hometile21.gif (8397 bytes)

homelogo.gif (15515 bytes)

Main
Installation
Uninstalling

Registering
IRC Network List
Servers
You
Themes
Scripting
Notify List
Ignore

Flood Protection
Message of the Day

Raw Data
Sound Events

Playing Sounds
Requesting Sounds
Posters
Aliases
TileFrame Colors
Web Browsers
Menu Mods

Favorite Channels
Channel List
Public Chat
Private Chat
DCC Chat
Recieving Files

Sending Files
FileServer
/commands
Text Codes

Tiling Windows
Known Bug List
Technical Support
Licence Agreement

Misc

Under the Misc tab you will find settings for web browsers, tileframe colors, aliases, and posters.

Web Browsers
OrbitIRC can load web pages into your web browser.  By default, OrbitIRC will detect your Windows 95 default browser whenever OrbitIRC is started.  As shown below, Internet Explorer is the default browser on this machine.   If you don't want to use the browser that OrbitIRC has detected, put a dot beside 'use this instead...' and then press the 'Find' button.   Find the browser that you want, and select the .exe file that it uses.  These settings will remain when you shut down OrbitIRC.misc2.gif (1647 bytes)

 

TileFrame Colors
When you tile your chat windows, you can move your mouse cursor over the chat buttons on the left side of the screen and you will see a colored frame moving around the screen, showing you which button corresponds to a tiled window.  You can change the color of this frame by clicking on the color you want below.
misc7.gif (4882 bytes)

 

Aliases
If you use /commands often, you may want to create aliases.  An alias is a quick way to do /commands, like a macro simplifies things in a wordprocessor.  For example, if you find yourself often typing

/me welcomes newuser to #ourchannel.  Please ask me is you have any questions, okay?

you can make things easier if you create an alias for it.  You can add to the alias list shown below or type in the chat window

/greeting $1 /me welcomes $1 to #ourchannel.  Please ask me is you have any questions, okay?

now if you type

/greeting bobby

in the chat, it will be as if you typed

/me welcomes bobby to #ourchannel.  Please ask me is you have any questions, okay?

Aliases will save you alot of typing.  If you would rather have this in the chat menu, you can create a menu mod to do the same kind of thing.  The $1,$2,$3,$4,$5 are placeholders for the text.   You can also put in mutiple commands per alias by separating the commands with two spaces like

/buz /me like the world.   /me is happy.

You can also have a box popup asking you for input like this

/zub /me is [boxWhat is my Mood?].

if you made an alias like

/hop /me thinks that $1 is a $2

and then typed

/hop bobby psycho

it would be the same as typeing

/me thinks bobby is a psycho

You can add an alias to the list by typing it directly in the list, or typing in the alias in the chat.  Here's what the alias list looks like.
misc3.gif (2418 bytes)
   

Posters
You can create a display a bitmap image on the left side of the OrbitIRC screen, under the buttons.  This is called a poster.  OrbitIRC ships with several posters.  To select a poster, make sure there is no checkmark beside the 'Don't use a Poster' and then click on the poster to use.  The poster files are kept in the /Posters folder where you installed OrbitIRC.  You can click on the 'X' button to update the poster list if you add files to this folder after you have started up OrbitIRC.
misc4.gif (1910 bytes)

Creating a Poster
A Poster is a Special Bitmap that sits underneath the buttons on the left side of the screen. You can put your favorite pic or company logo there and paint or stretch it to fit the button area. It is a very special bitmap because it contains codes that you put in with a paint program.  Just putting a normal .bmp file there is not going to work properly.

Check this out...this is the the lower part of the poster 's1.bmp' that comes with OrbitIRC. Start up OrbitIRC and loadup this Poster.

and here's a closup of the lower left hand corner where the special codes are.

the 7 pixels on the lower left of the .bmp are used to tell OrbitIRC what colors to use, tranparency info, and whether to paint or stretch this bitmap. These pixels(and the whole row they are on) are not displayed as part of the poster. Here's the specs:

Code Description
1 This is the transparent color of the bitmap. Whatever color is in this pixel will be 'see-though' in the poster. In the above example, it is set to lime green. The lime green that appears in the s1.bmp will then be transparent in the poster. If you don't want any transparent effects for your poster, make sure you put a color in this pixel that is not in your picture.
2 This is the background color of pressed buttons that show that a window is tiled.
3 This is the background color of a button that is pressed where the windows are not tiled.
4 This is the text color of a button that is pressed where the windows are not tiled. You uses #4 and #3 together to color an untiled button.
5 This is the text color of a button that is pressed where the windows are tiled. You uses #5 and #2 together to color a tiled button.
6 This is where you tell OrbitIRC to paint(fill the larger space with a smaller bitmap), or to stretch it to fit the space. If you set this pixel to PURE WHITE, it will paint this bitmap until the space is filled. If it is anything but PURE WHITE, it will just stretch the bitmap to fit the space.
7 This is the basic text color for buttons that havn't been pressed.

 

Here's another example. This is the lower left corner of Parch1.bmp poster that comes with OrbitIRC. It just paints a small bitmap to fill the space, sets the button and text colors, and turns transparency off.

Here's a closeup. You'll notice that in this example, the transparent color has been set for a lime green. But since the rest of the .bmp has no lime green, there is no transparency.

 

Here's another one. This is orbit1.bmp, and it streches to fill the space, without transparent areas. Here's the lower left corner.

Here's the closeup.