Snow for Macintosh
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Copyright 1984, 1988, 1990, 1993-1997 by Rick Jansen, all rights reserved.
This means Snow for Macintosh is available freely and you may give it to other people as is, but I retain all rights, including look and feel. Therefore it does not classify as 'Public Domain' software.
Description
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Let it snow on your desktop, on your windows and have Santa running around your screen for that extra Festive Season Cheer. Snow for Macintosh is a desk accessory ("Apple Menu Item") that animates falling snow and Santa on your desktop.
This README file comes in a StuffIt archive together with the Apple Menu Item "Snow". You can drag "Snow" to your System Folder, where it will be put in the folder "Apple Menu Items". You can start Snow for Macintosh by choosing "Snow" from the Apple menu.
Remarks
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- This is version 1.0.0 beta, which means it's rather new in this form. Please let me know any good and/or bad experiences by e-mail: rick@www.bpa.nl
- There can still be flaws, though as far as I have experienced it does not harm anything in your system.
- The whole process of letting it snow on your windows is rather CPU intensive. If you find Snow slows down your machine choose fewer snowflakes, no Santa, no tree or no Snow at all and that sort of thing.
- Snow does not know about icons on the desktop. If you move an icon at an inconvenient time, or an icon gets exposed it may be Snow punches a snowflake-shaped hole in that icon. No harm will be done though.
- Snow runs fastest if it is selected as the frontmost application. If it runs in another application's background it will run notably slower. Make it the frontmost application by choosing it from the applications menu (top-right menu) if you feel like some heavy snowing.
- You can set preferences, the number of flakes, how fast they fall, Santa's speed limit etc. The preferences are read at startup. (From the file "Snow preferences" in the Preferences folder.)
- Snow for Macintosh and screensavers like Pyro do interfere. When Pyro wakes up all snow will have melted and falling flakes will display an un-snowflake-like behaviour.
Modification history
====================
26-Nov-96: Snow for Macintosh version 0.0.1
29-Nov-96: Snow for Macintosh version 0.0.3:
- When a lower number of flakes selected the surplus really is erased
- The options snow on windows and screen works now
15-Nov-97: Snow for Macintosh version 1.0.0 beta
Where to get the latest version?
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Snow for Macintosh is available (November 1997) on my WWW page:
http://zoutmijn.bpa.nl/rick/MacSnow/
The page may move in the near future, use AltaVista or a similar search engine to locate it. (http://www.altavista.digital.com/)
A little snow history
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In 1984 (remember Lisa?) the first Macintosh program I wrote was a computer Christmas card which showed a picture of a snowman and falling snow. Later a Father Xmas in his sleigh was added. I converted this to an undying desk accessory in 1988 (remember MultiFinder?). But, little boys grow up, and when they are forced to a workstation with X-windows they want their thingies there too. So Xsnow was born in December 1993. The X-windows version has been around for a few years. Now it's nearly Xmas and time to return to one's roots, so here's Snow for Macintosh. It's a little desk accessory, which you can drag to your System Folder, where it will be put in the folder "Apple Menu Items". You can start Snow by choosing it from the Apple menu.
Merry X-mas!
Rick Jansen
Amsterdam, November 15th, 1997
email: rick@www.bpa.nl
www: http://zoutmijn.bpa.nl/rick/