OS/2 Shareware BBS: 35 Internet/35-Internet.zip/animpg14.zip/AnimPage.doc

Text File | 1996-07-13 | 8KB | 156 lines

AnimPage.cmd - v1.4 - By Sallie Krebs, 07/13/96 ([e-mail])

AnimPage is a Rexx program which generates an HTML page for loading IBM
WebExplorer** animations. The main HTML page displays an icon representing
each animation which can be clicked to load the associated animation. The
animation title, source (author), and number of frames are also displayed.

Send any comments, suggestions, flames, etc to: [e-mail]. This
program is free. You may use it and re-distribute it as you like. I only
ask that if you make any modifications to the code, you note them in the
original AnimPage.cmd file. Email to me which includes your
modifications would be nice, as well, but not absolutely necessary. I
welcome constructive criticism! Also, please do not remove my name from
this file, or the .cmd file.

Standard disclaimers apply: Use this program at your own risk. I will
not be responsible for any damage to your system from using this
program. Etc, etc, etc. I can't see how any damage *could* occur, but
that line is in all of the disclaimers I've seen, so I included it;)

Installation and usage notes:

1.  Unzip the ANIMPG10.ZIP file into its own directory. All of the
    included files should be kept in this directory in order for the
    program to work properly.

2.  Create separate subdirectories underneath the AnimPage directory for
    each of your animations. Each animation must have its own
    subdirectory. (Be sure that only subdirectories containing
    animations are below the AnimPage directory.)

3.  *IMPORTANT*: Check the 'user variables' at the beginning of the
    AnimPage.cmd file. Edit as needed.

4.  Run AnimPage.cmd: Running AnimPage.cmd will generate the
    AnimPage.htm file plus separate .htm files for each graphic.

5.  Load AnimPage.htm into WebExplorer: select 'File', 'Open' from the
    menu (or press Ctrl-O) and then use the file open dialog box to
    locate and load the file. Now, you should either save it in the
    quicklist or make it your "home page" in order to load it more
    easily in the future.

Each time you want to add a new animation, simply re-run AnimPage.cmd.
The old AnimPage.htm file will be renamed to AnimPage.bak. The
individual loader files will be deleted and recreated. If you want to
remove an animation, delete the subdirectory containing it. Re-run
AnimPage.cmd to remove it from the AnimPage.htm file.

Note that if an animation included an .htm file for loading, a new .htm
loader file will be created anyhow. The <TITLE> from the original loader
file will be used for the animation title on the AnimPage.htm page.
Also, if any <A HREF> links are found in the original loader file, they
will be included in the new file. Right now, only the <A HREF> is
searched for, so if the end tag- </A>- is on a different line, the link
won't work. The only way to correct this at present is to edit the
original loader file for the animation to put the end tag on the same
line as the <A HREF> start tag. If there is no <A HREF> link in the
original loader file, then "Animation source unknown" will appear at the
bottom of the new loader file. I know of no way to search for all
variations of things like "by John Smith", if the name didn't include a
link.

This is a very preliminary version of the program, therefore many
improvements could be made. For example, as written all files must
remain in the directory in which they were generated. Paths to the files
are hard-coded into the generated .htm files. Maybe one day I will have
time to work on improvements... and even a VX-Rexx interface! For now,
though, it meets my needs. I hope others may find it useful, as well.

Notes about the user variables:

1.  AnimTables: if this variable is set to 1, then the AnimPage.htm file
    will be generated using a 'Table' format. If you are running an
    older version of WebExplorer which does not support Tables, then set
    the AnimTables variable to 0. A 'List' format will then be
    generated.

2.  AnimPath is the base directory for your animation files. As noted
    above, each separate animation must be located in its own
    subdirectory beneath the base directory. If this variable is blank,
    then the current directory will be used for the AnimPath variable.
    (This assumes that animpage.cmd is run from the base directory.)

    Example:    Animpath='c:\inet\animate'

3.  You may substitute your own graphics for the ones supplied. Just
    edit the user variable for the desired graphic to match your
    graphics file name, and copy your graphics file(s) to the base
    directory.

4.  The AnimArcHRef variables are links to animation archives sites. Of
    course, you can set them to any site you want, but as supplied they
    point to 3 animations sites. These links will be displayed below the
    'AnimArc' graphic located near the bottom of the page. Currently
    AnimPage only supports 5 links. To change the links, edit both the
    AnimArcHRef and the AnimArcTitle variables for the link you want to
    add/modify. You could also use one (or more) of these links to load
    another HTML page, instead of an http:// link. For example, I created
    a page of links to my favorite sites:

    file:///E:\INET\PAGES\SALHOME\HOMEPAGE.HTM

5.  If you don't want the Blue Ribbon logo and link displayed at the
    bottom of the page, then just edit the AnimRibbon user variable to
    make it an empty string:

    AnimRibbon=''       /* Blue Ribbon Logo graphic for bottom of page */

    The AnimPage program checks to see if this string is empty, and if so
    it doesn't add the link.

6.  AnimOnward: Same as for the blue ribbon link, but the graphic and
    link are for the "Ever Onward OS/2 Campaign" page.

7.  AnimLogo: Same as for the blue ribbon link, but the graphic and
    link are for the "Building for Merlin" page.

Known problems:

1.  WebExplorer crashes upon loading the AnimPage.htm file with a
    SYS3175 error (WEBEXWIN.DLL.) (I'm running WebExplorer v1.1B.) I
    only had this happen on one of 46 animations I've tried. I use the
    first animation of the series for the icon on the AnimPage.htm file.
    For some reason WebExplorer doesn't like some graphics files. The
    one I had the problem with was a .BMP file. To resolve the problem,
    I loaded the file into a graphics editor and then saved it. I
    noticed that the file size changed, even though I didn't edit the
    file... sorry folks, I don't know anything about graphics, so I
    can't say what was changed that fixed the problem, but it worked.
    Note that I didn't do anything to other files in the series, and the
    animation itself works fine. If you experience this problem, try to
    see which icon is being loaded when WebExplorer crashes, then do as
    I did above, or remove the individual animation subdirectory and all
    of its files.

2.  As mentioned above, credits will not appear properly in the new
    individual loader .htm files if both the start and end tags for a
    href reference are not on the same line. Edit the .htm loader file
    located in the affected animation's subdirectory accordingly.

History:
    v1.0 - first release
    v1.1 - minor aesthetic fixes, not released
    v1.2 - corrections to code to fix possible problems which could
           occur if an original loader file had a "bad" title or href
           line. Added more links.
    v1.3 - added 'Table' formatting.
    v1.4 - minor corrections to the HTML code generated to display
           graphics and format table data better. Also added the new
           header graphic for the top of the page created by Ingo
           Guenther. Thank you Ingo!

** WebExplorer is a copyright of IBM Corp.