Sqirlz Water Reflections version 2.3 General Information
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Operating Systems
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This program runs under the Windows Vista, XP, 2000, and Me operating systems.
Installation - Windows Vista
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Sqirlz Water Reflections must be installed whilst logged into Windows with a computer administrator account. You can then use it as you please from any user or administrator account.
Installation of Sqirlz Water Reflections is by default in the folder \Program Files\Sqirlz Water Reflections.
When the program is installed it is accessible only from the installer's account. You can make it available to all users as follows:
cut the folder
C:\Users\(admin name)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Sqirlz Water Reflections
and paste it to:
C:\Users\All Users\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Sqirlz Water Reflections
where (admin name) is the administrator's account which you used for the initial installation.
Installation - Windows XP
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Sqirlz Water Reflections must be installed whilst logged into Windows with a computer administrator account. You can then use it as you please from any user or administrator account.
Installation of Sqirlz Water Reflections is by default in the folder \Program Files\Sqirlz Water Reflections.
When the program is installed it is accessible only from the installer's account. You can make it available to all users as follows:
cut the folder
C:\Documents and Settings\(admin name)\Start Menu\Programs\Sqirlz Water Reflections
and paste it to:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Sqirlz Water Reflections
where (admin name) is the administrator's account which you used for the initial installation.
Installation - Windows Me
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Installation of Sqirlz Water Reflections creates shortcuts in your \Windows\Start Menu\Programs folder. These are shortcuts to the folder in which Sqirlz Water Reflections has been installed (by default: \Program Files\Sqirlz Water Reflections). If you wish to remove these shortcuts, delete them from the respective folder.
Uninstallation
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Sqirlz Water Reflections can be completely removed from your system at any time by running the supplied uninstaller program - instead of clicking on "Sqirlz Water Reflections" just click "Uninstall" when accessing Sqirlz Water Reflections from the Windows Start (All Programs) menu. The uninstaller program is usually situated in the \WINDOWS folder, and is called "Sqirlz Water Reflections Uninstaller.exe".
License
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License information for Sqirlz Water Reflections is given by the "License Agreement" command in the Help menu when the program is run.
Program History
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Version 2.3 - introduces more realistic snowfall effects: optional speed and direction changes for each snowflake. Raindrops and snowflakes may be much wider, and a much larger number of raindrops/snowflakes may be chosen.
Version 2.2 - Adds loading and saving of PNG files, and fixes a number of bugs.
Version 2.1 - Compatible with Windows Vista. Option to crop the saved animation to just the rectangle containing the reflecting Outline. Ripple/wave height boost option which gives bigger waves/ripples and a more 3D appearance. Ability to position a single 'ring' ripple at any chosen point.
Version 2.0 - Has general rainfall/snowfall effects, and the option of adding reflecting areas of water containing circular (ring) ripples like those seen when rain falls onto water.
version 1.3 - Additions: Baseline for "landscape perspective", tinting of reflection, additional waves, wave flow, reflection smoothing, reflection blurring, textured reflections, saving animation to GIF file, reading and writing TIFF files. Improvement to saving large Flash files.
version 1.2 - allows the transparency of the water surface to be adjusted from 0% to 100% so that the underwater image shows through by a selected amount - the underwater image rippling can be adjusted independently.
When loading an AVI file, the reflection speed can now be adjusted independently of the AVI frame rate.
Bug fix when loading uncompressed AVI files made with certain software.
version 1.1 - can now load AVI video files and reflect in same way as still image files.
version 1.0e,f - Bug fix - can now abort when saving animation with resizing.
version 1.0d - Outline save to file option removed, as unnecessary and maybe confusing.
version 1.1b-c fixes a problem with saving to large Flash files, and corrects the license agreement in the Help menu.
version 1.0 (rev 2-6) - improves the way the program interacts with the operating system whilst running an animation.
Additional Resources
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For reading and writing TIFF and GIF files, this program makes use of the FreeImage Library under the FreeImage Public License Version 1.0 (see http://home.wxs.nl/~flvdberg/freeimage-license.txt). The source code for the FreeImage Library may be obtained from http://freeimage.sourceforge.net