The Arach Interface:

Before you actually attempt to create some stationery, take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the Arachnophilia Interface. At first glance it appears to be a regular windows type program with a couple of toolbars and a large open window area. Indeed, that’s just what it is. One of the first things you may wish to do is go to the Tools Menu | Options | Miscellaneous tab and check "Use small Toolbar icons". I find the default large icons to be far too large, but that’s up to you. At 640x480 resolution you will definitely wish to make that change as the Preview button is off the screen when the icons are large.

Another item you may wish to change is the default font. Personally I prefer Tahoma at nine points, so I changed to that. You, of course, are free to use whatever font you choose (even the default). This can be changed via Tools | Options | Display. You may also wish to turn off the word wrap on that same tab – again that’s a matter of personal preference.

There are many other options that can be set through the Tools | Options dialog. I suggest you read the help on this subject before you start changing too many items.

Now, if you glance at the top toolbar, you’ll notice that it has quite a few options on it (see Illustration below). The meaning of some of the icons will be immediately apparent, but others are not so obvious.

defaulttoolbar.jpg (5333 bytes)

From left to right, the buttons are:

New HTML Page
Keyboard Macros
Open
Save
Find
Replace
Undo
Redo
Cut
Copy
Paste
Bold
Italics
Underline
Align Centre
Tag Colouring
Preview

A few of these buttons (keyboard macros for instance) you will likely never need. Others you will use all the time...

Now, please direct your attention to the bottom of the Arachnophilia window. Just above the status bar you will see what looks like another toolbar. This one has button names like: Fonts, Forms, Graphics et cetera.

metabar.jpg (4744 bytes)

This is called the MetaBar. If, for some reason, the MetaBar (or the Tool bar or Status bar) is not visible, go to the Commands menu and turn them on. You can later turn off any or all of these if you don’t use them.

If you have installed my additions to the program properly, you will notice that the last three buttons on the MetaBar are all labelled "Stationery". The buttons on the MetaBar represent the names of various toolbars that you can turn on to assist you in creating HTML in Arachnophilia.

The Stationery toolbars are what I have written for the program and are the only ones that you are likely to need for creating stationery. Feel free to investigate the other toolbars though.  If you feel that you will never use the features on the other toolbars, you can also remove them from the meta bar.  To achieve this, start Windows Explorer and navigate to the Arachnophilia Toolbars folder.  Select and move all .TBD files that do not contain "Stationery" in their names.  The only files you need in the Arachnophilia Toolbars folder to run my toolbars are the three "stationery" .TBD files, RightClickMenu.tbd, and keymacros.txt.

If you haven’t done so already, click once on each "Stationery" button to turn on the corresponding toolbars. Now glance back up at the top of the window. This is where the toolbars have appeared.

toolbars.jpg (10821 bytes)

I have made a "Structural" toolbar which contains the following buttons:

HTML
Head
Body
Image
Sound
Marquee
Tables
Tab Bgr
Mailto
Web
Sample

I’ve also created a "Stationery/Script" toolbar with the following options:

Basic
Email
Sound4
Sound5
Bounce
Orb
Ticker
Calend
Clock
Blink
Breathe
Scroll
Fade

There is also a third, the "Other" Toolbar (for lack of a better name). It contains the following features:

Quote
Fonts
Animate
DynAnim

Transition
Blend
PopUp
TopBord
Snake
Type
Quill

Don’t worry if all the buttons on those toolbars don’t make a heck of a lot of sense right now, I’ll get to that shortly.

I’ve also written a custom Right-Click menu for the program with the following options:

rightclick.jpg (9898 bytes)Background Image
Background Colour
Watermark
Border (Left)
Border (Top)
Border (Right)
Custom Position
No Repeat
Margin (Left)
Margin (Top)
Margin (Right)
Default Font
Bold
Italics
Centre
Right
Marquee Left
Marquee Right
Marquee Up
Marquee Down
Alternate
Scroll
Slide
Absolute Position

Adjusting the Display:

Depending on how you have your display configured, there is a chance that you might not be able to see all of the items I have described above.  Sometimes the MetaBar or the toolbars are too long for the window, or sometimes the Right-Click Menu is too tall.   Don't worry as there are ways around most of these.

For starters, I've tried to arrange it so that  all the toolbars and menus will be fully visible when Arach is run at 640x480 resolution or above.  Depending on your Windows Colour scheme or what else is on the screen at the time some of these items may not fit properly on the screen.

If the MetaBar or the Toolbars don't fit on the screen there is absolutely no problem.   In the case of the MetaBar, you don't even really need to use it as all those functions are available through the Commands Menu - the MetaBar itself is merely a convenience.

You can also drag the MetaBar to a different position if you wish - either leave it "floating" or anchor it to one of the Vertical edges, either method will increase the amount of space on it.  Finally, you can also edit the MetaBar to remove those buttons which you don't use thereby reducing the length of it.  To do this, in Windows Explorer navigate to your Toolbars folder, most likely located at:

C:\Program Files\ Arachnophilia\Program\Toolbars

and delete any *.tbd files that do not contain the word "stationery".   The only files you need in that folder to use my toolbars are the 3 stationery tbd files, keymacros.txt and RightClickMenu.tbd - all the others are just surplus (NOTE:   Be sure to keep the Uninst0.000 and Uninst1.000 files in that folder as well or you will be unable to uninstall the toolbars).

If any of the toolbars are too long for your screen, you have most of the same options.   You can move toolbars and leave them floating or anchored to a different edge of the screen, or you could simply access all those features from the Commands menu.

If it is the RightClickMenu which is too large, then you don't have as many options to fix this.  The only way is you adjust your Menu Font size for your Colour Scheme.   To accomplish this change, go to Start | Settings | Control Panel.  Then on the Appearance Tab of the Display applet (you can get here easier by Right Clicking the desktop and picking properties) adjust the font size of the Menu item:  Find "Menu" in the Item drop down box and then on the next line down reduce the font size by one setting.  Please note - this change is system wide - it will affect the size of every menu in every program on your system.  Hit Okay and you're done.