Screensavers, More For Appeal Than Saving Screens.
I know you know what screensavers are. Yeah I'm talking about those animated sequences that come up after your monitor has been left sitting for a specified amount of time. Any thing from different colors and designs that flash on and off the screen to slideshows of professional pictures or your own personal shots, to words and phrases, to animations like aquariums or video games. So why do they exist?
The original purpose for screensavers was more noble than purely entertainment. The fear and it was legitimate back then was the images if left static on the screen for too long would actually burn out or otherwise permanently change the actual physical units on the screen that the pixels corresponded to. Kind of like when you stare a something bright for too long and then wherever you look for the next little while you have an image, usually a different color "burned" into your field of vision. Its really annoying and actually ruined monitors. The idea was that if you had some sort of program that kept the images and background moving so that pixels weren't left static on the screen you could avoid these image burns.
And it worked great while it was an issue, which was for as long as screens were produced like they used to be. You see they changed the physical characteristic of the individual cells on the screen to work with less energy. This reduction in the amount of energy necessary to light up any one particular pixel point minimized the risk that it would burn out permanently, thus getting rid of the need for screensavers.
But they didn't leave did they? No they have become a permanent fixture on all standard home and office personal computers. Now they are more novelty that useful application. And boy are some of them unique! If you haven't done anything more than use the typical screen savers that are offered with the windows operating system that comes with your computer, and because you haven't seen any other than that you might be wondering what I mean when I say that I am amazed at the creativity that goes into some of them.
Well if this is the case than I encourage you to do a search for screensavers and I think you will be amazed (like I am) at how many there are and how much work people have put into making some very complicated screensavers. I think you will also have a hard time believing as I did that there are some very cool and professionally done screen savers out there that you can download for free! Go ahead, have some fun (and be careful, there is lots of smut out there too) searching for a little screensaver art for you PC.
Dylon Floppours was trained in computer graphics and animation and now makes his money by teaching and designing <a href="http://www.cheapscreensavers.info">screensavers</a> on the side. Check out www.cheapscreensavers.info for some fabulous examples.
This article has been accessed 40 times since 2006-05-22.
