Zipple is an extension and Control Panel which places an animated image of your choice over the title of the Apple, Balloon Help, or Application menu (in color if you have a color screen). To install Zipple, simply drop it in your System Folder and reboot. Its icon should appear at the bottom of the screen, indicating it was installed properly. If the icon has a large 'X' through it, Zipple was not installed properly. Please write to me with your system version and a list of the extensions, etc. that you have if this should ever happen (it shouldn't... see below for a technical explanation of why it would). You can turn the startup icon off, but if Zipple is not installed properly it will display the X-ed out icon anyway.
The Control Panel
================
The Zipple Control Panel is where you turn Zipple on or off and customize the image that appears in the menu bar. You can also set the speed with which the image is animated. The control panel features a scrolling list of the images you have created so far, and a FatBits editing box to edit the frames of the images. There is a palette of 16 colors to choose from (on black and white screens, this appears as a grid of 16 patterns). Above the FatBits editor are two palettes of tools. The left-most one allows you to choose between 'pencil' or 'paint-bucket' mode. In pencil mode, clicks in the editor act like you would expect. In paint-bucket mode, clicks in the editing window act like you used the MacPaint paint bucket. The right-most palette allows you to manipulate the current frame in various ways. You can rotate it 90 degrees, or nudge it one pixel up, down, left, or right. You can insert and delete frames, and use the standard Edit menu commands to cut, copy, paste, and clear frames. From version 1.4 on, you can use pictures cut or copied into the standard Macintosh clipboard. You can undo changes you have made to the current frame, but as soon as you move to another frame or another Zipple, your changes become permanent.
The "Grabber…" button will bring up a dialog box in which you can open a file and grab various picture resources from it to use as frames in the Zipple. Simply drag the picture from the right-hand list of pictures to the appropriate frame in the left-hand list. Currently, you can grab ics#, CURS, and SICN resources into the black and white frames of the Zipple, and those types plus ics4 resources into the color frames of the Zipple.
You can also import and export Zipples with the "Import/Export" button. (NOTE: if you created your own Zipples with version 1.0 of Zipple, use the Import option to bring them into later versions; versions 1.1 and later changed the format of the frame data slightly).
Click on the logo/picture in the upper left hand corner to bring up a dialog box which allows you to turn the start-up icon on and off, specify whether Zipple should choose a random image at startup, and choose which menu title Zipple will replace.
How I Know it Works
===================
Zipple has been successfully tested on a range of Macintoshes running almost all versions of System 6 and all versions of System 7 and Tune-up and System 7.1. A note for System 6 users: if you have a color screen and do not have the 32-bit QuickDraw extension from your System disks installed, you may notice that the FatBits editor draws somewhat slowly. This is because I use the new QuickDraw GWorld routines to speed up the refresh of the editor, and those routines are not available under System 6 unless 32-bit QuickDraw is installed. (It has no bad effects on your System, so you should have it installed anyway, in my opinion. Better yet, get System 7.)
How Much It's Gonna Cost You
==========================
Zipple is in-betweenware, meaning it is somewhere between shareware and freeware. If you like it a lot, go ahead and send me a few dollars ($10 seems to be a popular choice among those who have paid so far) so I can afford some more pizza, and more development time on future versions of Zipple. If you don't want to send money, however, don't. I won't be insulted.
Christopher Suley
12 Sandhill Drive
Brunswick, ME 04011-9552
Internet address: csuley@cs.cornell.edu
(not valid after May 22, 1993)
Technical Information
====================
Zipple does its work by installing a small device driver at startup. If there aren't any driver slots available, it doesn't load... so, if you have a lot of network or screen drivers or whatever, put Zipple last so that it gets last choice. (I'm sure you'd rather be attached to the network or your screen than have a spinning Earth over the Apple menu). The driver is set up to periodically get time and when it does, just does some CopyBits calls to draw the Zipple. To avoid weird looking results with screen savers, Zipple checks the menu bar height before doing any work... if it's zero, Zipple does nothing. All of the code I have seen that blanks the whole screen sets the menu bar height to zero, so I think this should work.
Acknowledgements
=================
I was inspired to write Zipple by the Earth extension written by Stefan Bilaniuk. In fact, I snagged the Earth and Earth II images from versions 1.0 and 1.1 of Earth. Bob Andris sent me the color Spinning Apple and 3-D Spinning Apple images. Lloyd Wood made many helpful suggestions, most of which have been incorporated into version 1.2. Scott Gruby reported a serious bug in version 1.3, allowing me to quickly squash it. Mark Manning gave me a very detailed and helpful description of a bug in version 1.3.1.
Version History
==============
1.6.1
* Bug fix release.
* Fixed bug that caused crashes while nudging or rotating frames in the color editor.
* Fixed the very last bug in the operation of the speed control.
* Zipple no longer draws over the Keyboard menu instead of the Help menu.
1.6
* Added tool palettes.
* Added the ability to Undo changes made to frames while editing.
* Put patterns in the black and white palette.
* Fixed a cosmetic flaw in the list of Zipples in the control panel.
* Clicks in the editing box with no Zipple selected no longer crash.
1.5
* Balloon Help added.
* Added a paint bucket feature to the color editor.
* Fixed a couple of bugs that caused memory leaks when editing.
* Zipple now gives fewer "Out of Memory" under System 6 and MultiFinder.
* Fixed a bug that prevented Zipple from working on a Macintosh Plus.
* The 'Clear' command now updates the frame editing box properly.
* Fixed a bug in the operation of the speed control.
* Tightened up the code a bit, making it a little smaller.
* Using Patrick Beard's "ShowIconFamily" code to draw the startup icon.
1.4
* Added the "Grabber".
* Changed the interface of the Import/Export feature somewhat.
* The Cut command can now be used, in addition to Copy, Paste, and Clear.
* Editing commands now use the standard Clipboard.
* Fixed a cosmetic flaw that arose when Zipple was used with Rival.
1.3.1
* Bug fix. Version 1.3 would crash machines at startup.
1.3
* Zipple now REALLY always uses the color images when it should.
* You can now choose to have a random Zipple picked at startup.
* Zipple can now draw over the Apple, Balloon Help, or Application menus.
1.2
* Zipple now always uses the color images when it should.
* Double-clicking on a Zipple in the list chooses it as your current Zipple.
* The speed control now works more sensibly.
* If an error occurs, the X-ed out startup icon ALWAYS appears.
1.1
* Import and Export of Zipples
* Support for copy, paste, and clear operations on frames.
* No more white artifacts on the screen when your menu bar is not white.
