Consider this: You run a Telefinder BBS and would like to personalize it to your exact needs. You would like to put pointers in the system to help new users (and even old pros) to find files, new messages, and perhaps to promote a sale or user group meeting.
You can put custom icons on your board in two ways:
1) Add the resources to your Telefinder prefs file. These files will appear with unique icons under Telefinder. If they are TEXT files or PNTG (MacPaint) they will be loaded into a window when your users double click them (just as the ordinary Telefinder docs will do).
If your users download those files, and look at them later under Finder, they will become generic documents, and can’t be opened by double clicking [or without launching Telefinder--which may or may not be what they want to happen]. Most icons that you use on your system should probably be of this sort: you primarily use these files for online guidance.
2) Use these Telefinder document applications to customize your online *and* your offline viewing. You might use a special events icon (like the one enclosed) to distribute your user group meetings schedule or other special events. The advantage here is that your message becomes unique, will open when double clicked from both Telefinder and Finder, and is sort of fun, anyway.
I had originally included an invisible copy of TeachText with this file, but had to remove it because of restrictions from Apple. Just put a copy of TeachText into the applications folder and then any document saved with the creator name of any of these applications will be opened by TeachText--it doesn't matter where the document is on your user's dekstop. If you distribute this file (or some subset of it) to your users, and if you include an invisible copy of TeachText with it ( which I did not just recommend), they can open your custom documents right away. [Remember that if you copy the folder that you must make TeachText visible first, or you must add another version of TeachText. Stuffit, however, will Stuff the invisible file along with the visible apps]. Once you’ve decided which icons you want to use for your special files, simply remove the other applications from the folder, Stuff it, and mail it out with a few instructions (and the creator names, so that users may also create these documents on their machines). The names of all applications included are their creator names--to get the icon on a document, just write a text (or TeachText read only) file and set the creator name to the icon that you want to see.
Don’t forget that TeachText can display PICT images! This is a fun way to send out pictures to your users--using a photo album icon (which I have not drawn--if you do, send it to me, please.)
About these applications:
Russ Coffman’s Post-it notes gave me the idea for this.
The applications are courtesy of Sak Wathanasin. Some of the icons were originally used in Russ Coffman’s Post-it notes, others I have drawn, and still others have come from I don’t know where. All of the ic18’s are from my hand, some of them are pretty good, some of them are not so great (but for free, now:)
This is all freeware. Use these applications, add more icons and ic18’s and post them on America Online!
P.S. I am currently looking to contract a shareware author to add these icons to a save menu in a text DA. That way your users (or you SYSOPS) can just drag down to the icon that you want to represent your document without having to remember the creator name. If I get a good enough price quote, I'll make this DA freely available. Otherwise, I'll have to hack it out myself, and that means waiting until I get enough free time to do it...if there are any other programmers out there who might like to do it, please do! But let's try to keep it freeware, so that as many people as possible can use these icons and have a little fun. Contact me if you think you could do it if only someone could pay for a little bit of your time. Mark
