Version History

• Version 2.5

  Added:

  • Background image support.
  • Proportional fonts are now supported correctly (They could be used with previous versions, but were treated like fixed-width fonts).
  • Status text can be set (and changed).
  • Text-placement can be (globally) modified by a vertical and a horizontal offset. Useful for placing the text withing a "display area" of a background image.

  Changed:

  • Framedelay default is now 50 ms which results in 20 frames per second (was 20 ms in v2.0). The new setting works just as smooth and is more friendly to low-speed systems. Slight modifications have been made to the timing-code for enhanced precision.
  • Modified transitions and colortables for use with lower framerate. Swapped colortable 1 and 2: Table 1 is now Green, table 2 is now Blue.
  • Colortables are defined with a new syntax. The new syntax is not compatible with v2.0 or below. Advantages are shorter configuration strings, easier creation of smooth color-transitions and better readability. Internally the change allowed me to write a simple implementation of the next change:
  • Predefined colortables are automatically adjusted to the background color. Changing the applet's background color is now as easy as changing the background color of a web-page.
  • Transition table 3 has a longer initial value: 0,1,2,...,298,299
    This should fade even the longest texts completely from left to right.
  • 10 predefined (and redefinable) transitions and colortables instead of 5 transitions and 3 colortables in v2.0.
  • New look for the documentation.
  • "License"-parameter is now named "AppletHome" and the "AuthorEmail"-parameter has been removed, because it was a major source of spam in my email-box.
  • Character spacing can be set to use the font's character spacing. Important for proportional fonts, convenient for fixed-width fonts.
  • Fader is now copyrighted freeware!

• Version 2.0

  Added:

  • Fader can now be tested locally! This is possible because relative URLs may be used to load the data-file.
  • The data may be placed directly into the html-code by use of the "InlineData" parameter
  • It is now possible to set the start of the loop to any position in the data. ("loop" variable)
  • The framerate is no longer fixed. ("delay" variable)
  • The font-style can be set ("style" variable)
  • Fader now reacts to mouseclicks ("link" and "target" variables)
  • Two parameters ("AuthorEmail" and "License") have been added to create a connection to my pages, which is not visible to the viewers of a page but obvious for those looking at the source of the page to "steal" the applet.

  Changed:

  • Fader looks much better on slow systems due to a change in the treatment of framerates that are to high for a system.
  • Double buffering is used for smoother animation. As a sideeffect of this the display is refreshed correctly when the applet area becomes visible after being hidden.
  • The code has been restructured completely and uses systematic names for all variables, which makes it much easier to maintain and improve Fader.
  • The licensing has changed.
  • The documentation is a complete rewrite and features frames, a tutorial and a tips & tricks section. Comments are welcome.
  • The name of the class-file is now lowercase to prevent problems that occured because the fact that Java is casesensitive is not widely known.

• Version 1.2

  Added:

  • Transitions are redefinable ("transitionx" variables)

  Changed:

  • All error messages are now in english and have the prefix "Fader:" to tell you which applet is responsible for the output.

• Version 1.1

  Added:

  • Colortables are redefinable ("colorinx" and "coloroutx" variables)
  • Backgroundcolor can be set by parameter

  Changed:

  • Minor changes to make the code more readable

• Version 1.0

  First public version.