Draw your menu screen in an ANSI program like TheDraw or AcidDraw.
Make sure that you save the menu file in the ANSI format!
Place your new ANSI menu file in your ProBoard TXTFILES directory where your other .ANS files reside. Your new file name would resemble NEW.ANS, where NEW would be the actual name of your new ANSI menu file!
Use ProBoard's Configuration utility PROCFG and select F9 Menu Editor. Make the appropriate selections and fill in your new menu information into a similiar entry table below :
For advanced animation, refer to the ANSI section in the PB-Lib FAQ.
A smiley face is how <CTRL-A> is displayed, it means that the menu entry is AutoExecuting and will run as soon as the menu is displayed.
Set the HOTKEY entry of the Menu Item to <CTRL-A>. A smiley face as seen above in the colored menu will appear.
As soon as a user goes to this menu, it will automatically run!
Unwanting scrolling of the screen at the end of a menu is normally caused by extra blank lines that have been appended to the end of your menu when you saved it with an ANSI editor!
Some ANSI editors will allow you to adjust the number of lines saved in your ANSI file.
Always make a backup of your file before making changes to it so you will have a fresh copy if you corrupt the one that you were modifying!
Extra blank lines can be removed by using a text editor. Make sure that you see all of the lines that your are removing, or you will probably remove some ANSI code at the very end of the file which will cause your ANSI file to become corrupt and not display properly.
When saving your ANSI menus with TheDraw, the end of the file is usually marked with <-[0m<-[255D with the blank lines above this end of file marker. Delete the unwanted blank lines near the end of the ANSI file, but leave the end of file marker code "as is".
The end of file marker is required for the ANSI file to properly display itself! Some of those blanks lines may be needed at the end of the file to help pad the file to help center the menu or just to have the last line of the menu appear in the proper position on the screen!
With a little trial and error, you should be able to fine-tune your menus to have a proper screen display!
Instead of removing the blank lines, you may want to remark out those offending blank lines by placing a semicolon in front of each line you decide not to display by using a text editor!
This modification should take place near the bottom of your ANSI menu, and just before the end of file marker! Remember to leave the end of file marker code "as is" and not to delete it!
HiLITE by Sarah & Faye Pearson at Fe-line Software add multi-colored cursor key controlled highlight bars to your existing .A?? or ProBoard generated menus without using .INI files.
HiLITE uses a built-in editor which allows you to draw the highlights over your menus while online.
HiLITE is ShareWare.
Cursory by Jens Rathmann at WSA Software uses initiate type files called .CSI which you must manually edit to work with your menus. Examples of working .CSI files are online available for downloading at WSA Software.
Cursory has a dedicated file area in PSN for the distribution of .CSI files that other SysOps use for their menus.
Cursory is Shareware.
How do I make a full screen ANSI menu?
