IdleWild
Revision as of 14:20, 23 January 2018 by TheAlmightyGuru (talk | contribs)
IdleWild is a plug-in based screensaver program for Windows 3 developed by Bradford Christian and first published by Microsoft with in the Microsoft Entertainment Pack For Windows in 1990. Each subsequent entertainment pack upgraded the program with additional screen savers, and various developers wrote different screen savers. The program was no doubt meant to duplicate some of the success After Dark had on Macintosh.
Screensavers
Screensaver | Pack | Image | Creator | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
Blackness | 1 | Bradford Christian | Just blacks out the screen. | |
Boat Race | 3 | Tony Krueger | Sailboats race around buoys. | |
Bricks | 2 | Ed Jalley | Breaks the screen up into a grid and eliminates blocks, while the others fall into place. | |
Chomp | 3 | Ed Jalley | Bites are taken out of the screen starting at the corners. | |
Dancing Lines | 1 | Bradford Christian | Color-shifting lines bounce around the screen and leave behind a trail. | |
Divide & Conquer | 3 | Tony Krueger | Doubles the screen alternating horizontally and vertically. | |
Dropout | 1 | Tony Krueger | Parts of the screen pop out and bounce away like the ending of Solitaire (Microsoft). | |
Fade Away | 3 | Tony Krueger | Slowly fades individual screen colors to black. | |
Fireworks | 1 | Bradford Christian | Fireworks shoot up into the black screen and explode while a fountain continually jets sparks. | |
IconBownz! | 3 | Doug Timpe | Bounces a random icon across the screen. | |
Life | 2 | Bradford Christian | Runs a random simulation of Conway's Game of Life. | |
Mandelbrot | 2 | Matthew Bellew | Cycles through random sections of the Mandelbrot set. | |
Oriental Rug | 3 | Tony Krueger | Draws repeating patterns in dots resembling a rug. | |
Random | 1 | Bradford Christian | Picks a random screensaver from the list. | |
Shuffle | 2 | Tony Krueger | Turns the screen into a number slider puzzle and plays forever. | |
Spider Web | 2 | Tony Krueger | Draws line art spider webs. | |
Spotlights | 2 | Tony Krueger | Dims the screen and spotlights randomly move around. | |
Stars | 1 | Bradford Christian | A basic star field simulator, a la Star Trek. | |
Stretch | 2 | Tony Krueger | Randomly zooms and stretches the screen. | |
Tinfoil | 3 | Ed Halley | Embosses the screen in gray. | |
Trails | 3 | Michael Gates | Colored worms slowly eat away at the screen. | |
Wipe Out | 1 | Bradford Christian | Performs a basic wipe to black and then jumps to a random screen saver. |
Reviews
Good
- Unlike most Windows 3 programs, the program works at any screen resolution.
- Several features have been added like password locking and hot spot activation.
- With the first three Entertainment Packs, you get 21 total screen savers.
Bad
- Most of the screensavers are pretty dull to watch.
- Compared to the zen style of After Dark, IdleWild falls short.
Ugly
- Nothing.