Editorial

Many of you sent us letters or electronic mail wondering why we haven't said much lately about ANTIC ONLINE--or added much to our Compu-Serve edition either.

Well, we missed you at least as much as you missed us. We enjoy providing the fastest and most indepth Atari news to thousands of users each month on ANTIC ONLINE. But although we felt bad about the temporary slowdown, all of us here are happy that contract negotiations have been concluded to everyone's satisfaction.

More important, we're sure that you will also be happy with the vastly expanded but streamlined new ANTIC ONLINE, which now becomes the first online magazine to offer these important new features we couldn't bring you before:

SOFTWARE ONLINE--Every month there will be new 8-bit and ST programs you can download, without any extra charge. These will showcase the best programs from Antic's five years of publication. And as we replace programs each month, the previous titles will be transferred to the SIG*Atari data libraries and remain accessible online.

PICTURE GALLERY---New RLE (Run Iength Encoding) high resolution graphics will be available each month for downloading or online viewing. ANTIC ONLINE will even be able to display pictures accompanying news stories. You'll read about a product or convention and then see it onscreen. You can submit your own best ST or 8-bit RLE pictures too.

SUBSCRIPTIONS ONLINE-- Now you can place your subscription orders online for Antic Publishing magazines and later be billed directly.

ALL-NEW MENUS

During our hiatus, Antic literally spent months of man-hours to create a dramatically streamlined menu structure for ANTIC ONLINE. Now you can see what's new as soon as you enter ANTIC ONLINE. No more wading through pages of submenus and old files before finding out about the newest products and developments. Only the best of the old material will remain in our archives. So it won't get in your way, but it's still there if you need it.

ANTIC ONLINE is CompuServe's largest online magazine--1.5 megabytes of Atari information, and growing. We are now able to update it daily (except between Friday and Sunday) directly from Antic. CompuServe still does the final merge in Columbus, Ohio. But all other preparations are now done right here at Antic, under the responsibility of newly-named ANTIC ONLINE editor Charles Jackson. This gives Antic much more control than we used to have over how soon we can upload material and where it's placed.

Next month Antic Magazine will provide many more details about how to get around on the new ANTIC ONLINE. However, we want to assure Atari users groups that it's still okay to download any text article from ANTIC ONLINE and reprint it in your newsletter--if you display the Antic copyright and permission notice at the top of each article you reprint.

To visit the new ANTIC ONLINE, just type GO ANTIC next time you log onto CompuServe. If you don't already subscribe to CompuServe, see your computer retailer or phone (800) 848-8199 to find out how to sign up. Ohio residents phone (614) 457-0802. There is never an extra charge for accessing ANTIC ONLINE.

Nat Friedland
Editor, Antic