FadeBack is a RISC OS program to generate pinboard backdrops with smooth fades similar to programs built into other OSs (Windows, Linux running KDE etc.). RISC OS Select has a simple vertical fade which you can modify the colours to, but I wanted something a bit more - dithering so that the backdrop looks better in low colour desktops, more fade styles and so on.

This is not just another backdrop selector - you create new backdrops on the fly from a number of predefined fade styles and a multitude of colouring options.

Gallery

These first lot are the square 256x256 images before the program stretches and smoothes them to fit the desktop.

Here I was just noodling around with backdrops for a 1200x873 desktop (the images are 1200x851 because I was taking a little off to account for the iconbar - but I've since found it's not really enough). The basic image was produced by using FadeBack's images and colour editing to export basic Sprite files, and then Photodesk's superior resizing along with some masking and texturing was used to produce quick 'n' dirty funky backdrops. You could probably do better if you took more time, but it was a bit of fun!

Documentation

The full documentation (a HTML page with images) is distributed in with the program itself, along with a text-based copy for the browser-challenged.

Downloads

You can download everything at once, or a copy of the program with only minimal resource files and then add the resources at a later date. As of November 28th 2002 the archives now have a 32bit compatible version of spr_fsi, and should work under RISC OS 5 on the Castle Iyonix.

• Full version:
  full.zip (1665 KB)
• Minimal version:
  minimal.zip (340 KB)
• Regular fades:
  fades_regular.zip (583 KB)
• Irregular fades:
  fades_irregular.zip (725 KB)
• Colour preset palettes:
  presets.zip (8 KB)
• Colour list files:
  colourfiles.zip (21 KB)