Is there an animated inspirational quote screensaver?

January 12, 2008 11:49 PM

Is there a Windows screensaver that animates text of inspirational quotes (allows me to add my own quotes)?

Looking for a cool looking screen saver that animates text of quotes that I think are really cool. I'd like to be able to add quotes.

posted by agrandy to computers & internet (6 answers total)

By 'animated' I assume you mean more than the usual Windows screen crawl? I don't know about Vista but that's still possible in XP, using nothing more but the standard control panel-thingy. (I think its official name is "Marquee".) It lets you put in some text and it scrolls it horizontally across the screen.

Or do you mean something where it picks one of several quotes that you have stored in a file somewhere?
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:15 AM on January 13, 2008

Sorry, but I'll assume you don't know this. If you do, please disregard.

Right-click the background and select 'Properties,' click the 'Screen Saver' tab, select the 'Marquee' screen saver, and click the 'settings' button. You can change the text of the marquee, change the speed, and a few other things.

You can change it any time you want to anything you want, but it only gives you one text. It sounds a little like you're looking for some sort of randomizer to give multiple quotations there. Is this what you're looking for?
posted by koeselitz at 12:25 AM on January 13, 2008

What about creating your own quotations on desktop-sized backgrounds and feeding them into a slideshow screensaver?
posted by unixrat at 5:59 AM on January 13, 2008

Sort of feeding off of unixrat's suggestion:

Make .gif or .jpeg files of each quotation you'd like (MS paint is a perfect little tool), make a separate "quotations" folder and save them there. Then select "My Picture Slideshow" under the screensaver option and choose the "quotations" folder as your default.
posted by chara at 9:46 AM on January 13, 2008

Thanks for the suggestions!

I am aware of Windows' Marquee screensaver. I am looking for something that handles more than one line of text (i.e. multiple quotes) AND looks a little cooler than the old school scroll.

There is an screensaver on the Mac that animates your RSS feeds. The stories fly on to your desktop in such a way that actually looks cool. I was going for something like this.

I might create image files as unixrat and chara suggested. The bonus is that I could also use these on a digital video frame put it anywhere around the apartment.
posted by agrandy at 12:01 PM on January 13, 2008

First google hit for "marquee screen saver." Haven't tried it, but it sounds like precisely what you're looking for:

from link: This screensaver lets you create and display your own scrolling marquee messages on-screen, and have them displayed on other computers on your network. Messages can also be selected at random or in order from any text file.
posted by koeselitz at 9:08 PM on January 13, 2008