Open Window Software News Inaugural Issue 2002-08-15 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards And ProUpdater Contents: 1) Welcome To Our First Issue! 2) New Freeware Alphabet Flashcards 3) Creating 'Template' Files For WinFlash 4) Considering A PDA Purchase? 5) Want A Printed Help Reference? 6) Free Upgrades For Deck Contributors 7) Study Tip --------------------------------------------------- 1) Welcome to Our First Issue! We hope that you'll like our newsletter and find it a worthwhile read. Each bi-monthly issue will feature a new freeware flashcard deck, either created by Open Window Software or contributed by one of you. These decks will only be available through the link contained in the newsletter until the NEXT issue of the newsletter is published. Continuing to read the newsletter will bring you these new decks two months earlier than they'll be generally available. If you have suggestions for decks that you'd like to see us develop, please send us an e-mail. We'll credit the person suggesting the deck in the newsletter when the deck is released. We'd also like to publish YOUR decks - see 6) Free Upgrades For Deck Contributors to learn more about this. Best Regards, Dick Bryant Open Window Software --------------------------------------------------- 2) New Freeware Alphabet Flashcards We want to learn how very young users respond to WinFlash. We've created a deck to help children learn the letters of the alphabet - in the classic 'C is for cat' vein. If you have a child at the appropriate age for introducing the alphabet, help them try out this deck. The pairs are set up in "standard" mode. All the child needs to do to run through the deck is to press the enter key repeatedly - at this stage don't worry that this marks all the answers as 'Correct'. You can even set the deck to run in 'AutoPilot' mode - simply "playing" the deck for the child without requiring any intervention on their part. The question is a large font representation of the capital and small letter pair. The answer repeats the letter pair, this time with a graphic and an audio giving the appropriate answer - e.g. 'A is for apple'. Of course you'll need a working sound card to use this deck. Be sure to try it out yourself and adjust the sound level before working with your child so that it isn't too loud. Another alternative is to turn the sound off and provide the audio portion in your OWN voice - a nice parent/child joint effort, as it were. It's probably best to start with the letters in order, so we've created the deck to start up in this mode. After your child gains proficiency, you may want to change to random order presentation using the Options|Pair Order & Size panel. You can download this file (~2.7Mb) by clicking on the link below: http://www.openwindow.com/ftp/alphabet.flz We'd love to hear feedback on your experiences with this deck and any suggestions you might have for us. If it proves popular, we'll do some other early learning decks to add to the library. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Creating 'Template' Files For WinFlash After using WinFlash for a while, users often zero in on a particular set of options that they are comfortable with using on their decks. If you'd like to have WinFlash create new decks using a specific set of custom option settings, try the following. 1. Open a deck that whose options are close to what you want for your template. 2. Using File|Save As, save the deck with a name like myoptions.fls. 3. The open deck will now be the newly-saved myoptions.fls. Make any adjustments you wish in the options and save the deck using File|Save. 4. Whenever you want to create a new deck, first open myoptions.fls and THEN use the File|New option. The new file will be created using the options that you had set in myoptions.fls. 5. You may want to create multiple options templates for use with different types of decks - e.g. mylanguageoptions.fls and mychemistryoptions.fls. --------------------------------------------------- 4) Considering A PDA Purchase? As you may know, Open Window Software and HandyMed have joined forces to bring you a complete software toolset to support your study needs. Now you can create your study decks in WinFlash Educator's easy-to-use editor and use them as always on your PC - with the added advantage of being able to take them along in your Palm or PocketPC-based PDA. You can always be ready to turn those otherwise-wasted minutes (waiting in line, riding the subway, time between classes) into productive study sessions! This is such a powerful combination that it has been the crucial motivation for some of our users to purchase a PDA. While we are platform-neutral on the PDA question (both PalmOS and PocketPC versions are available), we thought it might be useful for readers considering such a purchase to be aware of the following points that relate to using the PDA for study. 1. Monochrome PalmOS-based PDAs can often be found for less money, but prices are nearly equal once you consider the current color devices, especially color devices capable of playing music. 2. PocketPCs can support graphics and sound in study decks. 3. PocketPCs can directly handle regular Windows text files whereas PalmOS requires files to be converted to .pdb format before they can be used with the handheld --------------------------------------------------- 5) Want A Printed Help Reference? Along with many companies in the fast-moving shareware business, we've elected to avoid the expense in time, money and built-in obsolescence of bound manuals. However, you can easily have something that's even MORE useful for most of us. A loose-leaf reference in which you can make notes, add pages and otherwise interact with the resource. How? Just click on the menu item Helpfile.doc in the WFEducator v7.0 menu (Start|Programs|WFEducator v7.0|Helpfile.doc from the Windows Start button - or WFBasic or WFScholar if you have one of these versions). This will open the file helpfile.doc in Microsoft Word (if this is installed on your machine) or WordPad. In either case, simply print out the file (roughly 100 pages), punch holes for a three-ring binder and you have a printed version of the contents of the Help file. --------------------------------------------------- 6) Free Upgrades For Deck Contributors Have a deck that you think might be useful to others? We'll give you a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program if you'll share! Plus you'll get credit on the library page for your contribution (unless you'd rather remain anonymous). To submit your deck, see the detailed instructions at http://www.openwindow.com/pages/contribute.htm We'll immediately acknowledge receipt of your submission and, after review, will send you another e-mail letting you know if we've accepted it for use in our library. If it's accepted, we'll flag your database entry for a free upgrade to v8.0 when it's released. --------------------------------------------------- 7) Study Tip From enthusiastic WinFlash user, Valerie Grieve: "One thing you might want to add to your study tips is this: If multiple choice questions are provided in your study package as study items or a practice exam, you can bet that many of those same items will be on the exam. Pretty much all of the multiple choice questions in my study guide were on the exam (plus a few that were not in the guide as well). I have found this to be true with other university courses I have taken as well. I had entered these into WinFlash and had them down cold. It felt like easy marks." Have a study-related tip on using WinFlash? Send us a quick e-mail to share it with other readers! --------------------------------------------------- Need Help? Have A problem? Check out our online listings of the latest releases and the problems that they've solved. For WinFlash programs see: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/wfprobs.htm For ProUpdater see: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/puprobs.htm If your issue isn't covered there, please send e-mail to support@openwindow.com and we'll do our best to resolve your problem. UNSUBSCRIBE: Simply send an email to service@openwindow.com with REMOVE as the Subject. This newsletter is a free service of Open Window Software and is Copyright © 2002 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved.