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LVMenu Readme
lvmenu applet 2.0 - by Cromoteca
lvmenu shows a web menu and implements a sophisticated rollover effect by combining two images dinamically, according to mouse movements.
This is an example:
It's a simple rollover effect, only smoother than the JavaScript one. but lvmenu can do more, allowing overlapped rollover areas. Look at this example:
This is the displayed image:
The upper half is displayed when the user don't move the mouse over the applet. The lower half is displayed by combining with the upper half using the mask image as an alpha channel. Here's that mask:
Note that it is composed of 7 horizontal stripes, corresponding to the links that the applet must display. Where they are white, it means that the applet will apply the link. The text below the buttons is not white, but bright gray, so it's not recognized as a hotspot. I understand that's a bit complicated: you can find many applets on the web to obtain menus more easily, but lvmenu should be more versatile, provided that you are able to prepare the images needed.
You can configure these parameters:
| Parameter Name | Default Value | Short Description |
| Image | (none) | The name of the image file |
| Mask | (none) | The name of the mask file |
| Link# | (none) | The URLs to be shown when the users clicks over the applet
(one parameter for each link). You can also specify the target frame
name: when you do this, the format is:
url + separator + target |
| Threshold | 230 | The minimum value of gray representing a link in the mask. This value is only important in some special circumstances (e.g. the second example above). |
| SplitMask | No | Allows the applet to run faster. You can set it to "Yes" when the non-black areas corresponding to the links don't intersect each other, like in the first example above. If you are in doubt, try using "Yes" and switch to "No" if the applet don't show itself es expected |
| Speed1 | 200 | the time in milliseconds needed to light a link |
| Speed2 | 800 | the time in milliseconds needed to unlight a link |
| Font | Dialog,0,12 | Captions font. The format is:
type + separator + style + separator + size where type can be "Courier", "Dialog", "Helvetica" or "TimesRoman"; style can be "0" (Normal), "1" (Italic), "2" (Bold) or "3" (BoldItalic); size is an integer |
| Background | 000000 | Paper color. The format is "RRGGBB" (similar to HTML) |
| Foreground | FFFFFF | Text color |
| HandCursor | Yes | Uses the hand-shaped cursor over the links or not. The value can be "Yes" or "No" |
| SleepTime | 10 | Short pause between the animation frames (in milliseconds) |
| Separator | , | A character used as separator for parameters that specify multiple characteristics (e.g. Font) |
| Target | _self | Default destination frame for the links. This can avoid specifying the same name in every link |
| Text | lvmenu loading... | Text to display while loading the image |
| Credits | (none) | Please set it to "applet by www.cromoteca.com" as a credit for the author. Thank you! (This is required if you use this applet on the web, otherwise it won't work) |
Note: the names of their parameters and their values are case-insensitive, with the exception of the font names ("Courier", "Dialog", "Helvetica" and "TimesRoman") and of the Credits value.