Headliner's parameters are explained below, with reference to the clickable example code in the left frame: you can click a parameter from the example code to jump to its explanation, or simply read this page from top to toe.
Most of Headliner's parameters have a default setting which is mentioned below. If the default setting is the option you'd like to use in your own implementation, you can leave that parameter out of your HTML code.
The 'Archive' attribute & 'CabBase' parameter
JAR (Java ARchive) and CAB (cabinet) files are archives containing Java class files in compressed form, making them easier to handle and quicker to download. Most modern browsers are able to read one or other of these formats, and the Archive attribute and CabBase parameter tell the browser the name of the archive file to open. The .JAR, .CAB and .CLASS files must all be in the same directory, and the CODEBASE= attribute is used in the normal way, if required, specifying the absolute or relative location of this directory. Older browsers that are unable to read either the JAR or the CAB file will instead read the loose CLASS files.
Applet Width & Height
Headliner gives you a fair amount of help in setting dimensions. Its Testmode feature displays the best height for the applet, and the minimum width. The height is based upon your choice(s) of font and produces a slim but not squashed appearance. The width suggested by Testmode is a minimum, based on the length of your Heading (if you use one) and the length of your longest Entry. If you don't use a remote ScriptFile, you should set the applet's width to match the one suggested; any extra width you add will be unused dead space. If you do use a remote ScriptFile, make the applet's width as large as your page layout allows; the applet will then be able to adjust its own width as necessary if you add longer entries to the scriptfile.
It's recommended that you run Testmode in Netscape Navigator and copy the suggested dimensions from there, since this browser requires more space for everything than Internet Explorer.
Copyright
This parameter must be included or the applet will not run, whether registered or unregistered. To prevent mistakes we recommend that you copy/paste it into your code from the Getting Started page: it is case-sensitive, single-spaced throughout and should appear on a single line. If there's a problem with this parameter, you'll see a status-bar message that reads "Copyright parameter missing or incorrect" which should lead you to the problem.
Name
Specifies a unique name for an applet when used with the Cool Focus Satellites system. This name may be anything you like, but it should be the only applet currently running that has this name. If you're not using the Satellites system, you can ignore this parameter.
Satellites
A simple yes or no parameter that determines whether or not this applet should send mouse-move information to the Cool Focus satellites system. If you are using Satellites, include this parameter with a value of 'yes'. If you're not, either set the value to 'no', or leave out this parameter. Setting this parameter to 'yes' when no Satellite is being used will have the effect of making the applet respond to the mouse extremely sluggishly.
BgColor
A hex triplet specifying the background color of the applet. This should be set to match the color of your page-body. The intention is that BgColor is used to fill any 'dead space'; if the BgColor doesn't match the page around it, it won't look as good as it should. The default BgColor is FFFFFF (white).
BorderColor
Specifies a color with which to draw a border around the area of the applet in which the headlines appear. If you prefer not to display a border, just set this to match your chosen BgColor. The default color is 000000 (black).
FillColor
Sets the color with which the area displaying the headlines is filled. The default is to match whatever your BgColor is.
TextColor
The color of the font used to display the headlines. The default color is 000000 (black).
FocusTextColor
The color of the currently-displayed headline when the mouse moves over it. The default is 0000FF (blue).
PressTextColor
The color of the currently-displayed headline when clicked. The default is FF0000 (red).
EntryFont
A comma-delimited string giving the name, style and size of the font you want to use for the headline Entries. The default settings are Dialog, in plain, at size 12, which would be written as Dialog,plain,12. Two important things to note: first, there must be no spaces in this entry; second, the three items must appear in the order name,style,size. Note that the style part of this setting can be plain, bold, italic or bolditalic, and these are not case-sensitive.
UseHeading
A simple parameter whose value can be yes or no (not case-sensitive). The default is yes. When set to 'yes', the three parameters below become active and Headliner will create an area to the left of the section where the headlines are displayed and display your chosen Heading there. If set to 'no', this extra area on the left will be removed and the three parameters below will be ignored.
Heading
If UseHeading is set to 'yes', use this parameter to enter the text that should appear as a heading for the applet, which will be displayed to the left of the headlines. The default text is Headlines:. This text can be as long as you like: Headliner will create a suitably-sized area for it and adjust its own width accordingly (providing your applet tag's WIDTH= attribute gives it enough leeway to do so).
HeadingFont
If UseHeading is set to 'yes', this parameter sets the font to use for the Heading text. This parameter works in exactly the same way as EntryFont, and has a default of Dialog,bold,12. The font can be as large or small as you like. As a suggestion, the heading looks effective when displayed using the same font and size as the headlines, but with style set to bold, which is why we've set the default values of the two fonts this way.
HeadingTextColor
If UseHeading is set to 'yes', this parameter specifies the color of the Heading text. Its default color is 00FF00 (lime).
HeadingFillColor
If UseHeading is set to 'yes', this specifies the color used to fill the left-hand area of the applet where the Heading is displayed. The default behavior is to match whatever your BorderColor is set to.
Hold
A positive number that specifies how many seconds each headline should remain on the screen (once the entire line is displayed) before it's cleared and the next line starts to appear. The default is 1 second.
CPS
This is short for 'characters per second', and it sets the animation speed - in other words, how many characters are added to the current headline each second. The default value is 10 characters per second. If you'd prefer that the entire line appears 'at once' (actually, it'll never quite do that, but it will give that impression), set this to something like 200.
DefaultTarget
HTML offers it's own range of recognized targets for links: _top, _self, _blank and _parent. But when you use an applet like Headliner that can take an unlimited number of links, you'll often be opening your pages into a main frame in your browser, perhaps called 'Main', so almost every entry on the menu will need a Target parameter with the value "Main". The DefaultTarget parameter gives you a way to avoid entering all those identical parameters. Just enter the name of your most-used frame in the DefaultTarget parameter and it will be used by default for any headline entry that doesn't specify its own Target parameter to override it.
The default setting for this parameter is _top, so if you leave this parameter out, any entry that doesn't have its own Target parameter will open its document to fill the current window.
UseHandCursor
A yes or no parameter that determines whether or not a typical 'web-style' hand cursor is used when the mouse moves over the displayed headline. The default value is yes, so you need include this parameter only if you want to set it to 'no' and stick to the default pointer. This feature is applied only when an applet is running in a Java 1.1-compatible browser (Internet Explorer 4x or higher, Netscape Navigator 4.07 or higher). In other browsers, this parameter is ignored and the default pointer will be used.
Testmode
A straightforward yes or no parameter. Most of the time you'll leave this set at its default no (when uploading the page containing Headliner to your server, for example). When setting up the applet, set this parameter to yes and then move the mouse over the applet. The best height and a Minimum Width for the applet will be displayed in the statusbar. The suggested height is based upon your choice(s) of font: you can make the applet higher if you wish to, but the suggested height should seem compact but attractive.
How you use the Minimum Width suggestion depends upon how you use the applet. If you're not using a remote ScriptFile, set the applet's width to match the suggestion exactly. Anything larger will be wasted space on the page. If you are using a remote ScriptFile, the Minimum Width is based upon the entries the your scriptfile currently contains. You may add more sometime, and they may be longer than these. If you expect to regularly add/remove entries from the scriptfile and don't want to edit the applet's width in the HTML page accordingly, set the applet width to be as wide as possible. Every time Headliner reads the scriptfile, it will resize itself as necessary and paint all remaining width using BgColor to make it invisible.
ScriptFile
Specifies the absolute or relative location of an optional textfile from which Headliner should read its headline entries, URLs and frame-targets. If this parameter is included, and it points to a file which exists and which contains entries, the Entry, URL and Target parameters below will be ignored. However, if there's a problem reading entries from this textfile, Headliner will use those parameters.
The scriptfile can contain an unlimited number of entries, and Headliner will display them in consecutive order. There must be no blank lines or lines consisting solely of spaces in the scriptfile, or Headliner will assume it has come to the end of the file and stop reading.
Each entry must be on a single line, consisting of the headline to display, the URL it should link to, and (optionally) the frame-target for that URL. Each item is separated by a pipe symbol (|). A pair of entries might look like this:
Spytracking system released - read all about it.|spyindex.htm|_top
Compact remote headline display with Headliner|headliner.htm
The first line gives a headline, a URL and a target. The second just gives a headline and URL; since no Target is specified, the frame specified in the DefaultTarget parameter will be used for it. (Whether you include the pipe symbol at the end of that second line or not makes no difference.)
The name of the scriptfile and the file-extension used don't matter, as long as they're correctly entered into this parameter. However, it must be a plain-text (ASCII) file: Headliner cannot parse HTML or read application-specific file formats.
Update
This parameter is used only if Headliner is successfully reading its entries from a ScriptFile. Enter any figure higher than 0 to specify how often (in minutes) Headliner should re-read the scriptfile. The default update time is every 10 minutes. After reading the scriptfile, Headliner will resize its width (if necessary) according to the length of the longest headline entry it finds. This requires that your applet width gives Headliner enough leeway: it can never make itself wider than what is set in your applet's WIDTH= attribute.
This figure is not 100% precise. In fact, when the specified number of minutes has passed, Headliner will finish displaying the headlines in its current list before reading in the revised list.
If you set this parameter to 0 (or a negative number), Headliner will never re-read the scriptfile. However, if you don't want Headliner to regularly update itself in this way, it's recommended that you use the three HTML parameters below to specify your headlines rather than the scriptfile. That way, Headliner will initialize and start running more quickly as a result of not having to find and read the scriptfile.
Entry1, Entry2, . . ., Entryn
These numbered parameters contain the text of the headlines you want to display, in the order you want to display them. Each must have a unique number suffix. Make sure that the numbers are consecutive - if Headliner reaches 15 and finds no 16, for example, it will stop looking.
URL1, URL2, . . ., URLn
The absolute or relative URL to which the correspondingly-numbered Entry will link to when clicked.
Target1, Target2, . . ., Targetn
The name of the frame or window into which the correspondingly-numbered URL will be opened. If a URL parameter has no corresponding Target parameter, the frame-name set in the DefaultTarget parameter will be used. Since most or all entries will probably open into the same frame, this means that you may never need to include a Target parameter: you can leave them all to open into the DefaultTarget.
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