Copyright: Copyright Bay Image Software, 1997


About SlideShow

SlideShow is designed to help you create animated GIF files for your web pages. An animated GIF file contains multiple image frames. An animated GIF file can be played by most web browsers. Animated GIF images save your web site space and give it dynamic look.

With SlideShow, you can open image files in most popular image formats. You can insert images into an animated GIF image stack and save as one multiple-image GIF file.

With Windows common clipboard copy / paste support, you can send each individual image frame from a GIF image stack to your favorite image editor, like ImageShow from Bay Image Software, and edit the frame. You can get the edited image back to SlideShow by using the clipboard paste function after you copy the edited image to the clipboard in the image editor.

The animated GIF files that are created by SlideShow can be added to your HTML web page files using the common IMG tag, for instance, <IMG SRC="theAnimatedGif.gif">.


File: Open

Windows standard File Open dialog window will be shown. Allows opening image files from file storage. You can open multiple image files at the same time.

To open several files in a directory, in the File Open dialog window, select the first file by clicking on the file name in the list box, then press down the Control key and click the second file. You can also select a range of files in the list box by clicking the first file, while pressing down the Shift key, select the end file.

SlideShow can open files that are drag-and-drop’ed from Windows Explorer or File Manager.

SlideShow currently supports BMP, DIB, RLE, GIF, PCX, JPEG, TGA, TIF, AVI image file formats.


File: Save As

Save the current GIF image stack to file storage.

If you choose to save in image formats other than GIF, only the first frame will be saved and other image frames are discarded.


SlideShow
File: Close

Close the current image stack. If current image stack contains images, SlideShow will prompt you to save it before create an empty image stack.


SlideShow
File: New Window

Creates a new instance of SlideShow and opens a new SlideShow window.

You can create two GIF image stacks at the same time with two instances of SlideShow.


SlideShow
File: Print

Prints all the images contained in a GIF image stack using the selected printer.


SlideShow
File: Print Preview

Previews the printout of a GIF image stack. Use the Next, Prev. buttons on the preview window to navigate through all images.


SlideShow
File: Print Setup

Setup the printer and page layout.

The Print & Page Setup dialog will be shown.

You may select three page layout modes.

•	Best Fit mode stretches an image to fit in the paper while the image aspect ratio is preserved.

•	Stretch to Page mode stretches each image to fit in the whole paper.

•	Scale mode allows you to control scaling factors in both horizontal and vertical directions.

Press Printer button on the dialog to setup the printer properties. For instance, paper orientation, etc..


SlideShow
File: Exit

Exit SlideShow. You will be prompted to save the current image stack.


SlideShow
Edit: Undo

This function is useful while you changing any property of the image stack. With undo function, you can always roll back to the previous stage.

The function undoes the last change that you made to the image stack.

You need to select an image frame to enable this menu item.


SlideShow
Edit: Cut

Cut a selected image frame and place it into Windows clipboard. You can use the Edit/Paste menu function to get the image back.

You need to select an image frame to enable this menu item.


SlideShow
Edit: Copy

Copy a selected image frame and place it into Windows clipboard.

You can use this function to transfer an image frame to your favorite image editor, like ImageShow by Bay Image Software.

You need to select an image frame to enable this menu item.


SlideShow
Edit: Paste

Paste an image from Windows clipboard into the current image stack.

After you edit an image in your favorite image editor, copy the image into Windows clipboard in the editor's window. Use this paste function to insert the edited image into an image stack.

You can paste an image from any window application that support Windows clipboard operation.


SlideShow
Edit: GIF Logical Screen Descriptor

An animated GIF file contains information on how each image frame will be displayed according to a logical screen.

The GIF Image Global Property dialog window will be shown. In this window, you can

1. change the width and height of the logical screen. The width and height of the logical screen are default to the dimensions of the largest frame in the image stack. You can also specify the logical screen to be the same size as that of your monitor screen size.

2. specify if all image frames will share a common global color table, or if each frame shall use their private local color table. An image stack with global color table is smaller in size. If image frames in an image stack are from different sources, they may contain different color tables. You should experiment if you want the image frames to share a global color table. Three methods are provided by SlideShow. You can choose system default 256 color table to dither all the frames, or choose a frame and use the local color table of that frame as the global color table. You may also load an image file from disk storage and use the color table contained in the image file as the global color table of the current image stack. In any case, those image frames that have different local color tables will be dithered using the new global color table.

3. pick a color as the background color from the global color table.

You need to select an image frame to enable this menu item.


SlideShow
Edit: GIF Control Block

For each image frame in an image stack, you can specify image display properties when it is displayed along with other frames in the stack. You can specify

1. top and left coordinates that determine the image frame position relative to the logical screen.

2. delay time during which the frame is displayed. The delay time value is specified in one hundredth of a second. For instance a value 100 means that this frame will be displayed on screen as long as one second before the next frame is displayed.

3. dispose method that tells the web browser how to dispose the image frame after it is shown. "Nothing" means no effort is made to the image. "Leave as is" is the same as "Nothing". "Background" tells the web browser to wipe out the image using the background color after it is displayed. "Previous Image" means the web browser should display the previous image frame after the image frame is displayed.

4. a transparent color in an image frame, this is enabled only in the "Background" dispose method mode.


SlideShow
View: Toolbar

Show/hide the main toolbar. The toolbar can be attached/detached from SlideShow’s main window.


SlideShow
View: Status Bar

Show/hide the status bar at the bottom of the SlideShow window. The status bar shows the image frame number of the current image stack, system memory resource, and current time.


SlideShow
Test: Browser Test

Launch your currently installed web browser and test the animated GIF image stack.

For Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser, you must use version 3.0 or later.

For Netscape Navigator web browser, you must use version 2.0 or later.

Other web browsers must be compatible to Netscape's Navigator version 2.0.