MediaMenu 1.40
--------------
 2002 Alberto Martinez Perez
E-mail: amp@ampsoft.net
WWW: http://www.ampsoft.net


Contents
--------

1. Description
2. Legal stuff
3. Installation
4. Usage tips
5. Credits


1. Description
--------------

This program is a highly customizable full-screen menu, designed to
present the media contents (MP3, video,...) stored in a CD or other
media. The menu is configured via a standard .INI file (no
configuration interface available yet). Some of its features are:

- Customizable number of items, each of them can play a file
  (using a custom player), show a submenu (album), show a text
  with an internal viewer, launch an external program or launch and
  hyperlink (using the system default navigator).
- Customizable items: You can choose font size, type, outline, color
  and bullet images. It can temporally install a TTF font and use it
  in the menu texts.
- Customizable background: Solid color or image. Supported image types
  are .JPG and .BMP. The background image con be centered, stretched
  to screen size, or in mosaic style.
- The fonts, colors and images are configurable in each submenu (album).
  You may select a player for each album.
- Option of play a background sound. Supported sound types are .WAV,
  .MID and .RMI. The .WAV file can be compressed (e.g. with MP3).

Also, several programs are included with MediaMenu:

- HTMLColors: A small utility to get the hex code for the colors.
- RunMp2: A small program to launch the Windows Media Player.
- Tiny Image Viewer: A small utility to display images in full screen
  mode. It can be used to show images from MediaMenu.
- MediaMenu Installer Tool: This tool is designed to install MediaMenu
  and the suitable media files into the hard disk. Is specially useful
  with movies that take up more that 1 CD.


See Changes.txt for changes history.

If you have any suggestion, you find a bug, etc., send me an e-mail.


2. Legal stuff
--------------

This program is freeware, but only for private use (not commercial).
For commercial use or inclusion in distributions made for profit
(CD's, ...) contact with the author for authorization. You can
redistribute it for free, whenever you use the original package. If you
don't have an original package, you can find it at http://go.to/ampsoft

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. The author declines responsibility for any
possible damage due to the use of this program.


3. Installation
---------------

The program is distributed in two formats:

Installer: Execute the .EXE file and follow the instructions of the
install windows.

ZIP file: Simply extract the program's files to the directory where you
want to install them, and make a shortcut to the executable file.


4. Usage tips
-------------

- This program is only a menu, not a player, so you need also another
  program (Winamp, Media Player 2...) to play the files. The RunMp2
  tool included launch the Media Player 2, which is included in all
  versions of Windows except Windows 95.

- A example menu is provided to show the available features of
  MediaMenu. Although almost all features are easily identifiable
  by its name in the .INI file, the sample .INI file included with the
  program contains tips about how use the options to customize the
  menu.

- A default .INI file is included in the Tools subdirectory, so you can
  use it as a base to create you owns menu.

- If you want to use transparent images, use 256-color BMP's instead
  of JPG's, and fill the background with a color not used in the image.
  If you use JPG's, it will be hard to get an uniform background color.

- You can use the feature of launch hyperlinks to launch a file with
  its associated program. Please note that this program may vary
  in each system.

- Various MediaMenu copies can be nested using the option of launch a
  program (using a different folder for each copy). This allows
  virtually infinite levels of sub-albums.

- If the last character of a item is partially displayed (normally
  when the font is in italic style), try to append an ALT+255 character
  after that character. This is an invisible character like an space,
  but it is not ignored.

- If you want to display the items using left aling instead of center
  aling, but without showing a bullet, you can use a single-color image
  as bullet and put to 1 the Transparent bullets option, thus the entire
  image will be transparent (note that the image size still afects item
  positioning).

- If you upgrade MediaMenu from a previous version, please check the
  .INI file version at the top of the MediaMenu.ini. If the number has
  changed, use the new version because it will have new options and/or
  corrections.

- If you want to use the Installer Tool, I suggest you to use one menu
  for the CD that include the option of install it, and another menu
  designed to run from the hard disk.


5. Credits
----------

 2002 Alberto Martinez Perez
E-mail: amp@ampsoft.net

Thanks to Alvaro Martin and Antonio Torralba for his tests and
suggestions.
