We're a big believer in giving visitors to your web site something for nothing. It
helps build interest, promote good will, and usually insures return trips. To that end, we
think screen savers are perfect promotional giveaway items: they are relatively easy to
create, inexpensive, and people love to change their screen savers all the time.
Active Media
Eclipse is an unusual approach to screen saver design. While there are several good
screen saver products on the market which can create rotating slide shows from pictures or
bouncing logos, few if any, can combine all of these functions and more. In fact, most are
pretty limiting in their authoring and design abilities which is why this tool is so cool
-- it's not limiting at all. In fact, it has so many options, it's taken us months to
review them all, and we're certain we've missed a few along the way.
Once launched, the first thing you notice about the tool is the tabbed approach which
makes the usage of the tool almost wizard-like. This makes getting started rather quick
and easy. You merely select the type of special effect you wish from a pull down menu, and
then apply the effect to the graphic files you desire. You can then preview the screen
saver to see exactly how it will look.
The artistic handling of the various special effects, wipes and transitions is superb.
One is better than the next, and your greatest challenge with the tool will be trying to
decide which effects to use for your own screen saver. You can even combine effects and
transitions into a timeline, thereby creating some extremely elaborate screen savers (show
some restraint). Very cool stuff, indeed.
You can add the date, or an animated tag line to the screen. You can also create screen
savers which time-bomb out after a set number of days or require registration to see
additional images. This is a neat extra for those designers who want to make a living out
of selling shareware or trial screen savers. You can also link the screensaver to an URL,
so it can bring loyal users back to your web site whenever they click the screen.
The system provides a very sophisticated set of options for creating standalone
installation files. Here to, your options consist of choices in pull-down menus, and in
context Help is always available to answer your questions.
Active Media
Eclipse "eclipses" all other screen saver development tools and systems, and
we highly recommend it to you for your promotional projects. It's dynamite!
