Every once in a while a tool comes along which makes you stand up and take notice. If
you have ever wanted to produce a professional-looking screen saver, Axialis has the tool
for you.
While there are many shareware screen saver development tools available, none of them
have the professional appearance or features of Axialis. We should know: we downloaded and
reviewed over a dozen such tools until we were knocked out by the power, grace and
simplicity of Axialis' Professional Screen Saver Producer
3.0.
The first thing you notice about this tool is its interface: the developers have taken
their time to insure it is intuitive and easy to navigate. The screen is organized
logically in three zones including an Explorer-like interface for navigating your
directories, an icon-based interface for quickly jumping to your library of past work, and
a preview screen which allows you to see your work in real-time.
The tool comes with a small library of background graphics, sprites and sample screen
savers which you can use as templates for your own work. Keep in mind, while Axialis
supports animated sprites, it is not itself an animation package. Your sprites must be
rendered in another graphics package and imported into Axialis. Unlike some animated GIF
tools, Axialis requires the frames of your animation to be in a particular format, so you
may have to play with this feature a bit to achieve the desired results.
Most screen saver development tools merely allow you to create a slide show with
multiple wipes and perhaps a background WAV or MIDI file playing in the background. Many
do not even allow you to compile them or create an installation routine. But Axialis does
all this and more: it takes the animation approach believing constant motion is more
desirable than constantly changing static screens. Thus if you want to make your logo or
products dance across the screen to music, Axialis is going to be your preferred
development tool.
To create your first screen saver, you merely select a background graphic or design
your own gradient fill. Then you select your graphics -- these could be words or pictures
you have developed in another graphics program. Next you assign attributes to the
graphics: you can make them bounce around the screen or be static; they can have
transparent backgrounds; and you can incorporate a variety of sounds and music.
After you preview and finish your design, you can either save it to a stand-alone
Windows screen saver format or create a self-installing EXE. This latter option is
wizard-based and allows you to choose whether the EXE will span multiple floppy disks or
be downloaded as a single-file from the Internet or distributed on a CD-ROM. It allows you
to decide whether the instructions and copyright information should be displayed in either
English or French. You can even add a copyright notice and splash screen of your own
choosing though Axialis provide generic text to help you get started.
Once compiled, Axialis tests the install package to insure it loads the screen saver
properly and that it looks as you designed it. You can then distribute it freely or sell
it without regard to royalties. That's right, unlike many other packages (both shareware
and commercial), Axialis does not nickel and dime you for distribution royalties.
The application updates itself for free; this is another novel approach to capturing
and retaining its customers. Axialis currently sells this product for about $40 US which
is dirt cheap for what you get. Since we received our copy we have been busy creating a
variety of nifty promotional screen savers for our sites. If you want to see a sample of
our work, just click here to download.
