Dark Side 2.5 Documentation

Dark Side of the Mac version 2.5 © copyright 1989, 1990, 1991 all rights reserved by Tom Dowdy Introduction DarkSide is a screen saver application for Macintosh computers that run MultiFinder. It runs in the background and has an expandable set of “blackouts” or “Faders” which you can select from. Special note to users of old versions (before 2.1) Please take a look at the release notes for this version, as well any any new faders you haven't looked at before. You never know when you'll find a “new” one that you'll like better than your old ones. In addition, 2.1 introduces some changes in the shell, so faders in this version will not work with older versions of DarkSide - be sure to upgrade DarkSide along with your faders! Old faders, however, should work just fine with the new DarkSide if you have written any of your own. Setting up DarkSide… I usually set DarkSide up as one of my Startup applications (via the SetStartup command for users of 6.0.x). You can also simply run the program. Once DarkSide is running, you should select a screen fader that you would like to use. Use the “Choose Fader…” menu item to do this. (You can also double-click on a Fader from the Finder to select it, either before or after running DarkSide) You can control the options with the “DarkSide Settings…” menu item. Most faders also have their own settings to allow you to customize them. This is found in the “Fader Settings…” menu item. That's all there is to it. All settings within DarkSide and the faders are saved between runs of the program – so you should only need to set up DarkSide once. Fading right away A quick way to take a look at all of the faders is to double click on one of them and then command-F (Fade Now) to glance at it, then move on and double click on the next one. Note that there is a 2 second delay from when you move the mouse into the Fade Now corner and when the fade occurs. This is on purpose to avoid conflicts with INITs such as OnCue. Random fading You can set DarkSide to randomly choose between faders within the same folder as your selected fader. Do this by choosing “Randomly choose a fader” from within the DarkSide Settings dialog. Note that this will only take effect when you say “Fade Now…” or use the fade now corner, and not if you just let DarkSide fade automatically. This is due to a limitation in 6.0.x MultiFinder – I chose to place this limit rather than not implement the feature at all. Special note to users of System 7 The easiest way to make DarkSide run every time you turn on your Mac is to make an alias of the application and place it into your Startup Items folder in your System Folder. A future version of DarkSide will likely be 7.0 dependant, while providing lots of neat features for users of 7.0. Coming back from a fadeout… You can bring you Mac back …