1 You can disable "Tip of the Day" by clearing the checkbox at the lower lefthand corner of this dialog box. But why not leave it enabled for awhile so you can get the most out of the product? Firehand Blaze has a rich feature-set. "Tip of the Day" is a great way to learn about some of its most powerful capabilities!
2 Because Firehand Blaze has "multiple instance" support, you can run several different slideshows simultaneously in separate Blaze windows.
3 With the optional Firehand Media Xtension added to your registered Blaze installation, Blaze can play digital audio, video, and MIDI clips as well as animations and still images! If you're a Firehand Ember user, the Media Xtension also adds multimedia file support to that application! More information about the Firehand Media Xtension can be found at http://www.firehand.com/mediax....
4 You can set Blaze as your current system screensaver in two different ways: either open your computer's Display Properties dialog (accessible from Control Panel), select the Screensaver tab and then pick "Firehand Blaze" from the list of available screensavers, or simply run Blaze and check the "Use Blaze as current system screensaver" checkbox found on the General tab of the View/Options/Screensaver dialog.
5 Firehand Blaze -- like all Firehand graphics products -- features complete Windows drag/drop support to make working with your files fast and easy! Add pictures to documents, Email messages, or newsgroup postings by simply dragging them from Blaze and dropping them into other applications. Copy or move files by dragging them from Blaze and dropping them into folders or onto your desktop! You can drag files into Blaze too!
6 To select a folder for viewing in Blaze, choose the "Open" command from Blaze's File menu. Alternatively, you can drag a folder from your desktop or from Windows Explorer and drop it on Blaze's desktop shortcut to open that folder in Blaze.
7 Add music to enhance your Blaze experience! The Background Audio tabs on Blaze's View/Options/Slideshow and View/Options/Screensaver dialogs allow you to specify wave audio or MIDI files to accompany your slideshow or screensaver presentations. You can also pick a CD audio track.
8 Because you can delete files from within Blaze, it makes a great tool for culling through your Web or newsgroup downloads. Simply open your usual download folder in Blaze and start the slideshow. Strike the Delete key on your keyboard to delete the currently-displayed file and advance the show.
9 Blaze features four selectable view modes. When viewing pictures in "Default Size" mode, all images are displayed in their native dimensions within Blaze's display window. In "Descale to Fit" mode, images are shown in their actual dimensions if they are small enough to fit entirely within Blaze's display window without being cut off; otherwise, they are shrunk until they will fit entirely within the display window. In "Best Stretch" mode, all images are shrunk or enlarged to best fit the display window while preserving their native aspect ratio. In "Unconstrained Stretch" mode, all images are stretched to entirely fit the display window (their native aspect ratio is not necessarily preserved).
10 When using Blaze's display window as a drag/drop source or destination, Blaze uses standard Windows "semantics" to determine whether the operation is, by default, a copy operation or a move operation. (This determination is made based on the type and location of the disk drives involved.) However, you can force the drag/drop to result in a copy operation by holding down the Ctrl key while dragging and dropping. To force the drag/drop to result in a file move, simply hold down the Shift key while dragging and dropping.
11 Blaze features a variety of effects that can be applied to image transitions. These include a pixel fade, a color fade, a vertical line transition, a horizontal line transition, a box reveal, a vertical wipe, a horizontal wipe, an expansion, and a contraction. For maximum visual variety, the full, registered edition of Blaze even features a setting that causes an effect to be selected at random whenever a transition is triggered.
12 When using "Descale to Fit" or "Best Stretch" or "Unconstrained Stretch" display mode, you may wish to select the "Enhance images when stretching" option. When enabled, this option causes Blaze to apply an enhancement algorithm to images when stretching or shrinking them for display. Though this is a very computationally intensive operation (which slows display performance), it typically results in a much "smoother" appearance for resized images.
13 Blaze works great alongside other Firehand imaging products -- especially Firehand Ember. When launched from Ember, Blaze opens the folder being actively displayed in Ember, sets its file display order to match Ember's, and displays the file that is currently selected in Ember. This allows a seamless switch from Ember's thumbnail view to Blaze's slideshow view of the same folder. Note that the view change can also go the other direction: to switch from Blaze's slideshow view to Ember's thumbnail view of a folder, simply select the "Browse" command from Blaze's File menu.
14 Totally cool: add the Firehand Media Xtension to a full, registered Blaze installation and then specify a folder containing video clips as your screensaver folder! Blaze will play the video clips back-to-back with smooth transition effects in-between! With the Media Xtension installed, Blaze makes the ultimate video screensaver! You can even specify a background audio track to accompany the video clips!
15 Like Firehand Ember, Firehand Blaze auto-refreshes when the contents of the currently-selected folder change: added files are automatically inserted into the display sequence, properly ordered; deleted files are removed; changed files are re-displayed. This ensures that Blaze's folder view is always up-to-date -- even when changes are made to the contents of a folder by other applications. It also allows you to run slideshows and screensavers whose content changes dynamically as the content of the underlying folder changes.
16 Blaze's screensaver -- as well as its random auto-changer -- can be configured to automatically change your desktop wallpaper. Simply check the "Screensaver sets last displayed image as wallpaper" option on the Wallpaper Placement tab of the View/Options/Screensaver dialog. When the screensaver is subsequently run and then closed, it installs the last displayed image as the desktop wallpaper.
17 Blaze allows you to sequence files in a folder in a number of different ways. Files can be displayed in ascending or descending order by filename, disk size, or last write date. The full, registered version of the product also allows you to specify a random display order. When this option is selected, the files in the displayed folder are re-randomized each time the show cycles through or is manually stopped and restarted.
18 When using Blaze's random transition effect setting, note that an effect is chosen at random whenever a transition is triggered, however the settings for that transition are as specified in the settings dialog associated with that transition effect. This allows you to specify settings appropriate for each transition on your particular system -- ie, you will typically opt for more transition "steps" on a faster computer -- while still being able to enjoy the visual variation provided by randomly-selected transitions.
19 Typically, you will configure Blaze such that the last folder viewed as a slideshow will be used as the screensaver folder. However, if there is a particular folder you wish to fix as the screensaver folder, you may do so via the General tab on Blaze's View/Options/Screensaver dialog.
20 Blaze's "Edit" command is available if Firehand Ember is installed on your computer. When invoked from Blaze, this command opens the currently-displayed image in Ember's Pop-up Imager module, so that it can be retouched, cropped, rotated, or otherwise altered. If you then use the Imager module to save your changes to the image, Blaze detects that the file has been altered and automatically refreshes its display to reflect those alterations.
21 To view a particular image file with Blaze, simply drag the image file from Windows Explorer and drop it on Blaze's desktop shortcut. Blaze will immediately open and display the dropped file.
22 It is by adjusting the margins in the Page Setup dialog that you control the size of the image Blaze prints (when the Print command is invoked) and its position on the paper: Blaze will always attempt to scale its output such that it is as large as will fit within the specified margins without cropping. Thus, increasing the size of the page margins will result in smaller printed images. And increasing the margin on one side of the page will cause the printed image to be shifted toward the opposite edge of the paper.
23 Enable the "Iterate through subfolders" option on the Sequencing tab of the slideshow or screensaver Options dialog to cause Blaze to display files not only in a selected folder, but in nested subfolders under that selected folder as well. Blaze will first display all of the displayable files in the selected folder. It will then look for nested subfolders and traverse each in turn. This provides a great mechanism for displaying multiple sets of files you have organized into nested folders using Firehand Ember!
24 Blaze's wallpaper changer is a system service that is installed in the background each time you boot your computer. This system service operates independently of Blaze and is available even when Blaze is not running. It can be configured to randomize your desktop wallpaper whenever you start Windows and/or periodically while you work. The wallpaper changer can also be invoked manually to change your wallpaper. Simply double-click its taskbar icon!
25 The wallpaper changer utility picks an image file at random from the last folder viewed by the Blaze slideshow, or in a specially selected folder specified on the General tab of the wallpaper changer Options dialog. To cause the wallpaper changer to consider nested subfolders under the selected folder when choosing a wallpaper image, select the "Include subfolders in search when selecting wallpaper" option. This allows you to configure the wallpaper changer to select a file at random from a whole directory tree.
26 The "Treat folder tree as single, random file domain" option is available whenever you specify a random file arrangement on the Sequencing tab of the slideshow or screensaver Options dialog. Select the "Treat folder tree as single, random file domain" option to cause Blaze to, in essence, collapse an entire folder tree into a single folder for purposes of selecting random files for display.
27 To dynamically change the matte color on which images are displayed in Blaze, select the "Derive color from image corner" option, found on the Appearance tab of the slideshow and screensaver Options dialog. When this option is selected, Blaze uses the color found at the upper lefthand corner of each image as the background color for that image. Besides enhancing the visual variety of your Blaze presentation, this often has the effect of providing a more "natural" canvas color for each subsequent image in the presentation.
28 Selecting the "Match desktop to background color" checkbox found on the Wallpaper Placement tab of the slideshow and screensaver Options dialogs causes Blaze to update the color of your Windows desktop to match the current background color used in Blaze's display window whenever Blaze installs an image as the desktop wallpaper. Note that this color may be fixed (if you have selected a fixed background color in Blaze) or a color that has been matched to the current image (if you have selected the "Derive color from image corner" option on the Options dialog Appearance tab).
29 The navigation commands available on the Navigation menu, the context menu, and on Blaze's control bar, depend on the setting specified in the Subfolder Usage section of the Sequencing tab of the slideshow Options dialog. In all cases, only those commands that make sense within the selected subfolder usage context are made available. Thus, the configuration of the control bar provides a visual cue about the currently-selected subfolder usage mode.
