The URL on our result page links to a temporary image that is automatically deleted from our server 1 hour after the image was created. You must download the image to your Web server and link to it there (or you can save the image on your computer).

Yes! The program is (Click) Here

The easiest way is to move the mouse over the image, and make the menu appear (usually done by pressing the right most mouse button). Then choose:
• Netscape: Save Image As...
• IE: Save Picture As...
• AOL: Save Picture As...
Alternatively, you can forward the image directly to your web site using the "FTP" option.

• We get a lot of questions about this, and we don't really answer them. This is because there are *so* many different ways, and it's different for everybody. The best solution is to save the image to your computer (see download), and then do what you normally do to copy an image to your web site. If you don't know how to do this, consult the documentation from your ISP, and/or the program that you are using to create your webpage.
• Front Page
  • Right click on the image, and select "Save as Picture..."
  • Save the image to "My Pictures".
  • Start front Page
  • Choose Insert -> Picture -> Clip Art.
  • Now a clipart window appers.
  • Choose "Import Clips" and the "My Picture" window appears.
  • Click on the picture to insert it into your web page!
  • - help from Jim Voss
• DreamWeaver 6.0
  • Save the image to your computer.
  • Run Dreamweaver.
  • Choose "Insert" menu and select the "Image" entry.
  • Now select the image you just saved. Click Okay
  • If you get message "This file is outside of the root folder...", then click "Yes" to copy the image. A new save window will appear, choose where on the web site you want to save the image, then choose "Save"

You can change the font size of all our images by simply entering the required size in the "Font Size" box when you create the image. As for the text Color, most of the styles allow you to change this. Look for "Text Color" on the form that generates the image. If you see this option, then you can click on the color to change it. If you do not see this option, then it is not possible to change it.

Don't Wait! If your image is not generated in a few minutes, go back and start the generation again. The exception is that if the queue lenth is really long (very very unlikely) and your position in the queue is steadily getting better, then it might be worth the wait. In general, most images are generated in a few seconds, but some images might take up to 30 seconds to generate.

I believe in some cases, the original "wait" page doesn't change. If this happens to you try this: add "?a=1" to the end of the URL .. eg

http://www3.flamingtext.com/net-fu/jobs/034028802.html?a=1

If this happens to you, and happens all the time. Please let us know what Operating System/Browser/etc... and what "cache settings" you have.

Just click on the color that you like, and it will fill in the red, green and blue values for you!

Simple -- just put "\n" at the end of each line (except the last!) of your logo. For example, "Line1\nLine2"

The jobs are only around for one hour. If you come back after 1 hour, then you job will be gone. If you get this, please don't email us, just regenerate the image. If you regenerate the image and you get the error straight away, then please email cameron, but don't forget to mention that you read the FAQ (else I'll just send you right back to it!)

Make sure that you do not modify the image as you save it. Do not load it into other programs and save it again. Some web page editors, such as Microsoft FrontPage, may automatically re-save images when you use them to add the image to a web page, breaking the animation.

Another reason why GIFs may not animate (any GIFs, not just those from FlamingText) is firewalls. Several people have reported this problem with ZoneAlarm. ZoneAlarm has an option to disable animated GIFs. You can find this option under Privacy >> Ad Blocking >> Custom >> Animation in ZoneAlarm's Control Center.

The AOL browser will compress images by default using AOL's proprietart ART format, which will stop the animation. (Kaye kindly offered us this fix from the support people at AOL).

To turn off Compressed Graphics, do the following:

1. Click on the MY AOL icon and select PREFERENCES. NOTE: If the computer hangs after clicking on PREFERENCES, you will need to follow these steps while online.
2. Click on the WWW button.
3. Click on the WEB GRAPHICS tab.
4. Make sure that there is no check in front of USE COMPRESSED GRAPHICS. If there is a check, click on it to remove the check.
5. Click APPLY and then OK.
6. Close PREFERENCES.
and that should do the trick.

All the fonts are still available. Since we have so many fonts now, we moved all the extra fonts to a different page so that the main page will load faster (it's now at least 5 times faster!) To get access to the rest of the fonts, select "More Fonts..." at the bottom of the list. You should automatically be taken to the extended font selector. If you are not, then select "More Fonts" and then click the Create Logo button at the bottom, and it will take you there.

We discovered that we were missing many of the font styles available because there was no way to ask for a font that is italics or bold. So, we added a qualifier such that you can pick the font that you want. There are always three letters and here is what they mean:
1. l=light, m=medium, b=bold, x=black, s=semi bold, t=thin (how thick the font is)
2. r=regular, i=italic (the slant on the font)
3. c=condensed, n=normal, s=semi expanded, e=expanded, u=ultra condensed (how drawn out the font is)
so (mrn) would mean the font is a medium, regular, normal font. This is the basic default. (bin) would mean the font is bold and italic.

Also note that we calculate these three letters from the information stored in the actual font. Some fonts do not follow the standard and many (most) of the fonts do not contain italic and/or bold versions.

Most of the fonts have a link to the original font creator. If there is no link, then it is a Unix font and will not work under Microsoft Windows. If you are dead keen on a font try the Resources section and the font links, or use Google.com to search for it.

See the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article for instructions on Adding New Fonts in Microsoft Windows.

Short answer, no. Long answer: If you are the font owner and you email us permission to use the font then we will add your fonts (with links back to your site). If you are not the font owner, then you could ask (nicely) the font owner if they would consider letting us use their fonts (direct them to http://www.flamingtext.com/fonts/). How do I find the font owner? Check the find original font help.

Sorry, but we must have written permission from the owner of the font to use it. It's the policy we force upon ourselves.

If you would like to use the fonts (not the styles!) for regular text on your web pages, you can use Microsoft's Web Embedded Font Tool (WEFT) to create a font object that you can embed in your web pages and then reference to display your text in that font.

We would love to say that FlamingText works in all languages, but it does not. We have added a European section that describes the fonts that support the "standard set" of character extensions. We hope in the future to be able to support a much wider set of languages, but that is not currently possible.

First, I would try the FindFont option (on the left of the page). If that doesn't work then start using other search engines. I personally use Google and if that doesn't work HotBot or AltaVista. Usually, I type in the name of the font and "font".

For most of our fonts, we have a link below of the font (in the Fonts section). However if there is some other font you would like us to add, you will need to find the original font site (no, not just a site that contains it, the *original* one). I personally use Google. (or HotBot or AltaVista) If I can't find the original font site, I will pick a couple of font sites and download the zip file and open the .ttf file. This contains the name of the font and usually some other owner information. I use this information to search again for the original font owner. I have looked for many fonts in my time and always been able to find the original font owner, so you can too. Please do not ask me to find it for you.

We define a DingBat as a font that contains pictures, and a FontBat as a font that contains pictures around the glyphs (letters).

Some fonts don't have lowercase letters, punctuation or even a "space". If you try to use these missing symbols in your logo they may simply be ignored or you might get a box or some other character in the logo instead. If the lowercase letters are missing, then you can either change your text string to all uppercase letters (e.g. "ABC" instead of "Abc") or you can select a different font. You can check what characters are available in a font by clicking on the "charset" link for the font in the fonts area.

Look in the ClipArt-Names section, if you don't find your name, you can email me, but better still, you can create it yourself. Goto Start and find the style that you like and follow the directions.

The ClipArt-Names section is for real first names. If you want other text, you can easily create it yourself. Goto Start and find the style that you like and follow the directions.

We are all about flexibility! The "Names" section contains ready-made images of names in a few styles/colors. If you don't see what you want then goto Start, find the style that you like and follow the directions from there to customize the font, colors, etc. to get a perfect logo of your name.

Easy! Create the image, and then click on the email link.

Well usually this is very tricky. But we have tried to make it as simple as possible. And now that we have done the leg work, I am sure you will see this feature pop up on other sites. For Yahoo, Hotmail, USA.net and Outlook first create the logo that you want to put into your signature. Then click on the link that is on that results page. Follow the step by step instructions.

For all email clients the basic idea is that you set up a HTML signature. And inside that signature you put: <img src=http://yoursite.com/path/to/image.gif> There are so many emailers out there, we can't provide instructions for them all. Below are some hints for the most common email clients.

• Outlook Express
  • To save the file, make sure you right-click on the "this file" link and then select "Save target as..." from the browser's pop-up menu to save the small signature.htm file this link points to. If you get an error about the signature being too large or not being a text file then you have saved the image and not the HTML.
  • If you have more than one Outlook Express account (i.e. for different members of your family), you have to select which account to use the signature with. After you click the Set as Default button you need to click the Advanced button and check the box for the account to use the signature with before it will work. (Thanks for this tip Melanie!)
  • In some cases, you may need to restart Outlook Express before your new signature will be used (Outlook Express bug).
• Outlook
  • Make sure that you are not using Microsoft word as your editor.
  • To save the file, make sure you right-click on the "this file" link and then select "Save target as..." from the browser's pop-up menu to save the small signature.htm file this link points to. If you get an error about the signature being too large or not being a text file then you have saved the image and not the HTML.
  • If your signature stops working, check Tools -> Options -> Mail Format (Tab) and then look at "Use this Signature by default:".
• Hotmail
  • The folling step-by-step graphical help is only valid for IE. They might work in other browsers.
  • Graphical Help for Hotmail
• Yahoo
  • here you need to make sure that when you send messages, the Use my signature is checked. If you are not using IE, then you will need "Allow HTML tags" to be checked.
  • If you just get: "Image by FlamingText.com", see the line above.
  • I added a Graphical Help for step-by-step instructions.
• USA.net
  • Not free anymore. Definately the nicest system for HTML signatures. Make sure that you select the correct signature name at the bottom, that you would like to send. When you create the signature, make you that you select Send as HTML
• Netscape
  • As far as I can figure out (and I use netscape for my emailer), you can't set a HTML signature with netscape. If you figure it out, you could be famous, so let me know how!. Well here you have it, the technical article that says it must be plain text. On the bright side, it receives all the signatures generated by the other mailers very well.
• Excite
  • Not too good. It's not possible to have a HTML signature, but you can attach images. I tried to send images from excite to excite, and it works okay, however on most emailers, it would probably just look like at attachment. So save the image to somewhere that you know, and then when you send emails, click attach, then browser, then select your image and attach it again.
• AOL
  • Currently (AOL 6.0), it is not possible to include an image in your signature. You can insert pictures into your email, but that's about it. I think what you do is save the image to your desktop, then drag the image into your email. It's a pain, since you need to do it each time.
• ezboard
  • Make sure you have "use custom signature" and "ezcodes" selected when you post.
  • Some boards don't allow this feature, but you can test it here

If your saved image has the default Windows icon or Windows keeps prompting you for the application to use to open the image when you double-click on it then you forgot to add the image extension to your filename when you saved it. All of our images should have either a .gif or .jpg filename extension. Make sure you add the same extension that was on our original image filename to your filename when you save your image. It is not enough for it to show "Save as type: GIF (*.gif)" or "Save as type: JPEG (*.jpg)". You must still enter the extension eg coollogo.gif or coollogo.jpg .

We have changed a number of styles to support transparency. Some styles do not work well with transparency, but over time we will change all the styles that can use transparency to use it. Look for a Transparent or Background Mode: Transparent option on the style's form.

No catch! The generated images are free to use for almost any purpose, including commercially (although this is not legal advice) We (Dave and Cameron) enjoy creating sites that are useful to people. It's our way of saying thanks for all the other great software that people have written and we have used over the years. It's the Linux and Free Software Foundation way.

Please see our Terms of Use for complete details.

The best way is to simply link us!. You may also like to tell your friends about us, write to magazines, or even publish information about this site in books, magazines, and e-zines. Every little bit helps.

If you would like to make a small financial contribution then the best way is to buy a copy of FlamingText GIMP. We get a few dollars and you get a great piece of software that lets you create images on your PC, just like you do online at FlamingText.com.

The site was something that I (Cameron) always wanted to do. I had written a (simple) button generator in 1993, but never had the time to go big on it. One day, Dave showed my GIMP and a cool script he had found to add animated flames to an image. Then we found CoolText.com. Well it turns out that CoolText is an interface to GIMP. So we wrote our own interface to gimp, and have been making enhancements ever since. Dave did most of the initial work getting the GIMP server up and running (non-trivial), and writing the queuing modifications. Our main goal is to be the number one source of on-line generated images and our secondary goal is to increase the visibility of GIMP and Linux.

Currently, we are not accepting submissions for sites. We are going to change it to a vote scheme. When it is ready, then to be considered as a featured site, you will need to:
1. Make good use of FlamingText graphics.
2. Contain only family friendly content and links.
3. Have a sharp, clean look to it. Preferably it should look better than ours does!
4. No broken links, images etc.
5. Work on at least Netscape and IE, and preferable WebTV too.
6. Contain an appropriate link to say:
   Graphics created online with <a target="top" href="http://www.flamingtext.com/"><b>FlamingText.com</b></a>

We're very sorry, but we are too busy to answer generic questions on HTML. Please try HTMLGoodies.com, Draac's Free HTML Courses or WebMonkey.com, or another HTML Resources.

Of course! But please, we get a lot of email so check carefully to make sure that your question is not covered in this document first. If you do email us then mention that you have read the FAQ! If you don't then there is a good chance we will just send you the URL for this page :-)

Be sure to fully describe the problem. The more information you can provide the better the chances are that we will be able to help you. For example, if you encounter an error on the site then please include the URL of the page in your email.

If you are sending a reply to one of our messages, then please include a summary of the previous email(s) to jog our memory. (Like I said, we get a LOT of email!).

Ok, now that we've got that out of the way you may email us.

Sometimes you can find me on IRC irc.gimp.org #flamingtext, feel free to come and chat, but don't ask me questions that are already answered here.

Enjoy!

Cameron & Dave