By Bob LaFave, Tampa PC Users Group
boblala@ij.net

Emoticons can be described as a series of keyed characters used especially in e-mail to indicate an emotion, such as pleasure :-) or sadness :-(. They have evolved into little graphics to indicate emotions and tasks in a shorthanded writing. As you can see from the program Window below from “Handy Animated Emoticons”, they have become quite diverse and colorful. This program from ScoSoft is easy to use and does save you time when wanting to include emoticons in your email writings. You can visit http://www.scosoft.com/handy-animated-emoticons.htm to get a complete description. The program itself is available as a download for $19.95 online.

You can also place these figures into text documents, such as an MS Word document. All that is needed is for you to have open both a document and “Handy Animated Emoticons” and to pick an insertion point and click your choice with your mouse, and the emoticon will be automatically placed. Although the emoticons can be placed in MS Word and other text editors, they will not show as animated, only stationary graphics.

The picture shows how the program will automatically open in a split screen with a choice of view of “Auto Size Client Window” with your working application such as MS Word or MS OutLook Express on the top portion and “Handy Animated Emoticons” on the bottom. This allows you to view where and how the emoticons are placed when composing. In the text document, you place your cursor at the insert point and then go to the bottom program screen and “Click” your choice. This point and click is all you need to do. You can also pick to view the Windows Behavior as “Float” or “Float, Float Always on Top”. I personally like to use just “Float” so that I have a larger screen of the program I am using to compose the text message.

You should look at the website for what programs are compatible for use to see if you can use the emoticons as a point and insert or possibly as a paste into other formats. You have to remember that this is animated, and these figures perform different movements when you place them into emails or when you read them in an email application reader. The program comes with almost 500 emoticons, and you can also add emoticons to the viewer directory. These emoticons are animated gif’s in format and you can put these graphics into the interface to easily place them into messages.

This program is for fun only and is not for all. If you want to liven up your e-mails and be a little creative, then you will enjoy it. Anyone who knows me is used to me using animated gif’s in my Outlook Express emails and now can expect a few of these emoticons, also. u