Lava Lamp
Copyright  1996, 1997 Lonnie Foster


To read this file, open it in Notepad and stretch the window horizontally
until you can see all the text.

Lava Lamp is available for download from:

    http://www.pobox.com/~tribble/useless.html


WHAT (is this silly thing, anyway)?
-----------------------------------

Lava Lamp is the first in what I hope to be a series of Useless Taskbar
Applications.  It puts an animated, customizable lava lamp in your Windows 95
taskbar notification area.  Yes, now Windows 95 can become Windows 75, complete
with tacky mood lighting.


HOW (do I install it)?
----------------------

1.  Unzip the files into a temporary directory.
2.  Run setup.exe.
3.  Follow the instructions in the setup program.  Once it is finished, you may
    delete the files from the temporary directory.


HOW (do I use it)?
------------------

Start up the program, and presto! you now have a lava lamp on your taskbar.

Right-click on the lava lamp icon to bring up a menu of options:

*   Control Panel
    This is the brain center of the lava lamp program.  Use the Speed slider to
    control how fast your lava lamp bubbles, and select a color from the Color
    dropdown to better match (or clash with) the decor of your desktop.  Clicking
    the Close button (or hitting Esc) will close the Control Panel.  If you
    liked your settings better before you started monkeying around with the Control
    Panel, click the Reset button to restore them.  (Note that once you've closed
    the Control Panel, you're stuck with the current settings until you change them
    again.)

    TIP:  You can also bring up the Control Panel by double-clicking the lava lamp.

*   About Lava Lamp
    The usual stuff about who made the program and what sort of legal mumbo-jumbo
    applies to it.

*   Quit
    Close lava lamp, removing its aesthetically charming icon from your taskbar.
    Settings are automagically saved for you so your lava lamp will be just the way
    you left it the next time you run the program.


ANOTHER TIP:  Add a shortcut to Lava Lamp to your StartUp folder to have Lava Lamp
automatically added to your taskbar every time you start Win95.


WHY (did Lonnie waste so much time on this)?
--------------------------------------------

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  I found out how to put an icon in the
taskbar in Visual Basic, and thought that this would be a nifty way to practice
programming taskbar icons.  Besides, it looks cool.


WHO CARES (about all the technical details)?
--------------------------------------------

Lava Lamp makes a WinAPI call to Shell_NotifyIcon, passing it icons pulled from
a resource file.  Since there is an icon for each frame of animation (in each of
the seven different colors), the resources add a lot more bulk to the exe than I'd
like, but hey, it's not the end of the world.  I may try something more complex
for the next version (if there is one), but it would probably sacrifice some speed.

Visual Basic 5 source code for Lava Lamp is available in the file source.zip, which
is included in the Lava Lamp distribution.


Copyleft
--------


    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.  See the file LICENSE.TXT for
    details.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

    The author of this program (Lonnie Foster) may be contacted by email at
    the following address:

        lonnief@pobox.com