Open Window Software News Spring/Summer 2005 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards And ProUpdater Contents: 1) Access 1.8 Million Ready-made Flashcards - At a 30% Discount!! 2) WinFlash v9.0 Under Development 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 4) Study Tip - Use the Subject Outline Tool to Manage Your Decks 5) Version 8.0 Updates - v8.00.09 Available --------------------------------------------------- 1) Access 1.8 Million Ready-made Flashcards - At a 30% Discount!! We are proud to announce a new partnering arrangement with Flashcard Exchange (FE) - the web's largest repository of on-line flashcards. You can now download any of these decks that you wish and have them available for instant access by WinFlash Educator and/or HandyCards! Through our new arrangement with FE we are able to offer Open Window Software's registered users of WinFlash Educator a lifetime full membership in FE (necessary to access the download features) at significant savings! To obtain this discount, go to our order page at https://www.openwindow.com/pages/oworder.htm and select the Flashcard Exchange Membership - listed on the site for $16.50. Then, in the comments section, mention this offer by entering Flashcard Exchange Newsletter Offer We'll enter your new lifetime membership in FE for only $11.50! Here are some of the highlights of what's available in the FE library: 50 Foreign Languages (Including Elvish from the Lord of The Rings) Early Childhood Materials K-12 Subjects Higher Education, GRE Extensive Medical Library Military, Real Estate, Law and much, much more! Check out Flashcard Exchange at http://www.flashcardexchange.com/ and then sign up with us for your discounted lifetime membership! Are you a Basic or Scholar customer? You'll need Educator's Import capability to make use of the FE decks. Just order an upgrade from your current version to Educator and add on the Flashcard Exchange membership for the same additional $11.50. --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash v9.0 Under Development We're already working on the new features for v9.0 - targeted for release in time for the new school year. If you have a feature you'd like to see, now's a great time to e-mail us with your suggestion. While we can't guarantee that all suggestions will be included in the new release, we DO draw most of our enhancements from the suggestions and requests made by our users. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Have a friend that could use WinFlash? We'll give you a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v8.0 if you haven't upgraded yet or v9.0 when it comes out if you're already at v8.0) if your friend buys the program and mentions your name in the Comments section when they place their order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 4) Study Tip - Use the Subject Outline Tool to Manage Your Decks Ever find yourself wondering what the name of that deck was that you created early in the semester? Or which directory it was created in? WinFlash Scholar and Educator both contain a useful tool on the File menu called Subject Outline. Use it to improve the organization and management of your study files. On first use, the Subject Outline contains only a single entry titled Subjects Outline View: - Subjects Outline View Using the buttons you can add subjects, e.g. Biology and French, resulting in: - Subjects Outline View |- Biology |- French Let's say you have three decks already created for Biology and two for French and they're in a few different directories. By first selecting (click on it) Biology, you can add your three decks, one at a time, to the structure by clicking on Add Existing File and then browsing to one of the Biology files. You'll end up with - Subjects Outline View |- Biology | |- C:\Biology\biologydefs.fls - 11/14/2004 | |- C:\My Documents\biotest.fls - 12/18/2004 | |- C:\WinFlash Files\biologydefs2.fls - 01/23/2005 | |- French Following the same procedure for your French files you have - Subjects Outline View |- Biology | |- C:\Biology\biologydefs.fls - 11/14/2004 | |- C:\My Documents\biotest.fls - 12/18/2004 | |- C:\WinFlash Files\biologydefs2.fls - 01/23/2005 | |- French | |- C:\My Documents\French101.fls - 10/18/2004 | |- C:\WinFlash Files\FrenchVerbs.fls - 01/16/2005 You've now entered your existing study files and, even though they're contained in three unrelated directories, they're now nicely organized. By creating new files under the appropriate subject and adding new subjects as necessary you can keep all of your WinFlash decks easily available. To open one for study or editing simply double click on the one you want. You can right click on a file and check its stats without having to open up the deck. For Leitner mode decks the date will indicate when the earliest pair is due for review. For other decks the date reflects the last used date. Give the Subject Outline a try - it may very well become your 'control center' for managing your study sessions using WinFlash! --------------------------------------------------- 5) Version 8.0 Updates - v8.00.09 Available Since Version 8.0 was shipped on October 12, 2003 there have been eight 'slipstream' releases to fix various bugs that have surfaced since the initial release and to introduce new functionality. If you are experiencing any problems with your WinFlash program, first be sure that you are using the latest version (currently v8.00.09, released 1/5/05). Here are the releases to date and a compilation of the changes that were made in each: The 8.00.09 update to WinFlash Basic, Scholar, and Educator addresses the following issue: 1. An issue causing a "'' is not a valid integer" error to display when loading a deck that had been created or edited between 12:00 am and 12:10 am has been corrected. 2. An option has been added to Options|Misc/Audio|Audio/Video/Link Settings that will allow 'live' document and Internet links in Introduction and support .rtf files. The 8.00.08 update to WinFlash Basic, Scholar, and Educator addresses the following issues: 1. A further problem involving the Automatic Multiple Choice feature has been corrected. 2. Code has been added to reset the location of all windows whose position is stored from session to session in the case where the screen size has been changed between sessions and the old position setting(s) would place the window(s) off the edge of the current screen. The 8.00.07 update to WinFlash Basic, Scholar, and Educator addresses the following issue: 1. Under some unusual circumstances the program could hang when using the Automatic Multiple Choice From Standard Pairs feature. Also, in some circumstances, duplicate answers could appear in the choices. Both of these problems have been corrected. The 8.00.06 update to WinFlash Basic, Scholar, and Educator addresses the following issues: 1. Import/export compatibility between WinFlash Educator and HandyCards for PocketPC v5.0 has been greatly enhanced. Bidirectional Leitner mode data is maintained through multiple export/import cycles. 2. The minimum initial Leitner interval has been reduced to 1 day from the previous 4 days. 3. Minor consistency issues continue to be improved - none that caused any operational program problems. The 8.00.05 update to WinFlash Basic, Scholar, and Educator addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected error which caused the pairs in the highest-numbered Leitner Box to be asked EVERY session once the initial waiting period for the pair for that level box had expired. 2. Fixed problem caused by the interaction of auto-generated multiple choice answers with real multiple choice answers of Multiple Choice pairs. 3. Various minor consistency gremlins were fixed - none that caused any operational program problems. The 8.00.04 update to WinFlash Basic, Scholar, and Educator addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected error in Insert/Copy/Delete pair functions that failed to make adjustment for direct-record audio files. This caused the recorded sounds to 'move' to another pair under certain circumstances. 2. Fixed problem with Subject Outline that caused program to hang when files that used Multi-user mode were added to the outline. 3. Added display of direct-record audio files to the Editor|Table View. The 8.00.03 update to WinFlash Scholar and Educator addresses the following issue: 1. Corrected error in Copy Pair function that caused pair statistics data to be incorrectly written to the .FLD file. When running in Leitner Box System Mode this caused a 'Invalid Integer' error when restarting the deck after having closed it. If you have a deck displaying this error, just delete its companion .FLD file and the program will write a 'clean' .FLD file from scratch. The 8.00.02 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issue: 1. Corrected coding error that caused '%' and '<' characters to be incorrectly displayed in Q&A dialogs and the editor. The 8.00.01 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Fixed bug in Leitner Box System Mode that caused deck to hang if it had been created or modified between the hours of midnight and 1 a.m. Not a good feature for students :-). 2. Corrected omission that failed to generate independent unique identifiers for each pair during the import operation. The unique identifiers are not yet used, but may be needed in future releases. --------------------------------------------------- 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. --------------------------------------------------- SUBSCRIBE: Send e-mail to service@openwindow.com with SUBSCRIBE as the Subject. 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 © 2005 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved.