Open Window Software News Spring 2006 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash v10.0 - Unicode/Font Effects - Finally!! 2) Be A Beta Tester - Get Your v10.0 Upgrade For Free 3) Vote For Us For The 2006 ESC People's Choice Award 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 5) Study Tip - Limiting Initial Number Of Pairs For Large Learning Tasks 6) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v10.0 - Unicode/Font Effects - Finally!! Many of you will be happy to hear that we've finally taken the big plunge. It's not that we didn't know that lots of our customers wanted to use mixed fonts and Unicode text in the 'regular' parts of the program. It was simply that the task was too daunting! Fortunately a third-party supplier of code 'components' for our development system has come up with a set of tools that have brought this undertaking, while still a huge rewrite, into the realm of feasibility. With v10 you'll be able to use any Windows font, including Unicode Fonts, for the Question and Answer main text as well as for Multiple Choice and Fill-In-The-Blank answers. In the Question and Answer main text you'll also have access to a range of font 'effects' including Bold, Underline, colored text and backgrounds as well as sub and superscript. Storing these new pairs requires the addition of a new binary source file type for WinFlash - the .flu file. The "u" is for Unicode. Existing .fls files can be automatically saved as .flu files and .flu files can be 'saved as' .fls files. HOWEVER, saving a file to the older .fls format will result in losing any of the fancy new effects that have been utilized. Because of the large number of changes required in the program to accommodate these new features, we're planning a more extensive beta test effort than we've used with previous releases. See the item below to see how you can sign up to be on the beta team and get early access to the new features! --------------------------------------------------- 2) Be A Beta Tester - Get Your v10.0 Upgrade For Free We're planning to assemble a small team of people who use WinFlash on a regular basis and are willing to test the new version both for compatibility with their current files and for ease-of-use with the new Unicode and font effect features. If you would like to be on this team, send us a short note telling us how you use WinFlash and to what use you might put the new features. Team members who provide substantive feedback on the beta release(s?) will receive free codes for the final release of v10.0. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Vote For Us For The 2006 ESC People's Choice Award The Educational Shareware Cooperative gives a yearly award based on votes cast by the public on the Cooperative's website. We'd really appreciate it if you'd take a moment and follow this link http://www.edu-soft.org/education-awards.shtml and place a vote for WinFlash Educator! Thanks in advance for helping us towards our goal of winning this award for a second time! --------------------------------------------------- 4) 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 (v9.1 if you haven't upgraded yet or v10.0 when it comes out if you're already at v9.1) 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! --------------------------------------------------- 5) Study Tip - Limiting Initial Number Of Pairs For Large Learning Tasks If you have a large number of pairs to learn, as in the case of vocabulary words for a foreign language, it is more efficient to limit the initial number of pairs. You should be able to go through all of the 'unlearned' pairs in a single study session when beginning to study a new set of flashcards. You can control the set of pairs that are available for review in the Options|Pair Order/Size panel in the Range subpanel. If you have categories already assigned, as we recommend and discussed in OW20050101.TXT, you can select any subset of your assigned categories as the starting point for review. Alternatively, you can use the From Question __ to __ setting to specify a range of pairs for review. Try starting with 30-50 pairs to begin. Depending upon the difficulty of the material and the length of your average study sessions you can adjust this up or down until you feel you're making progress each session without being overwhelmed by the mass of unfamiliar material. We plan to add a feature that will automatically keep the 'new material' from the deck at some adjustable level in a future release, but it isn't difficult to manage this function manually until this feature appears. --------------------------------------------------- 6) Latest In-line Program Updates The 9.10.03 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected problem with incorrect import of .csv files. 2. Fixed problem in WinFlash Basic that caused the program to crash when opening a .flt-type file when skins were enabled. 3. Corrected another skins issue which screened some hot-key combinations from reaching the main menu items when a file was open for study. 4. Re-coded case where the first character in the Question was a "%" sign so that it would properly associate this character with the question rather than making it the last character of the Category. 5. Added code to correctly handle a direct open of .flz and .flt files from the Internet. The 9.10.02 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Fixed problem caused by interaction of the 'flashing' alert regarding the approach of the end of the evaluation period in the main window title bar and the new skins code causing the main window to continually steal focus away from other program windows. 2. Added software utility to collect data in the event of a crash and offer the user the opportunity to e-mail the report to Open Window Software. This can greatly improve our chances of being able to understand and fix elusive bugs that cannot be duplicated on our own machines. The 9.10.01 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Fixed problem with the Delete function where any attempted deletion of a pair caused a program error. --------------------------------------------------- Need Help? Have A problem? Check out our online listings of the latest releases and the problems that they've solved: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/wfprobs.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. 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