Welcome is one of the frivolous programs included in my book, “Bitchin’ Mac Programs,” published by SYBEX and available in better bookstores for $19.99. If your local bookstore doesn’t carry it, ask them to place a special order for ISBN #0-7821-1507-1. Or you can order an autographed copy at a substantial discount direct from the author. For details, read the Bargain Books file which accompanies this ReadMe file.
The Welcome program was written by Michael Carlton and this ReadMe file was written by me, Owen W. Linzmayer. Please respect the fact that I own the copyright to this text file and Michael owns the copyright to the program. That means you may not distribute these files for profit, but you may share them with others for free, provided that the Welcome application is included in an archive with both the Welcome ReadMe and Bargain Books text files intact.
If you have any questions, you may reach me as follows:
Owen W. Linzmayer
2227 15th Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94116-1824
AppleLink: Owen
America Online: Owen Ink
CompuServe: 71333,3152
Now, enough of all that formal legalese stuff and the book plug. Check out the following instructions for using Welcome (reproduced almost word-for-word from the book, except illustrations have been removed to keep this file to a reasonable size for downloading). Make sure you read the entire file before installing Welcome so you know what to expect and how to use the application.
Normally, when your Mac starts up, it displays the standard “Welcome to Macintosh” startup greeting. While it’s a lot less intimidating than a DOS >C prompt, it has all the personality of Al Gore on Thorazine. My first book, “Totally Rad Mac Programs,” contains a few gems that help you replace the standard “Welcome to Macintosh” startup greeting with any custom, full-size picture you like. While so-called StartupScreens are admittedly very cool, now you can also change the startup greeting itself using an unpretentious little program by the name of Welcome.
Installing Welcome
Welcome is an application, and as such doesn’t need to go anywhere special on your hard drive. Put it wherever you normally keep applications and utilities.
Using Welcome
Welcome works by editing the open System file. This causes some anti-viral programs to go into apoplectic fits. If that’s the case on your Mac, either disregard the warning or temporarily disable your virus protection program altogether until you’re finished with Welcome.
Even though Welcome has proven extremely reliable over the years, some users are apprehensive about making unnecessary changes to the active System file. As a precaution, make a duplicate of your System file before running Welcome, then drag the copy out of the System folder and onto a floppy disk (if it doesn’t fit on a floppy, just make sure this duplicate System file isn’t left in the System folder or the Mac could get confused the next time you restart). With a backup safe in hand, if something does go wrong while using Welcome, or your System file is corrupted at some latter point by unknown forces, you can always replace the bad System file with the fresh copy you just made.
Launch Welcome by double-clicking its icon and a dialog box displays the current Welcome message.
To completely replace the current Welcome message, highlight it all and begin typing. If you want to edit the current message, position the insertion cursor wherever you want, then Cut (Command-X), Copy (Command-C), and Paste (Command-V) to and from the Clipboard until you’ve composed the perfect Welcome message. You can enter your favorite saying, a warning to scare off intruders, or perhaps identification information (a good idea for PowerBooks that might get lost or stolen).
As you’re thinking up clever sayings to impress your friends or disgust your family, keep in mind that you can’t enter special characters such as tabs, and all messages are displayed as left-justified text using the same 12-point Chicago font shown in Welcome’s dialog box.
Enter up to 255 characters on eight lines in the message text field. Although Welcome scrolls the text field to allow you to enter more lines, the Mac displays only the first eight lines during startup.
If you need more room for your message, or you simply want to reposition it for aesthetic reasons, click on the small square in the upper left-hand corner, then resize by dragging to a new location.
After changing the Welcome message, choose Debugger (Command-2) from the Message menu to show the current message displayed when you start the Mac using a programming utility such as MacsBug. As you did for the Welcome message, change this to whatever you like. Then choose Extensions (Command-3) from the Message menu to show the current message displayed when you start the Mac under System 7 while holding down the Shift key to disable all extensions, control panels, and startup items.
When called for, both the Debugger and Extensions messages appear at the same time as the Welcome message, so you should make sure they don’t overlap. Choose Align (Command-K) from the Message menu. In the dialog box that appears, mark the checkboxes for the messages you want to align to the Welcome message, then mark the checkboxes for how you want them to align. Click OK to align the messages. Then you can manually reposition them if you wish.
Just as you can reposition the various messages, you can also move the Mac icon by dragging it wherever you like, even on top of the text of the messages. Even though this icon resides as a resource inside the System file, you can’t edit this one with iContraption (another program included in “Bitchin’ Mac Programs”) because it’s an incompatible cicn resource (ID -16396).
When you are happy with your new messages, choose Save (Command-S) from the File menu to make the changes permanent, or choose Revert from the File menu to go back to the way everything was the last time you saved to disk. If you want to restore the System file to its original status, choose Use System Default from the Message menu, choose Save from the File menu, then choose Quit from the File menu. Finally, choose Restart from the Finder’s Special menu to see the new startup messages in action.
Whenever you want to change the message, just launch Welcome again and make whatever modifications you like.
If you want to apply the same changes to the startup greetings on other Macs, launch Welcome and choose Write to file from the Message menu. In the dialog box that appears, enter a name and location for the Welcome data file that will contain all of your changes. After you click Save, copy this file to a floppy disk along with the Welcome application. To make the exact same changes to other Macs, launch Welcome on the new Mac, choose Read from file, then choose Save from the File menu.
Compatibility Notes
Welcome works under System 6 and System 7. If your Mac has a StartupScreen file in the System folder, this image appears instead of the startup message. To see your startup message, you must remove the StartupScreen file from the System folder.
