that these features are not intended for daily use.  StickyNote saves your configuration when you exit it or close Windows.  For most people, there really is no reason to enable autosave, or to manually save their configurations.  If your machine crashes often, autosave comes in handy.  Otherwise, it is recommended that you do not enable this feature, for it requires system resources as do all active features.  Saving will be handled automatically without it.