Marquee Launcher - v1.0

Overview

Marquee Launcher offers a quick way to enter a message into the Marquee Screen Saver and launch it. Great for those times when you need to step away from your desk and wish to let your coworkers know where you are (or to camoflage the fact that you are taking a long lunch by entering a very important sounding message... "Meeting with the CEO, will return eventually". :-)

Marquee Launcher works with the standard Marquee Screen Saver, which should be included with most installations of Windows. This application was tested with Windows 2000, but should work with other incarnations as well.

Marquee Launcher is offered as freeware. If you are feeling overly philanthropic, feel free to donate to your favorite charity.
Please send any comments or suggestions to Michael Kizer (mkizer@gmail.com)

Installation / Setup

Run the Setup.exe installation program and follow the prompts to install Marquee Launcher on your computer.

When you run Marquee Launcher you can enter saved messages (ones that you will be using repeatably) by clicking the Edit Saved button. You can also configure the Marquee Screen Saver by clicking the Configure Marquee button.

It is probably a good idea to configure the Marquee Screen Saver to your liking before testing out Marquee Launcher fully (colors, font, speed, etc.). The Marquee Screen Saver doesn't even have to be the selected screen saver for your computer for Marquee Launcher to work. This way, you can have a default screen saver that runs automatically when your computer is idle, and use Marquee Launcher only when you wish to leave a message on your desktop.

If you decide to uninstall Marquee Launcher, simply use the normal Add/Remove Programs option within Windows.

Usage

When you are about to leave your desk, run Marquee Launcher (either by shortcut key or double-clicking the icon). Enter a brief message (or choose one of the saved messages) and press OK to activate the screen saver (this is probably best accomplished by using the keyboard's "enter" key so that extra mouse movements do not instantly cancel out the screen saver.

Tip:You can create a shortcut key combination to launch the application (see "properties" for the shortcut icon). For example: Ctrl+Shift+s

Note: Using Marquee Launcher will activate the screen saver, but will not lock your computer immediately (if you use the password protected option in your screen saver settings (right-click on the desktop, choose properties, then screen saver). What ever wait time that you have specified for your screen saver will have to elapse before the computer will be locked.

One way to work around this issue is to use Marquee Launcher in combination with your video card's hot corners or by using a program like ScrHots (http://www.wischik.com/scr/savers.html). Then you can use Marquee Launcher to quickly set the message and the hot corner to immediately launch the screen saver and lock the computer.

Technical Info

This application was created using REALBasic (www.realbasic.com)
Also, utilized the HTMLField2 class from Domain Softworx (www.domainsoftworx.com)

The installation was created using Inno Setup (www.innosetup.com) and ISTool (www.istool.org).

Change History

v1.0 (03/31/2005) - Initial creation.