Since I know how a newbie to Fractal Explorer (FE for short) can feel overwhelmed with the program I thought I'd make a webpage that tells you how to use it. I'm going to show you step by step with pictures so be prepared, some of the images may take a little while to show up...

      First thing you have to do is download the program and then, of course, install it... Then, run it!

      When you first open the program you will be confronted with a blank screen. Look towards the top of your FE screen and you will notice the words File, Edit, Fractal, Attractor, Animation, Size, View, Window, and Help... That is how you will navigate about in the program. Once you get proficient with the program you may even bypass the upper menu and learn to use the shortcut keys such as F3.

      Now that you've opened up the program I'm sure you are anxious to start making fractals. To begin making a new fractal click on File, then New Fractal or just hit the F3 button. This will open up the standard mandelbrot fractal.

      One thing that is very important is to SAVE SAVE SAVE your pictures as you go along! Even if you don't plan on keeping one, save it anyway... The program can freeze for whatever reason and then you've lost what your doing forever if you didn't save it... Fractals are very graphic card intensive and you may need to close the program and restart at any time - people tend to push their computers to the limit (I'm one of them myself) and sometimes we overtax our poor computer with a program it's not really designed to handle so save, save, save that spot... When you save a picture, you may be asked if you want to "save the spot file", ALWAYS say yes (I say you may be asked because some versions of FE have saving the spot file as a default and other versions do not... That spot file is what you open to continue editing your fractal - a .jpg or .bmp won't do... You MUST save the spot file in order to continue editing your fractal.

      When you save your fractal image try to save the pictures in 800x800 or larger if possible (the bigger the better) so you can scale it down at a later date in order to anti-alias it or modify it in some way with an image editing program such as PaintShop Pro (the bigger the image is the better for this purpose)... If you plan to share your fractals with others, the fractal nuts like to see the pictures as big as possible (though it's a fine line between a large image optimal for viewing and an image that is too large for online viewing so you have to be careful, 800x800 and 300-500 kb in size is generally considered exceptable)... Of course, saving at 800x600 or 1024x768 is good if you plan to use the fractal as a desktop image...

      On to the next page of the tutorial.