LeftBorderScroll2

This box is seen when clicking on the sound addition on the left. By clicking on browse you can now go and select the song you wish to use. You can use mid or wav or anything that is normally used, but not an asf. Those require special html coding for use in a Scrippy. Using an asf is possible, if you have the code for it you can add it in using your favorite text editor after you are finished with your Scrippy stationery. You have the option of continuous play or only playing the sound file a certain number of times, as well as volume control for your sound. I choose not to change the volume from 100 as most people prefer to choose their own volume setting on their personal computer. It is difficult to hear sound also, if the author has lowered the volume. For midi I always choose continuous. But, if I want to use a wav file I often choose only 1 or 2. Now, you may be curious as to whether or not you can have more than one sound. Yes! You can have a wav and a midi file if you desire, try these different sounds and view your stat to see how it all fits together. Scrippy will give you a warning box however if you try to use more than one sound. Disregard it if when viewing your stat it seems to work just fine. When I mix a wav and a mid file, I choose the wav first and mostly pick play once. When the wav file is done playing the midi file will begin.

I chose the aboccher.mid for my sound. Notice the little arrow on the right here, it allows you to play your midi, however it should begin playing automatically after you darken it in. Clicking on open will choose that midi for your stationery.

Insert ticker. When you click on ticker it should automatically add it. Now another box opens up as below.

This is what you will see after you've added a ticker. In the message box type in your text. You can have more than one row of text and that usually works best. Message entry style offers several combinations. I do not encourage you to use instant as it causes the status box on the viewer's computer to flash and it may cause them to think there is something wrong either with their system or your stat. Everything you see here is user changeable. I generally use 60 moves per second in order to speed up the appearance of my text and 20 characters per move. It is not jerky at all. You can choose the method that your text leaves the screen also. My advice is simply to try each of them until you find the one which you like!

This area takes me a little bit of time because there are so many possibilities. I think the first thing to consider is the background color. If you are going to use an animation here and the animation's background is not transparent and you don't want to fix it or don't know how to fix it, then consider making the background color the same as your animations background color. If you don't know what the codes for that are I suggest you acquire a little program that helps you pick those colors. I use Paintshop Pro to get the codes I need. Scrippy does not allow you to use html codes at this juncture. Here is what it will look like.

If you open up the animation in Paintshop Pro you can use the color tool to click on the animation background and you can get the Red, Green and Blue codes that way. Another way to do it might be to check the coding before you go to send your stationery but that seems too hard to me. You can try guessing of course.

This is what you will see in Paintshop Pro. It gives you the Red, Green and Blue codes that you can use in Scrippy to set your loading message background whatever color that you want. This is so far the only way I know to do it. Others may have a better answer though.

Now that you have established your background color, let's add in an image or your animation.

Click on this little icon and it will allow you to browse to find your image or animation file. You can center it, place it left or right, however you prefer! I always use centered.

Click on browse to find your image to use in the loading message. Here I recommend you use a graphic that is not large in kb's as it will make your final stat much bigger and many people who use dial-up will be bogged down by your stat and may become irritated. There is a text flow option, this controls how the text you insert here is handled. Normally I do not change these settings. I insert my text or image first, then do a shift-enter so that the text or image which comes second is just one line below. Here's mine!

You can change the font and font color of your loading message in the same manner as you did in the message area. The last item to be discussed in the loading message section is the timing. As you can see, I have mine set on 2.0. However, if you are going to use an animation that develops, such as a flower opening or something similar, you may need to lengthen this number, making it higher makes it sit there longer while your animation plays. For a non-animated loading message try using 1.0. Keep in mind always that it often gets boring sitting there being forced to stare at someone's loading message. The way I look at it is how would I feel about it if I were the viewer?

I hope that this has helped you understand how to do a left border scroll in Scrippy and that I have not left anything important out! I do want to add in here that if you want to use a one-piece background, that is, the image is already placed onto the background, then everything would be done pretty much the same EXCEPT for the message area! You will find that your message area has to be moved over to the right. The reason for this is that Scrippy already knows on a two-piece background how wide your left border scroll area is and so it acts like the right edge of that is the actual background. But in a one-piece background it sees the actual left edge and so you need to move your message area over. Check your previews often so that you don't get an unpleasant surprise after you have done all of that work.

Okay. Now you are all done making your stat but how do you use it? Scrippy has a feature that will put this stat in your C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Stationery folder for you. However, if you intend to make more than one stationery that you'd like to save and reuse more than once I do not recommend this. If on the other hand, you only want to use that stationery until you make a new one then you can do it that way. If you click on File-Export Email then Scrippy will take the stationery that you have made and will stick in into your Stationery folder in the directory shown above. If you make a second stationery and do the same, the first one will disappear. This is because Scrippy names stats saved this way as ScrippyEmail.html. There are several ways you can get around this.

Method 1: File-Save Web Page This method saves the html file to your stationery folder but does not save the graphics to that directory. If the graphics get moved then the stationery will not operate properly. You could save all of the stationery graphics in their own directory but may not delete them while the stat is being used.

Method 2: Allow Scrippy to export the stat as an email. Now open up Outlook Express and choose the ScrippyEmail stationery. Once it opens up, click on File - Save As. A box will open up and shows it an extension of .eml. Give your stationery a name and choose where you want your stationery saved. You could make a directory called MyStationery and place it there. Outlook Express saves all of the files associated with your stationery, the html, sound and graphics, as one file. It will be mystat.eml and will be located wherever you saved it at. Now when you want to use that particular stationery to send an email with, all you need to do is go to that directory and click on it. And those graphics can now safely be deleted if you desire to or need to save space on your hard drive.

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