This is a very small screen saver for System 7 and later. I have long thought the increasing size of applications in general and screen savers in particular is sort of ridiculous. Tiny Saver takes up about 12k of disk space and a partition of 30k of RAM when saving the screen but only uses 12k when running in background (ie not saving).
Installing it.
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Tiny Saver is a special type of application called a "faceless background application". It can be launched like any other application by double clicking but it does not have any menus and does not show up in the application menu. Until envoked the user should never know that it is running.
The best way to use it, however, is to put an alias in the "Startup Items" folder in the System folder. If you chose this option and have other items in the startup folder you might want to add a space to the front of the alias' name. The reason for this is if you launch other applications in front of Tiny Saver and later quit them, Tiny Saver will be left in the middle of your Mac's memory since you won't normally ever quit Tiny Saver.
Running it.
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Using Tiny Saver is much like using any other screen saver. If you use the auto-fade option (see below) Tiny Saver will automatically hide the screen once your computer has been idle for the set period of time. Moving the mouse will 'wake up' Tiny Saver. If you would like to hide the screen immediately, place the pointer in the upper left hand corner. If you would like Tiny Saver to not hide the screen, you can place the pointer in the upper right hand corner. Tiny Saver is a little slow when reacting but that is because I wanted to give the maximum amount of time possible to anything that might be running in the background. For this reason Tiny Saver shouldn't slow down anything that is running when it envokes. If you want it to be faster you can chose the option "Responsive" in the options dialog.
Setting it up.
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Configuration of Tiny Saver can be accomplished by holding down the shift key when putting the mouse in the "hide" corner. This will bring up a dialog which gives you access to the configurable items. Checking "Auto-fade" will make Tiny Saver invoke after a certain amount of inactivity. The amount of time can be set in the edit text item which follows. Checking "Display current time" will cause Tiny Saver to move the current time around the screen as it sleeps. I prefer to just black the screen out, but I realize that can be confusing sometimes because it looks like the computer is off. You also have the option of fading to black or white. White is useful if some PowerBooks that you leave running. I also added a last setting which allows you to set the amount of time that Tiny Saver gets. Some people wanted it to be more responsive. Really it doesn't matter unless you are doing CPU intensive stuff. If you are just word processing, etc. you can make it "responsive". Likewise even some CPU intensive stuff, like compiling, is ok with this setting because those applications take complete control of the processor anyway and Tiny Saver can't do anything about the time it gets anyway. Both settings are actually really friendly to other applications, the slower one is just really friendly.
Quiting Tiny Saver.
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The assumption is that you won't ever need to quit Tiny Saver since it is so small and unobtrusive but if you do for some reason there is a means to do so. It is somewhat unintuitive but I wanted it to be so that Tiny Saver wasn't shutdown by accident. To quit Tiny Saver simply hold down the Command, Option, T, S keys all at the same time. Hold them down for about 2 seconds. I may add other means of doing this (like from the configure dialog) but this way seems sufficient since most people won't need to quit it and putting it in the configuration presents problems because the user might want to quit when the configuration file isn't present. NOTE--Even after Tiny Saver quits the icon will remain marked as an "open" application until you restart your Mac. This is a limitation of the finder and does not mean that Tiny Saver is still running.
Tiny Saver will also accept AppleEvents so you can shut it down that way from any application which can send AppleEvents. One nice program that will let you do this is Process Watcher 2.0. This is an amazing application which will give you information about all running applications even over Appletalk.
Customization
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I have done customizations for several people and don't mind doing so. In the past people have had me move the sleep corners and have Tiny Saver display their company name rather than the time. If you are interested in installing Tiny Saver at a large site I also have a version which does not allow configuration but requires a seperate application which only the site administrator has. Other customizations are possible. Please contact me for details.
Limitations, problems etc
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Tiny Saver does differ from other screen savers. It is acting as part of an application, not a system extension. This means that it will be a little slower when reacting to events. In particular if you type really slowly in another application, it may miss some of the key presses and go to sleep. This is unlikely unless you have the auto-sleep time set really low. If you have problems set the 'Responsive' setting in the Preference dialog.
Future plans
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I don't want to jazz up Tiny Saver too much(there are plenty of 2 meg screen saver programs which take up 300k of RAM in this world already), but if there is something that would make it better while keeping it small I would love to hear about it. Contact me at the address below.
The plea.
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Tiny Saver is SHAREWARE. It isn't much but either is the price. I am more than willing to support it but new versions are of course dependent on interest and interest is dependent on feedback and the best feedback is registration. I have written a few shareware applications and it is getting discouraging, not to mention financially hard, to justify all the time. If you use it please register your copy. I feel that shareware has fallen into the same trap as the commercial system it is supposed to be an alternative to. Authors ask for such large fees because so few people actually send them in. This in turn causes fewer people to send them in, which makes authors feel they need to ask for more, which…you get the picture. I have intentionally made the price so reasonable you don't have any excuse not to pay the shareware fee. If you don't think the program is worth $2-$5 then DON'T USE IT.
Registration info
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To register send $2-$5, *and* the registration form below (the form does make things easier) to Chris Owen, PO Box 1471, Garden City, KS 67846 (before August 1993 you can send it to me at 27 Bishop St #2R, New Haven CT 06511). The fee will also cover future versions as they come out. Several people have asked about site licenses and I am more than happy to do that. Please contact me if you are interested.
If you have any questions or comments about Tiny Saver, I would appreciate hearing them. I can be reached on at the addresses below.
owenc@minerva.cis.yale.edu
owen-christopher@cs.yale.edu <---use this if the above bounces
Mulligan's Valley ("official" support board) 203-772-4485
