OK, So a couple of question...

Will the portable version have the flip option soon?

What's the best solution that people have found, for mirrored glass to get this whole thing to work properly on a camera, and to mount a laptop on a tripod...

Mike, if/when I use this on a job, I want to pay you for it.
Make it Shareware - What's your PayPal address.


In fact here's a starter for 10, the new Cinevate cage holds a laptop... Above a camera: http://www.cinevate.com/catalog/popup_image.php?pID=133

Duncan,

Yes, i'm working on having the flip option work for the portable version. I would also like to do a video demo of the software and put it up on youtube or something but havent found the time. I thought of making it donation-ware. I did spend quite a long time making this but since it was for my own purposes initially and just as a coding challenge later on, I don't want to charge people directly. There will always be a free version of easyprompter and it won't be disabled in any horrid way ( maximum amount of characters?!! wtf)

anyway.. if anyone is feeling truly generous, my paypal is orders@story-tailors.com and I would appreciate any contributions to help pay for the hosting and things like that.

Also - as far as mounting a laptop - I'd recommend mounting it under the camera instead of above if space allows. This way the text is closer to ther camera since it scrolls up.
Personally, I used a folding music stand for my shoot :)

Thanks again for all your support and spread the word!

Contribution made and merited! Can I suggest putting a donate button on the homepage?

Thanks again for your efforts!

Thanks for all your effort. I find that the font does not replicate the flip function, but only reverses individual letters, which does not help by itself. Is there something more I need to do to use it in the stand alone?

Since a few people expressed interest in donating to the cause, I put up a donations page - EasyPrompter Donation

I would appreciate any support, but would like to maintain that EasyPrompter is FREE, so if you don't want to donate, don't feel guilty or anything :) - I'm cool with it.

----

Ken - thank you so much for your contribution.

Chris - I don't think I completely understand your issue. Can you describe what you're seeing in more detail? As far as portable version - flipped text is not yet available for it. I AM working on it though!

Mike - I think you answered my question. If I select the mirrored font in say, WORD, and type, it just types tyhe usual left to right, reversing each letter, standing alone it does not flip, which as I think of it, probably makes sense, as the flip programming only uses the font - it was not designed to be used stand alone. Thanks.

Yeah if you want to use it with word you'd have to type backwards. Font reverses individual letters. My code reverses the actual text

As promised - new version of the portable standalone is available which supports mirrored text. You will need to install the font separately in order for it to work. If you need to carry this on a flash drive to another location, download the font AND the standalone version and keep them together. Install font on whatever machine you need to use and you're all set!

For those using the standalone version just click "Check for updates" on top.

The rest, just head over here - EasyPrompter - Portable Standalone Version: the best free OFFLINE teleprompter.

enjoy!

Another day, another feature - I just added an Elapsed Time Display

go check it out!

EasyPrompter - Create Prompter

Thanks Mark J. Hewitt for the suggestion!

And thanks again Mike for this wonderful applet. I mentioned it on another forum and they seemed to love it as well.

What about a charging fee when you finish it and an putting an advertisement in Backstage?

Just a thought.

Thanks again Mike.

Regards,

John

Which forum did you post in? link would be appreciated. What is Backstage? I made it free cause I would hate to pay for something like this myself :) I put up a donation button cause it did cost me quite a bit of time and if someone feels that it's worth it to them they can contribute a little to the cause.

If enough interest is shown, I may do a "premium" account that would be paid (but inexpensive) that would let you store scripts, settings, etc.

help me get more traffic and interest generated people! i don't even serve ads on the site

Mike,

how do you bring back the detached controls?

just close that window - it should come back in about 1 second. If that doesn't work for you - let me know what OS/browser you're using.

I was using Slimbrowser, which rides basically on top of IE. If I close the window, I see a "script error" message at the bottom of the window, and it goes back to the prompter page but the controls are gone.

I think that's a Slimbrowser issue though, I tested the actual browser, IE7 and it works as expected.

Thanks,

That is supremely cool. Thank you for sharing it.

I can't get the stan alone version to work on IE8 or Safari. But the online version works great.

Ok, a feature request. When having more than one person read the prompter (say in a two shot), the prompter usually allows for different colored text. Would some simple tags such as those used here on VBulletin work?

I too will donate to your efforts in the near future.

regards,

-gb-

I have a "highlight" feature in there that does just that. Simply highlight the text and hit the "highlight" button. It puts in [hl] tags.

Anyone wanna make a demo video? I realize it's hard to figure out all the features and the docs on my site arent that great.

I never even heard of that one - I'd be curious to see what the script errors actually complain about. Does it ride on top of IE6 or 7?

Yeah Mike, when I finally watched your Demo, I saw the different tags. Now if I can just get the stand alone to work.

Thanks again for your wonderful efforts to code this app.

-gb-

I can probably help you diagnose the issue. Let me know what the script errors say and exactly what your config is (OS/exact browser version). Getting something like this to work on all browsers is a monumental effort (it shouldnt be, but go tell that to the browser makers).. but I also hate when apps dont work on my browser of choice (which happens to be Opera of all things) so I'll do my best to get it to work. For the standalone, IE is just very very tough to get through to :)

See attached for error message. I have IE 7 at work and 8 at home, exact same behavior.

permission denied eh .. interesting. Not even sure where that may apply. Will test it on IE when I get a chance but as the description on the portable page says - IE is just not supported at this time for the portable version.

OK the problem is with detaching the controls - it's the same problem that makes images not show up in IE. IE doesnt support embedded data in html. I am trying to make a super-portable version now w/o any images or embedded data but IE doesnt cooperate too much - not to worry. I'll strangle it one way or another :)

stay tuned.

in the meantime, all other functions should be working - also, if you can at all, consider a better browser;)

Re-reading your request I see you've been asking about the OS as well - it's XP Pro on both machines, MS updates to day on the home machine, selective (corporate) updates at work.

But don't waist too much sleep on this Slimbrowser thing, this is just my choice, not a lot of people use it anyway. What I like most about it is the auto login - tried that with a few other IE add-ons and none of them worked properly for me.

As long as you nail IE, we're all fine!

If that's the only reason, I'd suggest opera or FF or any other browser -they all have password memorization if you want them to. Also, take a look at clipperz.com - open source, 1-way encrypted password management with ability to use it for auto-login.

Thanks Mike, Microsoft can memorize passwords regardless of your browser, but that's not what I am looking for. With auto login in Slimbrowser you click a favorite and lean back, that's it, you're there. The login info is stored on your computer and the script fills all the info in AND CLICKS the "ok" or "login" tab for you. Yeah, I'm lazy... I am looking at Chrome, they are still adding features, they may have this as well one day...

But we digress, back to your great software!

Internet Explorer has been defeated. New version (1.0.5) of the portable app is now out with full support for IE. I dub this the "ugly" version due to lack of graphics :)

I believe this is a good compromise between functionality and aesthetics. I tried to make the non-graphicsl buttons look nearly the same as the ones currently in the full version. Go grab the latest version!

EasyPrompter - Portable Standalone Version: the best free OFFLINE teleprompter.

Ervin - look into clipperz.com - it does exactly what you'er describing except in any browser and from any computer. great piece of javascript.

You must be kidding.

To give away all my login info by creating an online account and storing all that sensitive stuff there, web logins, bank passwords, credit card numbers??? Huh, they even offer to store my burglar alarm code; absolutely genious!

What a great trick for stealing personal info! Worth a Nobel prize indeed!

I dont want to hijack my own thread but it's 1-way encryption and it's open source - whats' stored is an encrypted string that w/o your password just simply cannot be gotten to. and the code is in the open so u can go through it and see that that's what it's actually doing.. but to each his own.

anyway - so did the new version fix your issues?

No, there is no change; the control panel detaches into a new window, but when I close that window, I still get the error message. And it's the same in IE8 as well on my home PC today. When I close the new window, it goes back to the prompter screen, no controls, with a little exlamation mark in yellow triangle at the bottom, sign of some error. But if it works for everyone else, it might be something wrong with this particular PC. I have a ton of soft on it, just about ready to reformat the whole thing.

As I said before, don't waist too much time on me, I'll report back after I reformat this thing.

I know this is a dumb question but you did download the latest copy? Sometimes caching can screw with things. Do the buttons look "uglier" now in IE? (I implemented rounded corners for browsers that support it - IE isn't one of them so the buttons are now kinda ugly-ish square grey)

Hi Mike, I got the new version and the great news is that the stand alone now works in both IE8 and Safari 4. But I discovered that IE doesn't like the apostrophe character in the script. Might want to have a look and see what's happening there. Otherwise, fantastic job and it doesn't look the least bit ugly to me.

-gb-

proper character escaping is one of the most difficult things to get right with this program on all browsers - I'll look into it. Thanks for the bug report

Fixed - both regular and portable versions. Portable is now at 1.0.6 - go grab the latest!

I recently did a "placeholder" 8 minute film for the UWOL contest on here, and 4 minutes of it was a "talking head" (mine) shot using the Mike Drob prompter... The prompter was displayed on a 17 inch flat screen about 8 feet from my eyes, and the camera located behind that by a couple of feet. I zoomed until the monitor was out of the scene. I think the lack of looking "directly" into the lens was negligible.

Check it out: UWOL 2nd round - Glacier Park Turns 100 on Vimeo

Oh... I made a donation. I urge others to support freeware efforts like this.

Thanks Chris! Very much appreciated.

this thread has gone kinda quiet - people still using the program? any problems? any suggestions? production photos? :)

As a future possibility... can you make it mouse toggable to go to FULL SCREEN during playback? That would be a nice feature.... once it is playing I don't need the frame etc. I am building a miror teleprompter and would rather use your software than the stuff I prevoiusly got to use... but IT is full screen.

Also, I want to THANK YOU for the scrolling speed control. In my 4:30 talking head I on several occasions needed to slow down or speed up. I discovered that what thought would inuitively be true wasn't, namely that once a good speed was set it would remain constant for my reading, it varied throughout the read.

Chris, you can go full screen in most browsers by hitting F11 (at least on PC - not so much on Mac). The only way to do fullscreen in another way is to make your browser physically larger. I personally don't like doing this cause then it usually remains that way, and I hate it when sites resize my browser.
With that said, I'll see what I can do.

Thanks.

Fantastic - used it today in a studio setup. As soon as he pay's I'm throwing some your way..

Had the laptop just below the lens and all I could see was the slightest eye flicker. Next time I'll stick to the centre of the screen rather than go edge to edge - and it should be perfect.

thanks muchly