No? Still having trouble? E-mail questions to Bumperactive.com founder Kyle Johnson at markoff_cheney@hotmail.com. Or feel free to call me at 512.444.8675.

The Main Thing you need to know about the StickerMaker is that it's divided into three distinct areas, or "Panels":

1). The "Workspace Panel" is where you actually do the grunt-work of building your bumper sticker. 2). The Attribute Panel lets you input values such as "Font," "Color", "Size," etc. in order to absolutely fine tune your bumper sticker, 3). And the Layers Panel helps you manage and keep track of all of the different parts of your sticker.

1). The Workspace Panel:
At the top of the Workspace is the Toolbar, an array of seven icons that lets you do everything you need to do to make a bumper sticker. The first six icons let you draw stuff:

is the Background icon, which lets you modify your sticker's background.	Let's you draw Rectangles.
Draw Circles...	Draw Lines...
Insert Text in any font installed on your system...	And insert Images, from our library or your hard drive.

The seventh icon, is a little bit different: It's the "Select / Move" icon. And (funnily enough) it lets you pick up stuff that you've created with the other six icons and move it around.

Clicking on any of the Toolbar icons places a blue box around it - indicating that this "Mode" of the StickerMaker is currently active (In the above examples, you'll see "Text" is the active Mode"). Clicking anywhere in the space directly beneath the Toolbar thus inserts an element of the corresponding Mode - Text, Image, Shape, etc. - into your bumper sticker. Except in the case of circles, rectangles and lines: You need to drag and click to place these elements.

You should notice that clicking on any of the first six toolbar icons also results in a change in the Attribute Panel in the lower left hand corner of your screen. In fact, you'll see that each toolbar icon has it's own Attribute Window, displaying fields for the unique characteristics of each Mode. (For example, the "Text" Attribute Window contains fields for Font, Color, Size, the Text itself.) More about the specifics of the Attribute Panel is explained below, but for now you get the general idea.

You should also notice that every time you create a new element to the workspace, the name of that element appears at the top of the list in the Layers Panel in the lower right hand corner of your screen.

And finally, you should see that clicking once on any element in the Workspace immediately highlights it by drawing a "selection box" around the element:

Clicking once on the orange oval puts the "selection box" around it.

When an element is selected, its name also becomes highlighted in the Layers List. And that element's characteristics pop up in the Attribute Panel. Another way to select an element is by clicking first on its name in the Layer's List . This will also cause the element to become highlighted by the selection box in the Workspace.

In fact, if you fiddle around with the app for a while by creating and selecting a number of different elements, you'll see fairly quickly how the three panels are very much interrelated -- The key concept behind the StickerMaker.

One last note about the Workspace: You've already found the help button, or else you wouldn't be here. Just to the right is the "Order My Sticker" button, where you click once you're completely satisfied with your sticker and want us to print it up for you. And in the far left-hand corner of the toolbar, you'll also see a pull down menu titled Save and Load functions. These functions are mostly technical stuff, and are explained in detail at the very end of these instructions.

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2). The Attribute Panel:

The Attribute Panel includes the Color Palette in the lower middle of your screen, and everything to the left of it. Mousing over any of the 40 colors in the Palette should bring up a "tool tip" window displaying the color's name. Clicking on a color will make it the "Active Color" of the StickerMaker, designated by the large square window at the bottom of the Palette. Any new elements you create will be of this Active Color.

Here the mouse is pointing to the color "khaki," but the Active Color is "navy," as displayed in the window at the bottom right of the palette.

Clicking the mouse will change the Active Color to khaki.

To the left of the Color Palette is the Attribute Window, which, as you've already seen, changes depending on the Mode selected in the Toolbar. Before you actually place an element in the Workspace, the headline of the Attribute Window appears in red (Draw Oval, Insert Text, etc.). However once an element has been successfully placed, the Attribute headline changes to black, and a number appears beside the name of the element (Oval1, Text2, etc.).

Sample Attribute Window for a "cyan" Rectangle with a "chocolate" border."

You can modify any element placed in the Workspace in virtually any manner you wish by adjusting its values in the Attribute Window. For example, if you've drawn a rectangle and wish to make it taller, simply key in a larger value for Height in the attribute window.

If you want to change the rectangle's color, select a new Active Color from the color Palette and then click in the rectangle's Fill Color box in the attribute window.

If you want to move the rectangle up or down, simply key in different values for its "Y position." New values for "X position" will move it left and right. (Of course, another way to move the rectangle is simply to pick it up with the "Select/Move" icon - so there's more than one way to accomplish some things).

The fields of the Attribute window vary, depending on the nature of the element it refers to. For example, the "Text" Attribute Window displays a field for the text you want to write, it's size, a pull down menu for font, and "click boxes" to make the text bold or italic. All of the Attribute Windows contain fields for maneuvering the element's X/Y position, except for the "Background" Attribute Window (After all, how do you maneuver around a background?)

How do you change an element when it isn't the one currently displayed in the Attribute Panel? Again, simply select the element by clicking on it in the Workspace - Or click on its name in the Layers List - to call up its Attribute Panel. Then change whatever values you wish

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3). The Layers Panel:

To best understand the Layers Panel, it helps if you think of making your bumper sticker as if you are building a collage: You start with a blank canvas and then add bits of material one at a time. Sometimes the pieces overlap in "Layers." But in a collage, the last thing you add is always the top-most layer.

By default, the StickerMaker works in exactly the same way. If you draw, in this order, 1). a rectangle, 2). a line of text, and 3). a circle, the StickerMaker will layer those elements so that, if you move the rectangle to the same area as the text, the text always appears on top of the rectangle (Because you drew the rectangle first and the text second). However, if you move the circle to the same area as the text, the text will always be under the circle (Because you drew the text second and the circle last).

This makes for a sensible way of doing things, but it can be a real pain if, say, you write some text, and then decide to add a real cool image, and now the image is covering up all of your text! Now, one way to solve the problem is by deleting the old text and adding a new line on top of the image. However, the Layers Panel offers are much more elegant solution:

Here the selected element, Text1, is "underneath" Rectangle1 in the collage.

Clicking the Move Up button will bring it to the front, however.

The five buttons to the left of the Layers List are your tools for manipulating the layers of your collage. The list displays the elements of the sticker, with the top-most element at the top of the list and the bottom-most element at the end -- Just above the ***background*** element, which is always the very last item on the Layers List. (Think about it: You can't put anything behind the background).

From the previous example, want to put that line of text on top of the image you added later? Simply highlight the text (by clicking on it in the Workspace, or clicking on its name in the Layers List). And then click the "Move Up" button. (Or, if you want, you can highlight the image and click "Move Down").

"Move Up" and "Move Down" move the selected element one place in appropriate direction on the Layers List. Similarly, "To Top" and "To Bottom" moves the element all the way to the top or bottom. And of course, "Delete" lets you erase the selected element entirely. A query box will ask you if you're sure you want to delete the element. After that, it's gone forever.

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Save and Load Functions: Coming Soon.

The functionality of the Save and Load menu in the top left of your screen is still being built, so we haven't included directions for this stuff yet. If you have any questions about this part of the app email me, and I'll do my best to help you out.

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