This file contains all previous issues in reverse chronological order. Open Window Software News Summer 2012 Featuring Tips on Using WinFlash and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash Basic is Now Freeware 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Notes File 3) Study Tip - Use Your Smartphone 4) How To - Put Your Leitner Study Files On Vacation 5) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash Basic is Now Freeware We now offer our introductory level program to users at no cost. This helps us compete with the MANY free flashcard programs that are now available. We hope that after using Basic for a while people will see the value in the additional features available in Scholar or Educator and upgrade to these more powerful programs. This change to a free Basic has implications for users who purchased their programs before Basic was changed to the freeware model. 1. If you have an older version of Basic and don't feel the need for Scholar and Educator-level features, go ahead and download the new version from the website and register for a free unlock code. 2. If you're a teacher or a trainer using Educator to create study files for others, everyone can now have their own personal copy of Basic for free. Just have them download Basic from the website and register for a free unlock code. 3. If you're organizing a study group to share the work of creating the study decks you'll only need to purchase one copy of Educator to use to do the merging. Everyone else can use Basic to create their sections of the assigned file(s). --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Notes File Educator v12 can create a companion .rtf file for each study file. This file can be used to keep any data about the study file handy and editable. I use the notes file with my wildflower study files to keep a copy of the scientific names of the various flower families available. When adding a new flower to the file, I open the Notes file and can cut & paste the name of its associated family into the editor. To create or open an existing Notes file, first open the study file with which it is associated. Then click the Notes icon (fifth one, counting from the left) on the main window's button bar. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Study Tip - Use Your Smartphone Since you have your phone with you at all times, consider using it in spare moments (waiting in line, waiting for your doctor's appointment, waiting for...) for additional study time - rather than playing yet another session of Angry Birds. Educator can export decks compatible with several smartphone flashcard apps, but I prefer simply exporting .jpg's and running through these on my phone in spare moments. See http://www.openwindow.com/newsletters/ow20120101.txt for detailed instructions in the How To - Optimize Settings to Export .jpg's to Handheld Devices article. --------------------------------------------------- 4) How To - Put Your Leitner Study Files On Vacation OK, you've just returned from a lovely 3-week cruise (we can dream, can't we?) and opened your Leitner-mode study file to find that you now have 237 pairs due! Yikes! OK, don't panic, just select Options|Q&A Modes|Mode Specific Settings. Click on the Shift All Due Dates Earlier or Later button and enter 21 in the Shift in Days dialog that appears. This will 'erase' the effect of your 3-week vacation and your deck will now have the number of pairs due that it would have had on the first day of your vacation. Don't use this too often, though - the "forgetting curve" never takes a vacation :-) --------------------------------------------------- 5) In-line Program Updates Since the Last Newsletter The 12.00.02 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Correct filename info on output of .jpg's 2. Add At End mistakenly closes open Notes document 3. Repair TestModeOptions crash in Scholar and Basic 4. Fix initialization problem with AdvStats after previous file was loaded --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 (c) 2012 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Winter 2012 Featuring Tips on Using WinFlash and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash Feature Highlight - AutoSpell Mode 2) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 3) Study Tip - Leitner Mode Adjustments for Long Term Studies 4) How To - Optimize Settings to Export .jpg's to Handheld Devices 5) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash Feature Highlight - AutoSpell Mode WinFlash Educator's new AutoSpell mode is great for quickly creating study files to master spelling lists. Try it out by following the steps below: 1. Create a new file using File|New 2. In the editor, enter the following words in the Question text area for pairs 1,2 and 3 - aardvark, bootleg, caustic. 3. Save the file and close the editor. 4. Select Options|Q&A Modes|Settings Common to all Modes|Automatic Spelling Mode using Text-to-speech The test study file will now operate in the AutoSpell mode - reading the word using text-to-speech with a fill-in-the-blank box displayed for typing in the word. This, of course, assumes that your computer is operational in text-to-speech mode, your speakers are turned on, etc. :-) --------------------------------------------------- 2) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you have earned free upgrades to v12 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v12 if you haven't upgraded yet or v13 when it's released if you're already at v12). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing the order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 3) Study Tip - Leitner Mode Adjustments for Long Term Studies When you are using a study file on a continuous basis, perhaps adding new pairs over time, you may want to make some adjustments to the Leitner settings. You can adjust the number of boxes used, the repetition intervals, and several other options. For this tip, we'll focus on these first two settings. To access these, select Options|Q&A Modes and click the Mode-specific Settings button. The setting at the top controls the number of boxes used with a default value of 5. The next area down controls the Box Review Intervals with default values of 3,6,12 and 24 days. Let's see how we might use these adjustments. After we've been working with a study file for some time, most of the cards will have been promoted to Box 5 and will be reappearing 24 days after they were last answered correctly. If we are frequently getting the questions incorrect after they have been promoted to Box 5, we might want to move the slider a little bit towards the Hard Questions setting - this will reduce the interval between appearances. Conversely, if we hardly ever miss a pair that is Box 5, we could increase the interval by moving the slider towards Easy Questions. We may discover, however, that the intervals are about right for the pairs in the lower boxes, but that, over time, we miss very few pairs in Box 5. At this point consider increasing the number of boxes to 6. Now, when a Box 5 pair is answered correctly, it will be promoted to Box 6, thus doubling the interval between reappearances. Again, as you work with the file, experiment with the Hard/Easy slider, finding where it is optimally set for your content and then, when Box 6 pairs seem to always be correct, consider moving on to a 7-box setup. This approach can be employed for up to a maximum of 9 boxes - probably more than would be required in most applications. --------------------------------------------------- 4) How To - Optimize Settings to Export .jpg's to Handheld Devices If you want to use .jpg's of the Q and A dialogs to study on any handheld device that supports .jpg graphics, these tips will help you achieve optimum results. 1. Decide whether you wish for the entire dialog to be captured in the picture or just the area that contains the text and associated graphic (if any). The former contains more ancillary information about the pair while the latter makes better use of screen space. 2. Since you won't be able to 'scroll' the text area, you'll need to make sure that the Question dialog is sized so that all the text of the longest pair is displayed. You might do this by reducing the font size and/or enlarging the Question dialog. When sizing the Question dialog, keep approximately the same aspect ratio as the screen that will display the .jpg's on your handheld. This will prevent unwanted distortion when the program sizes the output .jpg's. 3. In Options|View|Alignment & Q/A Dialog Control, make sure the Windows for Q&A same size/location option is selected. 4. Select Educator|Export Content and select Graphics For iPod/Other JPG Players as the export format. 5. Select the Full Dialog or Text/Graphic area only as you decided in 1. above. 6. Enter the h and w in pixels of the display on your target handheld device. These values can be found in your owner's manual or, often, by Googling the make and model of your device and then looking for the specifications in the manufacturer's support listings. Using this method, one finds that the iPod Touch 4th Generation has a screen resolution of 960 x 640 pixels. Depending on how .jpg's are displayed on your device, enter the vertical dimension as the h value and the horizontal dimension as the w value. 7. You may also set output filtering to export only a subset of your study file if desired. 8. Click OK and select a 'group name' for the exported files, as explained in the info dialogs that appear. For example, a file name of 'medterms' will result in pairs of output .jpg's named similarly to medterms1_AQ.jpg and medterms2_BA.jpg. When you view these files sequentially on your computer or phone they'll appear as Question, Answer, Question, Answer, etc. Note - depending on the sort algorithm used by your device, they may not show up 1,2,3,4... but as 1,10,100,101,102... or some other strange sequence. The Q's and A's should stay correctly linked, however. --------------------------------------------------- 5) In-line Program Updates Since the Last Newsletter The 12.00.01 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Intro should not show in open in editor 2. Icons shown in subject outline should be the new ones 3. Add option on FIntro to not show again 4. Fix old version editing new format file issue --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 (c) 2012 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Summer 2011 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash v12 Released 2) WinFlash Suggestion Contest Winners 3) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Mercy for Leitner Mode 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 5) Study Tip - Use Your Smartphone 6) How To - Install Educator on a Thumb Drive 7) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v12 Released After a long development cycle we've released the latest versions of WinFlash! We're really pleased with v12 and hope that you will be too. Download the latest from our website and see if you don't agree that v12 has added real value to the program. Here's a quick rundown of the new features: The following new features are available in all three WinFlash versions: * Jumpstart option for Leitner prevents the promotion of Box 1 pairs, thus keeping them 'always due'. This allows frequent review of newly-added material if desired * "Mercy" feature allows all Leitner due dates to be moved back - or forward for the masochistically-inclined * Height of fill-in-the-blank edit boxes now optionally scales with the height of the Question dialog, allowing for multi-line FIB answers and/or larger fonts * Popup menu selection added for Go To Previous Pair in study mode * Fast timed mode now allows pairs to be shown in random order The following new features are available in WinFlash Scholar and Educator: * Study files in multi-user mode now store ALL options on a per-user basis - each user can set favorite colors, fonts, etc. * The full range of filtering options is now directly accessible from the Print Cards, Print Tables and Print Tests dialogs * Pair order can be randomized when printing tables and tests * Batch font operations can be performed selectively on Q, A, MC, FIB, Hint or Comment text * Pair statistics of current pair available by right-clicking on the Q or A dialog * Pair numbers in table views are highlighted with red for disabled pairs and green for priority pairs The following new features are available in WinFlash Educator: * Browse, select, download and store any of FlashcardExchange's 40+ million flashcards for use with Educator from within the program * Export study files as a series of jpg's for direct use on any device that can show jpg graphic files * Export study files as rtf tables, retaining all font effects - useful for extracting data from study files * A copy of Educator can now be installed on any USB-interfaced drive (e.g. a "thumb" drive) so you can use your study files on any USB-equipped Windows computer without installing WinFlash on that computer * Default foreign language keyboards can be assigned to both the Question and Answer, automatically switching to the correct keyboard mapping when entering data in the Editor and when entering answers in fill-in-the-blank mode * Auto Spell mode allows a single entry of spelling words in the Editor's Question input box - word is read by text-to-speech and answer entered using the fill-in-the-blank entry mode * Pop Up Mode expanded and improved * A rich-text-format notes file associated with each study file allows free-form notes to be made using either WordPad or Word (if installed) - accessible at any time via a new main menu speed button * 'Say Again' button on Main Window button bar rereads the Q or A that's displayed when text-to-speech is enabled * Hints and Comments can now optionally be read with Text To Speech * Associated statistics (e.g. Leitner Box) can now be retained when creating new decks using the Create Composite Source File tool * Current file only mode now available in Create Composite Source File tool so a second file does not need to be selected if you aren't going to use it * Check for Duplicates displays duplicates in a table - making it easy to delete unwanted pair(s) * A new security option has been added which requests a password to access any function which can alter the contents of an open study file - prevents accidental data modification Note: Old .FLS and .FLU files will work just fine with v12. Simply open them with the new program and the new entries for the .FLD file will be automatically created the first time you open the file in v12. However, files created with v12 may NOT be compatible when used with older versions. See Backward Compatibility for detailed information on this topic. --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash Suggestion Contest Winners These five people won upgrades to v12 for their suggestions. Timber Borcherding - Improve readability of file type icons William Joy - "Mercy" function for Leitner mode Bob Jones - Randomize capability in printed tables and tests Yaniv Keren - Add TTS option for Hints/Comments Lauren Sauve - "Say Again" feature for TTS In our judgement these suggestions offered the most value across all users for the most reasonable amount of development effort - always our criteria when considering suggestions. Thanks to ALL of you who submitted suggestions during this cycle. Please send us suggestions anytime - we keep a list of all of them and review the new ones during each development cycle. --------------------------------------------------- 3) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Mercy for Leitner Mode Ever come back from vacation and find your carefully-maintained Leitner Mode study file now has a bazillion due pairs? Well, maybe not a bazillion - but WAY more than you want to tackle right away. The mercy feature allows you to move the study file's 'clock' back so that your vacation is just that - a vacation. Let's say you've been gone for 14 days. Just open the deck (the one with a bazillion due pairs) and select Options|Q&A Modes. Click the Mode-specific settings button and on the Leitner Settings tab of the dialog that appears, click the Shift all Due Dates Earlier or Later... and enter a positive integer to move the dates out - in this case 14. Close the deck (to reset the due status of the currently-displayed pair) and reopen the deck. You'll now see a much more containable number of due pairs. --------------------------------------------------- 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you have earned free upgrades to v12 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v12 if you haven't upgraded yet or v13 when it's released if you're already at v12). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing the order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 5) Study Tip - Use Your Smartphone Your smartphone can be a great study aid for use when you have a few minutes to spare. Instead of firing up yet another session of Angry Birds, use this time productively by either listening to .mp3's of your study file or reviewing .jpg's of your pairs. Educator can export study files either as a series of .mp3's (or .wav's) or a series of .jpg's. Many smartphones can handle both types of files, so you can listen to the .mp3's when you can't devote visual attention to the task and use the .jpg's for a different sensory review of the same information. Studies have shown that the more ways you present information to yourself, the better your retention of the material will be. See the Exporting topic in the Help Index for detailed information on exporting audio and graphic content. --------------------------------------------------- 6) How To - Install Educator on a Thumb Drive Note: This feature is only available when the program is registered. This feature lets you create a portable version of WinFlash Educator on a USB-connected drive (generally this would be a 'thumb' drive, but any drive that connects to the computer via USB will work). This capability can be really useful for tutors - just take your USB stick containing lessons and program to your student's machine and let them practice without needing to install a copy of WinFlash on their machine. Of course it's also useful for those who are into the 'USB stick as computer' paradigm - just carry this around in your pocket and plug it into any of the public access machines that are available. Here's how to create your portable version. 1. Insert your USB-connected drive into one of your computer's USB ports - make sure the drive has at least 35 MB of free space before proceeding. 2. Start Educator and select Create Portable Version on USB Drive... from the Educator menu. 3. Enter the drive letter of your USB drive in the Create Portable Version dialog that appears. 4. Some Windows status boxes showing copying proceeding will appear, followed by a message dialog stating "Your portable version of WinFlash Educator has been created. To Start Educator from this drive, run the file winfle120.exe located in the WinFlashEducatorPortable directory." In developing this feature I ran across a VERY useful, free tool that organizes applications installed on a USB drive and provides a nice interface for them: http://portableapps.com/ If you decide to try this out, you can integrate the WinFlash portable version into the Portable Apps structure on your thumb drive by moving the directory WinFlashEducatorPortable from the top level of the drive into the PortableApps directory. WinFlash will then display as one of the applications in the Portable Apps launcher. --------------------------------------------------- 6) In-line Program Updates Since the Last Newsletter Version 12 has been released. 12.00.00 is the current version for WinFlash Basic, Scholar and Educator. --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 (c) 2011 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Winter 2011 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash v12 Suggestion Contest Continues 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Shortcut Keys 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 4) Study Tip - Jumpstart New Pairs added to Leitner Deck 5) How To - Install a Foreign-language Keyboard Mapping 6) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v12 Suggestion Contest Extended - Again We've decided to extend the development period for v12 through the end of the school year, releasing the official beta sometime in June. We already have a small alpha team working on the in-progress v12 - testing as we go. Because of this longer development cycle we're keeping the suggestion contest open for further requests. We'll give a free upgrade to v12 for the 5 best suggestions that aren't already in our very large stack of requests. By "best" we mean improvements that will be valuable to a large percentage of users, and that are implementable with a reasonable investment in coding time for the value of the improvement. Please consider these two measures when contemplating a suggestion. We often receive suggestions that are SO specific to a particular, unusual, application of the program that they simply don't justify the effort necessary to add them. An example of this type of suggestion is "I'd like to have the next question displayed determined by how I answer the current question" - i.e. programmable branching within the study file. While this might be useful to a few individuals, the vast majority of users would never spend the necessary time to set up the branching logic. Suggestions don't have to be complex to be useful. My wife, Kathy, found it annoying that the flashing hint and comment buttons could only be activated when in their 'full-color' state - so in v12 you don't have to 'time' your mouse click to launch a hint or comment. --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Shortcut Keys Folks who are competent typists can save time when using WinFlash by learning and using the shortcut keys - key combinations that achieve the same result as clicking on a button or menu item with the mouse, but without removing a hand from the keyboard. Most dialog buttons have a 'built-in' shortcut key - just look for the underlined character in the title of the button. You can 'press' this button by holding down one of the Alt keys while typing the underlined character. For example, if you are reviewing cards that are 'standard pairs', you can 'click' the Display the Answer button by typing Alt-d and enter the result (Correct or Incorrect) by typing Alt-c or Alt-i. Try this approach the next time you're reviewing a study file and see if it doesn't speed things up a bit. Another class of shortcut key is invoked by holding down the Ctrl key and typing a letter. You're probably familiar with the standard Windows shortcut combinations for Copy, Cut and Paste: Ctrl-c, Ctrl-x and Ctrl-v. Here's the complete list of WinFlash-specific shortcut keys from the Help topic Shortcut Keys and Buttons: Shortcut Keys Ctrl-a - Opens the current study file to the current Q&A pair in the WinFlash editor Ctrl-b - Toggle Browse Mode Ctrl-d - Initiates a Copy Pair operation Ctrl-e - Opens the current study file to Q&A pair 1 in the editor Ctrl-Alt-f - Moves to the first Q&A pair in the editor Ctrl-g - Opens the Go To Pair dialog box or, if the editor is open, moves the cursor into the edit box for entering the Q&A pair to jump to. In either case, Enter will complete the move to the Q&A pair after typing in the pair number Ctrl-h - Clicks the Hint or Comment button in the Question or Answer dialog, respectively. This shortcut is inoperative in test mode. Ctrl-i - Opens the current study file with a new Q&A pair ready to edit in the editor inserted immediately following the current Q&A pair Ctrl-l - Opens the current study file with a new Q&A pair ready to edit in the editor inserted at the end of the file Ctrl-Alt-l - Moves to the final Q&A pair in the editor Ctrl-m - Moves to the memo control in editor Ctrl-n - Moves to next Q&A pair in editor Ctrl-o - Brings up the File|Open dialog Ctrl-p - Moves to previous Q&A pair in editor Ctrl-q - Closes and saves the open study file - this combination is disabled when working in the editor. Ctrl-r - Resets the contents of the status bar. Ctrl-s - Opens the Show MY Answer dialog if Answer dialog is open and the Show MY Answer speed button is enabled. Short Cut Keys for Text Editing Ctrl-Right Arrow - Moves cursor one word to the right. Ctrl-Left Arrow - Moves cursor one word to the left. Ctrl-Shift-Right Arrow - Selects from cursor position to end of word. Ctrl-Shift-Left Arrow - Selects from cursor position to beginning of word. Ctrl-a - Selects all text in the current edit box. Ctrl-b - Applies the bold style to all selected text in the current edit box. Ctrl-i - Applies the italics style to all selected text in the current edit box. Ctrl-u - Applies the underline style to all selected text in the current edit box. Ctrl-c - Copies selected text to the clipboard. Ctrl-x - Copies selected text to the clipboard and deletes the selected text from the source location. Ctrl-v - Pastes the text on the clipboard at the cursor location - WITH any font style information from the source. Ctrl-Alt-v - Pastes the text on the clipboard at the cursor location - WITHOUT any font style information from the source. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you have earned free upgrades to v11 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v11 if you haven't upgraded yet or v12 when it's released if you're already at v11). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing the order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 4) Study Tip - Jumpstart New Pairs added to Leitner Deck When we are using a study file in the Leitner mode for ongoing mastery of an information set, we may periodically wish to add some new pairs. We don't want to change the overall Leitner settings for the deck because that will modify the due dates for the existing pairs. To get a jumpstart on the new pairs (assumed to be in Bin 1 to start) try the following: 1. Set Options|Q&A Modes|Mode Specific Settings|Wait one day before repeating missed pairs to Unchecked. 2. As you run through the new pairs - mark them incorrect, even though you may have gotten them right. This will keep returning them to Box 1. Because of the setting you made in 1., these pairs will keep recycling through as long as you keep marking them as incorrect. 3. Only treat the new pairs in this manner. Answer any old pairs in the normal fashion. 4. After a few sessions where you run through the new pairs a couple of times before quitting, and after you feel you have a good short-term grasp of the new pairs, go ahead and mark them correct when you know them. This will promote them to Box 2, to join their compatriots in the normal rotation. 5. Return the option that you set in 1. to its original setting. Personally, I prefer it unchecked. That way on regular pairs I am asked a missed pair again in the current session which I feel helps reestablish mastery of the pair. V12 has a new option which improves the above scenario - Do not promote Box 1 pairs. When checked you can then freely mark the pairs right or wrong (so the stats will be correct) but they won't be moved to Box 2 until you uncheck this option. --------------------------------------------------- 5) How To - Install a Foreign-language Keyboard Mapping Note: To read this section with the included screen graphics, go to the web-based help article here: http://www.openwindow.com/helpfile/index.html and select Foreign Language Keyboard Setup in the alphabetized index. To add another language to your computer's repertoire open Control Panel and select Regional and Language Options. Now select the Languages tab (Keyboards and Languages in Vista) and click the Details button (Change Keyboards... in Vista). Next click the Add... button and select the language you wish to add in the top drop-down list from the Add Input Language dialog that appears and click OK. Again, Vista is a little different - select the language from the list (in our example we'll use Russian, then click on the Keyboard entry below "Russian" and select the checkbox saying "Russian". Vista also allows you to click the Preview button to see how the keys will be assigned to the keyboard when it is set to Russian. Now click the Apply button to save these new settings. Then click the Key Settings button which will show you that in order to switch back and forth between Russian and English you simply type the LeftAlt-Shift combination (LeftAlt is the key labeled Alt to the left of the space bar). Click the OK button to finalize the addition of the new language to your computer. Let's try it out! Open a new study file in WinFlash (see Quickly create a text-based study file in Help if you aren't already familiar with this procedure). For the first Question text type "Now is the time for all good men", now click into the Answer's edit area. Before typing, hit the LeftAlt-Shift combination and then type "To come to the aid of their party." Instead of the English characters, you'll see the foreign language characters generated by those keystrokes. This is all well and good - but how do I know which key types which Russian character? The best solution I've found is the following article on Wikipedia.org which shows pictures of the keyboard layouts for most common languages. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout to view this article and while there print out the section of the article which contains your keyboard of interest. You can then use this for reference when learning to type in your new language! We have enhanced the use of keyboard mappings in the upcoming v12 by allowing you to set a 'default' keyboard for the Questions and a separate one for the Answers. The program will then automatically switch to the proper keyboard mapping when you are entering text into one of the edit boxes. --------------------------------------------------- 6) In-line Program Updates Since the Last Newsletter There have been no new updates of v11 since our last newsletter. v11.00.05 is the current version for WinFlash Basic and Scholar. WinFlash Educator is at v11.00.06. The 11.00.05 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected Subject Outline for locales where '-' is used as the date separator 2. Positioned cursor at last used file when opening Subject Outline 3. Fixed problem with Unicode characters in checking FIB answers 4. Corrected problem in Create Composite File when checking for duplicates 5. Added section in Help file addressing Foreign Language study 6. Made help section on exporting text to speech to .mp3 files easier to locate The 11.00.06 update to WinFlash Educator ONLY addresses the following issues: 1. Fixed issue causing the program to crash when using Text-to-speech with study files where there was no text in some of the Q's and/or A's 2. Added code to use the correct Text-to-speech voice when reading Q's and A's in the Answer First mode 3. Corrected bug causing ALL pairs to be placed in Bin 1 when switching BACK from Use Bin 0 in Leitner Mode 4. Updated code for cancelling an Audio Export so that it does so cleanly. 5. Added code to properly place Flashcard Exchange imported pairs in Bin 0 if this feature is selected when importing --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 (c) 2011 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Fall 2010 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash v12 Suggestion Contest Continues 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Leitner Box 0 Pool 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 4) Study Tip - Learn the Q&A Relationships BOTH Ways 5) How To - Easily Create Spelling Decks Using Text-To-Speech (Educator Only) 6) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v12 Suggestion Contest We're still working on the v12 upgrade, so we're keeping the suggestion contest open for further requests. We'll give a free upgrade to v12 for the 5 best suggestions that aren't already in our very large stack of requests. By "best" we mean improvements that will be valuable to a large percentage of users, and that are implementable with a reasonable investment in coding time for the value of the improvement. Please consider these two measures when contemplating a suggestion. We often receive suggestions that are SO specific to a particular, unusual, application of the program that they simply don't justify the effort necessary to add them. An example of this type of suggestion is "I'd like to have the next question displayed determined by how I answer the current question" - i.e. programmable branching within the study file. While this might be useful to a few individuals, the vast majority of users would never spend the necessary time to set up the branching logic. --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Leitner Box 0 Pool If you're planning to use the Leitner System (definitely our favorite) for mastering a large body of knowledge, we think you'll find the Box 0 Pool feature to be quite useful. Let's say you have 500 anatomy definitions to memorize by the end of the term. If you build your deck and start with the normal Leitner mode, you'll find you immediately have 500 pairs due... A bit daunting... Using the Box 0 Pool, newly-created and imported pairs are placed in Box 0. At the first opening of the study file each day, the status of the file is analyzed to determine how many (if any) pairs should be moved from the Box 0 holding area into Box 1 - available for study. The settings that control enabling and using Box 0 are accessible in Options. First set the file to Leitner mode in Options|Q&A Modes, then click on the Mode Specific Settings button which will bring up a two-tab dialog controlling operation of the Leitner mode. Click on the Pool (Box 0) Settings tab to access these controls. Below is a description of each setting on this panel (from the Help file). Open one of your Leitner decks and access this panel to follow along while reading the descriptions. Box 0 Use Depending on which radio button is selected, new pairs will be placed in box 1 (due immediately) or in box 0 (due based on the rest of the options on the Pool Settings tab). Pairs created in the editor can be steered to either box when this latter option is selected. Box 0 Controls Maximum Pairs Added... This value sets a maximum number of pairs to transfer into box 1 at the beginning of each day's first study session. Maximum Total of Day's Due Pairs... This value sets a maximum total of new and previously due pairs. In the dialog above, the Maximum Pairs Added is set to 10 and the Maximum Total Pairs to 50. For these values, if there were 46 due pairs when the session was started, 4 more pairs would be moved from box 0 into box 1, giving a total number of pairs due for that session of 50. If there were already 55 pairs due for the session, no new pairs would be added. I.e. this value does not limit the number of pairs due - it simply sets a threshold above which no new pairs will be added. Choose Pairs to Transfer... This selection chooses whether pairs are added into box 1 in the order that they were created or at random from all pairs in box 0. Transfer __ Pairs Immediately... After entering a number here, pressing the Transfer button will immediately move that number of pairs from box 0 into box 1. Reset All Pairs In This File To Box 0 This allows all Q&A pairs to be reset to box 0. An 'Are You Sure?' message will be displayed after pressing this button, as the operation cannot be undone once completed. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you have earned free upgrades to v11 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v11 if you haven't upgraded yet or v12 when it's released if you're already at v11). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing the order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 4) Study Tip - Learn the Q&A Relationships BOTH Ways What's this mean?? Simply that you'll have a much firmer grip on the material if you master the study file with the A First followed by Q option enabled and set to Random. As an example, consider a geography pair on state capitals - New Hampshire/Concord. If you study with the A First option enabled, sometimes the Question will appear as Concord, requiring you to answer with New Hampshire. Learning this relationship in both directions creates a firm grasp of the fact in your memory. Most subjects can be studied in this manner and you'll reap the benefit come exam time! --------------------------------------------------- 5) How To - Easily Create Spelling Decks Using Text-To-Speech (Educator Only) We've previously discussed using Educator's built-in recording capability to generate the audio question for spelling decks. Here's a much quicker approach that employs the text-to-speech capability in Educator. 1. Create a new study file using File|New. 2. Using the Quick Deck panel in the Editor, enter each spelling word as a pair where the question and answer are the same - e.g. Aardvark, Aardvark. When you've entered all of your words, click Save and then close the editor. 3. Choose Options|Q&A Modes|Settings Common To All Modes|Automatic fill-in-the-blank from Standard Pairs. 4. Turn on text-to-speech. If you don't want the answer read when it's displayed, uncheck Enable Answer TTS on the Options|Speech panel. 5. Here's the trick - in Options|Colors and Fonts, change the background color of the Questions to black. This will make the text of the question invisible. You'll now have a deck which will 'read' your spelling word as the question. Then, after you type your answer into the fill-in section and hit 'Enter' or click the 'Check' button with the mouse, the answer will be displayed along with the indication of whether you got it right or not. Consider using Educator's Cheers and Jeers feature to add a little audio fun to the exercise. --------------------------------------------------- 6) In-line Program Updates Since the Last Newsletter v11.00.05 is still the current version for WinFlash Basic and Scholar. WinFlash Educator is at v11.00.06. The 11.00.05 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected Subject Outline for locales where '-' is used as the date separator 2. Positioned cursor at last used file when opening Subject Outline 3. Fixed problem with Unicode characters in checking FIB answers 4. Corrected problem in Create Composite File when checking for duplicates 5. Added section in Help file addressing Foreign Language study 6. Made help section on exporting text to speech to .mp3 files easier to locate The 11.00.06 update to WinFlash Educator ONLY addresses the following issues: 1. Fixed issue causing the program to crash when using Text-to-speech with study files where there was no text in some of the Q's and/or A's 2. Added code to use the correct Text-to-speech voice when reading Q's and A's in the Answer First mode 3. Corrected bug causing ALL pairs to be placed in Bin 1 when switching BACK from Use Bin 0 in Leitner Mode 4. Updated code for cancelling an Audio Export so that it does so cleanly. 5. Added code to properly place Flashcard Exchange imported pairs in Bin 0 if this feature is selected when importing --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 (c) 2010 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Spring 2010 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash v12 Suggestion Contest 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Advanced Statistics (Educator Only) 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 4) Study Tip - Review Your Notes Too 5) How To - Backup Your Study Files 6) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v12 Suggestion Contest The results of the contest that we ran during the development of v11 were so useful that we've decided to do a repeat during v12's development cycle. We'll give a free upgrade to v12 for the 5 best suggestions that aren't already in our very large stack of requests. By "best" we mean improvements that will be valuable to a large percentage of users, and that are implementable with a reasonable investment in coding time for the value of the improvement. Please consider these two measures when contemplating a suggestion. We often receive suggestions that are SO specific to a particular, unusual, application of the program that they simply don't justify the effort necessary to add them. An example of this type of suggestion is "I'd like to have the next question displayed determined by how I answer the current question" - i.e. programmable branching within the study file. While this might be useful to a few individuals, the vast majority of users would never spend the necessary time to set up the branching logic. --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Advanced Statistics (Educator Only) One of Educator's powerful tools, Advanced Statistics, can be used both to see how you're doing with your study file as well as to provide insight into where you might need to focus more study effort. The Advanced Statistics display can be accessed by right-clicking on either the Question or Answer dialog when the study file is open and selecting File Statistics... from the popup menu, or by selecting the study file in the Subject Outline display and clicking the Statistics for Selected File button. Either action brings up the Summary Statistics display. Click the Advanced... button at the bottom of this display and the Advanced Statistics display will open. The information can be displayed for each pair or summarized by category. It can also be sorted by pressing the Sort... button at the top and selecting the name of the column you wish to sort by from the list displayed. Using this feature you can, for instance, see what pairs are coming up in the near future if you're using the Leitner Study mode - just sort on Due Date, choosing Ascending as the sort direction. Give the Advanced Statistics tool a try and you'll find it both useful and informative! --------------------------------------------------- 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you have earned free upgrades to v11 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v11 if you haven't upgraded yet or v12 when it's released if you're already at v11). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing the order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 4) Study Tip - Review Your Notes Too While we are very confident in WinFlash's ability to help you master memory-intensive material efficiently, you shouldn't use WinFlash to the exclusion of reviewing your class notes. Periodic review of your notes will help you tie together the various facts that you're studying with WinFlash and provide a logical framework that associates these facts to each other. --------------------------------------------------- 5) How To - Backup Your Study Files We hate getting notes from our users that they've had a computer crash and have lost their study files. These files represent a lot of time and effort and sometimes their loss can compromise studying for an upcoming exam. To avoid this issue you need to have copies of your study files stored on some form of removeable media that won't be lost or damaged if your computer has a sudden meltdown. While both Scholar and Educator contain a backup tool on their respective Scholar and Educator menus, this simply places a copy of the currently-open study file (and its associated support files) in the same directory as the open file. This gives you a copy you can 'revert' to if you encounter problems working with the original, but will NOT help you if you have a complete hard drive failure that makes your entire disk inaccessible. If you've arranged your study files so that they are all in individual subdirectories of a single top directory - e.g. My WinFlash Files - backing up to a CD-ROM is quite easy (See the Help File topic How Do I... Organize My Study Files for more detail on this). Assuming your computer has a writable CD-ROM drive, you can simply set this up to burn the contents of My WinFlash Files and all of its subdirectories to a CD. Once done, store the CD in a safe place and you can always reload your data current to the date of the CD. If you do a backup every week or two, you'll never lose very much work in the event of a computer crash. Even better, ALSO copy your e-mail files, word .docs and other valuable data when you backup your WinFlash study files. If you have a writable DVD drive you can probably fit ALL of your important data on a single disk. --------------------------------------------------- 6) In-line Program Updates Since the Last Newsletter There have been no updates since the last newsletter. v11.00.05 is still the current version. The 11.00.05 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected Subject Outline for locales where '-' is used as the date separator 2. Positioned cursor at last used file when opening Subject Outline 3. Fixed problem with Unicode characters in checking FIB answers 4. Corrected problem in Create Composite File when checking for duplicates 5. Added section in Help file addressing Foreign Language study 6. Made help section on exporting text to speech to .mp3 files easier to locate --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 (c) 2010 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Fall 2009 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Exporting Audio Files 2) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 3) Study Tip - Don't Waste Mini-opportunities for Study 4) How To - Get Text-to-speech to Read a Foreign Language 5) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Exporting Audio Files Exporting audio versions of your study files using WinFlash Educator can help you turn commute time, waiting time and other such opportunities into productive study time. The latest version of Educator has several improvements that make audio file export more flexible - we'll discuss these in this feature highlight. To export an audio file you'll first want to set up the Text-to-Speech capabilities for your file by accessing Options|Speech while the study file is open. See the Speech topic in Help for more detail on these settings. Once you have the Text-to-Speech settings adjusted to your liking on the PC, you can output your audio file(s) by selecting Export Content... from the Educator menu. Select Sound File - Text-To-Speech as the export format in the drop-down selection box in the upper left of the Exporting from Source File dialog that appears. This will enable the Text-to-speech Settings area in the right half of the dialog where you will make the rest of your choices. Output can now be either a single audio file for all the pairs selected by the Output Filtering settings or a separate audio file for each pair. The latter choice allows you to use your audio player's shuffle feature to study the files in random order. Most people will wish to use the .mp3-format output, since even at the High Quality it produces much smaller files than the .wav output. Simple audio file outputs can be specified using the Pair Settings selections. You can include associated audio files that go with the pairs by checking the Include check boxes. If your pairs have no audio files associated with them, this setting is simply ignored. Select the pause settings you want, click OK and your audio file(s) will be exported with the name given in the final dialog box that will appear. You don't need to include the .mp3 or .wav extension - this will be added by the program. Using the Pair Settings approach, you'll always get an output of the form Question Text-to-speech, pause, Question Audio File (if present and selected in Settings), pause, Answer Text-to-speech, pause, Answer Audio File (if present and selected in Settings). If this is just what you want - excellent. If, however, you'd like the output arranged differently, you'll want to use the Pair Code approach. Checking the Use Information in Pair Code check box disables the Pair Settings section and enables the edit box in the Pair Code section. By entering easy-to-use codes in this edit box you can achieve a wide range of output arrangements. Let's say you'd like to have the Answers read first followed by the Question - emulating the 'Answer First' option used in regular PC study mode. You'd just need to enter AT 5 QT 5 to get the Answer Text-to-speech, 5-second pause, Question Text-to-speech, 5 second pause. If your deck has associated audio files with the answer that you'd like to include you could enter AT 5 AA 5 QT 5 Or a more complex arrangement, in normal order, where the question is repeated after hearing the answer QT 5 AT 5 QT 5 Here's the full listing of the codes: QT - Question text AT - Answer text QA - Question audio file AA - Answer audio file Whole Numbers - A pause of that number of seconds Note: It's a good idea to try out the above on a small file - something fewer than 10 pairs - before moving on to large files. The output of study files in the 100's to 1000's of pairs can take considerable time, so you'll want to be sure you have all the settings the way you like them before exporting larger files. --------------------------------------------------- 2) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you have earned free upgrades to v11 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v11 if you haven't upgraded yet or v12 when it's released if you're already at v11). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing the order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 3) Study Tip - Don't Waste Mini-opportunities for Study There are many opportunities to make a bit of progress with your studies that may seem too short to bother with. Maybe you're waiting to check out at the store - probably three or four minutes for the checker to finish the two people ahead of you. Fire up HandyCards on your PDA or switch your iPod to your Spanish Verbs playlist and use those minutes! Making a habit of claiming these otherwise-wasted minutes will add up to big gains in your studies - all from time that would otherwise have gone unused. --------------------------------------------------- 4) How To - Get Text-to-speech To Read a Foreign Language One of the biggest applications of WinFlash is foreign language study - especially vocabulary. Wouldn't it be nice if you could get text-to-speech to read your vocabulary words to you and be able to output them as audio files as discussed in the first item in this newsletter? If you're studying French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish there's an easy (and free) way to add this capability! First, you'll need to install the SAPI4 engine on your computer. This is compatible with the newer SAPI5 and both can be accessed by Educator's text-to-speech capability. You can download the installer for SAPI4 from our voices downloads page here: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/voices.htm After installing SAPI4 on your computer and checking out that it is functional by testing it in the Speech tab, you can download and install Dutch, British English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish from the link above. To complete the task, just select the proper foreign voice from Educator's Options|Speech tab to associate with the Answers (assuming your foreign words are the answers and the English words the questions). --------------------------------------------------- 5) In-line Program Updates Since the Last Newsletter The 11.00.05 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected Subject Outline for locales where '-' is used as the date separator 2. Positioned cursor at last used file when opening Subject Outline 3. Fixed problem with Unicode characters in checking FIB answers 4. Corrected problem in Create Composite File when checking for duplicates 5. Added section in Help file addressing Foreign Language study 6. Made help section on exporting text to speech to .mp3 files easier to locate --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 (c) 2009 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Spring/Summer 2009 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash v11 Released 2) WinFlash v11 Feature Review 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 4) Study Tip - Take Breaks While Studying 5) How To - Get the Most Out of Glossary Buttons 6) Study Tip - Continue Leitner Review of Languages Over the Summer 7) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v11 Released We released the .00 version of WinFlash v11 shortly after our last newsletter was published. We're very pleased with the high rate of upgrades from our existing users. Thank you for continuing to support the development of the WinFlash programs! For those of you who've not yet upgraded, we've included a review of the new features in the next section. Remember, upgrade pricing is only $7.95, $11.95 and $15.95 from an older version of Basic, Scholar and Educator, respectively, to the corresponding v11 program. --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash v11 Feature Review Here's a look at what we've added to v11. The following new features are available in all three WinFlash versions: * Categories - Maximum number of Categories increased to 200 * Leitner Box 0 Pool - The pool allows adjustable feeding of new pairs into active use * Leitner Missed Pairs - Choose to have Leitner missed pairs repeated until promoted or not repeated until the next day * Skip It... - A Skip button has been added to all Question dialogs allowing you to postpone answering the current pair without penalty. Can be disabled if desired * Editor Panel Splitters - Splitters have been added to the editor's Question Text, Answer Text, Hints/Comments and QuickDeck panels. Arrange each panel to apportion the space where you most need it * Subscript/Superscript - Access Subscript/Superscript functionality directly from two new speed buttons in the editor * Paste Special - Paste Special (unformatted) added to editor right-click menu * Additional Editor Browse Buttons - First and Last buttons have been added to the editor's Previous and Next buttons grouped in the same area and ordered as First,Previous,Next,Last * Enhanced Character-inserter - The inserter can access all fonts and characters available on your computer - now it's automatically set to the font where the cursor is positioned * Paste-from-clipboard Graphics - Quality vs file size of paste-from-clipboard graphics can be adjusted on the Associated Files tab * Used File Paths - Option for full/short/filename only paths in Used Files list - toggle entry on File menu * Multiple Monitor Displays - WinFlash is now compatible with use on multiple-monitor display systems --------------------------------------------------- The following new features are available in WinFlash Scholar and Educator: * Unicode Glossary Buttons - Glossary Buttons have been enhanced to accept Unicode characters * Leitner Box Status - Pairs' Leitner box status is now displayed in the editor's Table View - you can edit the box value by double-clicking on it * Table View Sorting - The editor's Table View can now be sorted by any desired column - including Category and Leitner Box --------------------------------------------------- The following new features are available in WinFlash Educator: * SAPI5 - The improved quality of SAPI5 is now supported in Educator's text-to-speech (TTS) functionality * Independent TTS Engines for Q & A - Independent engines can be assigned to the Questions and Answers. This allows, for example, an English-optimized engine to be used for the Questions and a German-optimized engine to be used for the Answers. TTS for Question and Answer can be enabled independently and the engine for reading the Intro TTS can be selected to be either of the two engines * TTS Export - TTS can now be exported to a single file or file per pair. The output can be programmed for any combination of QText, AText, QAudioFile and AAudioFile giving total flexibility in exporting your content for audio study * Pop Up Mode - When enabled, WinFlash minimizes itself after each completed pair, popping up with a new pair after a programmable interval. Generate a continuing stream of Q&A's while working on other projects * Study Session Timer - Session elapsed time optionally shown on main window. More comprehensive data on study time is displayed in the Advanced Statistics for the file * Advanced Statistics Sorting - Advanced Statistics can now be sorted by any desired column - including Category and Leitner Box * Direct-record Mp3 - Store your audio recordings as either .wav or .mp3 format with three-level quality selection * Audio for Introduction - A recorded file may now be stored for the Introduction Note: Old .FLS and .FLU files will work just fine with v11. Simply open them with the new program and the new entries for the .FLD file will be automatically created the first time you open the file in v11. However, files created with v11 may NOT be compatible when used with older versions. See Backward Compatibility in the help file for detailed information on this topic. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you have earned free upgrades to v11 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v11 if you haven't upgraded yet or v12 when it's released if you're already at v11). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing the order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 4) Study Tip - Take Breaks While Studying Avoid that zombie feeling by taking short breaks when you're studying. If you have to close out of WinFlash for a while, use the Options|Q&A Modes|Settings Common To All Modes|Resume Previous Session on Opening Study File setting. This will keep your place for you so you won't need to start over when you reopen the study file after a bracing walk around the block for some air. --------------------------------------------------- 5) How To - Get the Most Out of Glossary Buttons Many users who are not using WinFlash to study foreign languages assume that the Glossary Buttons aren't useful in their use of WinFlash. While it's true that the example in the help file shows the buttons being programmed with accented characters such as those that would be used in the study of the French language, glossary buttons can be used for much more than this! Let's say you're creating a study file to help you learn the capitals of each state. Open the Glossary Editor by clicking the Edit Buttons... button on the Question tab of the editor. Then enter "What is the capital of ?" (without the quotes) in the Button 1 edit box. Change the Button Face Labels selection to First Two Characters to help remember what's on the button. Now click OK and you'll be returned to the editor. The label on the first button will now read "Wh". Select any unwanted text in the Text For Question edit area and then click the "Wh" button. It will insert the string "What is the capital of ?" into the edit area and all you need to do is click just behind the question mark and type in the state for the question. Whenever you're faced with repetitively entering large portions of each pair's content, consider using the Glossary Buttons to help you out. --------------------------------------------------- 6) Study Tip - Continue Leitner Review of Languages Over the Summer (This tip is a repeat from a previous newsletter - for our newer users who didn't catch it the first time around) Many of you use WinFlash to learn and maintain fluency in a foreign language. For most language students, this endeavor spans multiple school years. You'll do yourself a huge favor by NOT letting your WinFlash language files gather electronic dust over the summer vacation. With the Leitner system's highly efficient use of study time, you can review your files every week or so for half an hour and continue to maintain and improve your vocabulary. Since you aren't adding new words, the time invested in this maintenance operation is minimal and will pay big dividends when the fall semester starts! --------------------------------------------------- 7) In-line Program Updates Since the Last Newsletter The 11.00.04 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Popup mode is now turned off when accessing Editor 2. Superfluous display of previous answer in Popup mode is corrected 3. Disabled menu items first when closing file 4. Title bar information is now correct in .flr file results display 5. Speech sliders now correctly update tooltip on slider movement 6. Major corrections and enhancements were made to Glossary Button capabilities 7. Made the Organizing Your Study Files help topic easier to locate 8. Clarified Run Pair by renaming to Preview Pair 9. Corrected button location problem when character inserter was resized The 11.00.03 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issue: 1. Corrected bug which could cause the program to hang under certain circumstances when the editor was closed using the red button on the title bar rather than the 'Close' button in the main body of the editor The 11.00.02 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected gFlash export problem with incorrect extension 2. Added export support for older HandyCards For PalmOS v1.x programs 3. Added 'persistence' for Used Files filename format selection The 11.00.01 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected program error caused by pressing glossary button when cursor was not in edit box 2. Added import/export support for gFlash for iPhone and BlackBerry The 11.00.00 update to all WinFlash versions is the initial release --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 (c) 2009 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Winter 2009 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash v11 Suggestion Contest Winners 2) WinFlash v11 Preview 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 4) Study Tip - Cramming 5) How To - Use Scheduled Tasks to Run Study Files 6) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v11 Suggestion Contest Winners Thanks to all of you who sent in suggestions for additional features to add to v11. Here's the list of winners who will receive a free upgrade to v11 when it comes out around the end of Q1. These suggestions lean heavily towards 'bang for the buck' - i.e. a significant increase in usability for a moderate expenditure of programming effort. Manuj Chandra - Enable the Subject Outline to access files located on a network drive. Tim Mahon - Add SAPI5 capability to Text-to-Speech and allow each question and answer pair to be exported as an individual file. Ingo Thomas - Combine the Start and Stop buttons in the editor's Recorder into a single button and assign a keyboard shortcut to the key. Also several other suggestions relating to TTS export that are incorporated in v11. James Ryan - Show Categories in the editor's Table View. Fred Johnston - A mode where WinFlash automatically pops up and asks a pair periodically, remaining minimized otherwise. There were MANY interesting and useful suggestions submitted. Pieces of some may appear in later upgrades. --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash v11 Preview We're currently beta-testing v11 and editing/expanding the Help file to accompany the new release. We hope to launch v11 around the end of Q1. Here's a look at what to expect derived from the What's New in V11 topic in the new Help file: The following new features are available in all three WinFlash versions: * Categories - Maximum number of Categories increased to 200 * Leitner Box 0 Pool - The pool allows adjustable feeding of new pairs into active use * Leitner Missed Pairs - Choose to have Leitner missed pairs repeated until promoted or not repeated until the next day * Skip It... - A Skip button has been added to all Question dialogs allowing you to postpone answering the current pair without penalty. Can be disabled if desired * Editor Panel Splitters - Splitters have been added to the editor's Question Text, Answer Text, Hints/Comments and QuickDeck panels. Arrange each panel to apportion the space where you most need it * Subscript/Superscript - Access Subscript/Superscript functionality directly from two new speed buttons in the editor * Paste Special - Paste Special (unformatted) added to editor right-click menu * Additional Editor Browse Buttons - First and Last buttons have been added to the editor's Previous and Next buttons grouped in the same area and ordered as First,Previous,Next,Last * Enhanced Character-inserter - The inserter can access all fonts and characters available on your computer - now it's automatically set to the font where the cursor is positioned * Paste-from-clipboard Graphics - Quality vs file size of paste-from-clipboard graphics can be adjusted on the Associated Files tab * Used File Paths - Option for full/short/filename only paths in Used Files list - toggle entry on File menu * Multiple Monitor Displays - WinFlash is now compatible with use on multiple-monitor display systems __________________________________ The following new features are available in WinFlash Scholar and Educator: * Unicode Glossary Buttons - Glossary Buttons have been enhanced to accept Unicode characters * Leitner Box Status - Pairs' Leitner box status is now displayed in the editor's Table View - you can edit the box value by double-clicking on it * Table View Sorting - The editor's Table View can now be sorted by any desired column - including Category and Leitner Box __________________________________ The following new features are available in WinFlash Educator: * SAPI5 - The improved quality of SAPI5 is now supported in Educator's text-to-speech (TTS) functionality * Independent TTS Engines for Q & A - Independent engines can be assigned to the Questions and Answers. This allows, for example, an English-optimized engine to be used for the Questions and a German-optimized engine to be used for the Answers. TTS for Question and Answer can be enabled independently and the engine for reading the Intro TTS can be selected to be either of the two engines * TTS Export - TTS can now be exported to a single file or file per pair. The output can be programmed for any combination of QText, AText, QAudioFile and AAudioFile giving total flexibility in exporting your content for audio study * Pop Up Mode - When enabled, Winflash minimizes itself after each completed pair, popping up with a new pair after a programmable interval. Generate a continuing stream of Q&A's while working on other projects * Study Session Timer - Session elapsed time optionally shown on main window. More comprehensive data on study time is displayed in the Advanced Statistics for the file * Advanced Statistics Sorting - Advanced Statistics can now be sorted by any desired column - including Category and Leitner Box * Direct-record Mp3 - Store your audio recordings as either .wav or .mp3 format with three-level quality selection * Audio for Introduction - A recorded file may now be stored for the Introduction Note: Old .FLS and .FLU files will work just fine with v11. Simply open them with the new program and the new entries for the .FLD file will be automatically created the first time you open the file in v11. However, files created with v11 may NOT be compatible when used with older versions. See Backward Compatibility for detailed information on this topic. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you have earned free upgrades to v10 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v10 if you haven't upgraded yet or v11 when it's released if you're already at v10). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing the order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 4) Study Tip - Cramming (This tip is a repeat from a previous newsletter - for our newer users who didn't catch it the first time around) While we don't recommend cramming as a study mode, who hasn't had to occasionally prepare at the last minute? If you're stuck with learning a week's worth of vocabulary words for Friday morning's test and it's now Thursday night, what's the quickest way? What's needed is a time-compressed version of Frequency Based on History, so that you don't waste time learning words that 'stick' right away. The best way to do this is with the simplest Q&A mode, Ask All Questions Equally Often with a few additional options. Here are the steps and settings needed: 1. Open the study deck and set Options|Q&A Modes to Ask All Questions Equally Often. 2. In Options|Pair Order & Size select Repetition = One Pass 3. Run through the deck and, after the pass is complete, click 'Yes' in Continuation dialog and 'Yes' again in the 'Only Include Missed Pairs? dialog. As you continue to repeat the deck, the 'learned' pairs will drop off while the tough nuts will continue to appear. Once you've gotten all the remaining pairs correct the deck will automatically reset to asking all of the pairs again, letting you review the full set again, working through it until all are answered correctly again. 4. Repeat step 3 until you feel confident you've mastered the deck. You can add variety to the 'cram session' by using the Options|Pair Order & Size|Order = Random setting as well as the features in the Options|Q&A Modes|Settings Common To All Modes grouping. Take an occasional break and don't burn yourself out - and start a little earlier NEXT week :-) Note: WinFlash Basic does not support the 'Run Only Misses From Previous Pass' feature. --------------------------------------------------- 5) How To - Use Scheduled Tasks to Run Study Files The Scheduled Tasks capability in Windows can be a handy way to set aside some time each day to study. The specifics below are for Windows XP, but the facility exists in all versions of Windows. 1. From the Start button, select Settings|Control Panel 2. In Control Panel, double-click on Scheduled Tasks 3. In the Scheduled Tasks window select File|New|Scheduled Task (I'd recommend NOT using the Add Scheduled Task entry in the task list. This invokes the Add Task Wizard which really isn't very helpful.) 4. Enter a name for the task - perhaps the name of your study file 5. Right click on the new entry in the task list and select Properties 6. On the Task tab, browse to your study file and select it (you'll need to select "All Files" in the Files of type: drop-down to see other than .exe files) 7. Select the user in the Run As box - enter the password associated with this user by pressing the Set Password... button 8. On the Schedule tab, set the Start time and whether the task runs daily, etc. 9. The Settings tab has more advanced settings if you wish, but these aren't usually necessary. 10. OK the dialog and enjoy having your study file start up whenever you've scheduled it. You can test that everything's OK with your settings by right-clicking on the task and selecting Run. If the file opens up in WinFlash you're all set. If not, review the settings again. --------------------------------------------------- 6) In-line Program Updates Since the Last Newsletter 10.10.07 remains the latest update to v10.1. If you're running something older than v10.10.05, you're missing out on some nice improvements in the 'look' of the program - "Complete icon facelift throughout the program" The 10.10.07 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Reset TextToSpeechOn to 0 if SpeechInstalled = False 2. Fixed Cheers & Jeers crash that appeared in 10.10.06 --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 (c) 2009 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Fall 2008 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash v11 Suggestion Contest 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Open In Editor 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 4) Study Tip - Study With Music 5) How To - Set Up a Home Network for Kids 6) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v11 Suggestion Contest We're still working away on WinFlash v11. Depending on how smoothly development and testing proceeds, v11 will be released sometime in Q1 or Q2 of 2009. Still plenty of time to get your suggestions in and get one of the free upgrades to v11 that will be given to the best 5 suggestions received. By "best" we mean improvements that will be valuable to a large percentage of users, and that are implementable with a reasonable investment in coding time for the value of the improvement. Please consider these two measures when contemplating a suggestion. We often receive suggestions that are SO specific to a particular, unusual, application of the program that they just don't justify the effort necessary to add them. An example of this type of suggestion is "I'd like to have the next question displayed determined by how I answer the current question" - i.e. programmable branching within the study file. While this might be useful to a few individuals, the vast majority of users would never spend the necessary time to set up the branching logic. --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Open In Editor For those of you using the Leitner system mode for your studies, this is an especially important feature. If you have added your study file(s) to the Subject Outline (see this topic in Help for more information) you know that the next due date for review of a Leitner study file is displayed at the end of the path name of the study file. But what if the file isn't due yet and you want to add some new pairs to the file? If you open the file by the regular method, you'll get that irritating "The file's current range has no pairs due for review..." message. Here's where the Open In Editor feature comes in. If you're in Subject Outline, simply right-click the file you wish to open and select Open Selected File In Editor from the pop-up menu that appears. Whether it's due or not, your Leitner deck will open up in the Editor, ready to be worked on. You can also access this feature by selecting File|Open In Editor from the main menu and picking the file with the regular Open dialog that appears. As an additional note, get used to right-clicking in WinFlash when you're working with the program - you'll find that the menu that pops up often has a single-click access to the task you want to perform. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you have earned free upgrades to v10 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v10 if you haven't upgraded yet or v11 when it comes along if you're already at v10). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing the order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 4) Study Tip - Study With Music We're not talking head-banging heavy metal here. But research has suggested that any adjustment to the study environment that can make the student more relaxed and comfortable has a positive effect on the effectiveness of the session. This would include physical comfort such as one's chair or sofa and the temperature of the room. Light classical background music also enhances the session, especially with language learning. See this link for a further discussion of the theory, known as desuggestopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suggestopedia --------------------------------------------------- 5) How To - Set Up a Home Network for Kids For home users our license allows installing a single copy on each machine that you personally own, so you can put Educator on your kids' machine(s) and then, if you wish, lock down the Educator and/or Options settings with a password. If you're networked, the study files can be on your machine and accessed by the kids over the network. If not, you'll need to copy the files you create to their machines. If they won't be edited by the kids, use compiled .flz and .flt study files. If you do want the kids to be able to edit them use .flu's but create a separate directory for each .flu and put all support files in this directory. That way you can transfer the directory intact to the kids' machines and there'll be no issue with filepaths for support files. --------------------------------------------------- 6) In-line Program Updates Since the Last Newsletter If you're running something older than v10.10.05, you're missing out on some nice improvements in the 'look' of the program - "Complete icon facelift throughout the program" The 10.10.07 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Reset TextToSpeechOn to 0 if SpeechInstalled = False 2. Fixed Cheers & Jeers crash that appeared in 10.10.06 --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 © 2008 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Spring 2008 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash v11 Suggestion Contest 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - One Pass 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 4) Study Tip - Managing Peaks In Due Pairs In Leitner Study Files 5) How To - Choose An Intermediate Format For Data Importation 6) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v11 Suggestion Contest We're actively working on WinFlash v11 and are looking for suggestions from our users. We'll give a free upgrade to v11 to the 5 best suggestions that aren't already in our very large stack of requests. By "best" we mean improvements that will be valuable to a large percentage of users, and that are implementable with a reasonable investment in coding time for the value of the improvement. Please consider these two measures when contemplating a suggestion. We often receive suggestions that are SO specific to a particular, unusual, application of the program that they just don't justify the effort necessary to add them. An example of this type of suggestion is "I'd like to have the next question displayed determined by how I answer the current question" - i.e. programmable branching within the study file. While this might be useful to a few individuals, the vast majority of users would never spend the necessary time to set up the branching logic. --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - One Pass Study files can be set for either Continuous or One Pass repetition in the Options|Pair Order and Size panel. The One Pass option can be advantageously used when studying small decks that you want to learn in a hurry - e.g. cramming for Friday's Spanish vocabulary final. For this purpose, also set the Order to Random on the same panel. At the completion of each pass through the study file you'll be told how many answers were correct and incorrect and asked if you wish to run the file again. If you select Yes, you'll be given the option of only showing the pairs that were answered incorrectly on the just-completed pass. By continuing to re-run only the misses from the previous pass, you'll focus on the pairs giving you trouble. Once you answer all the remaining incorrect pairs from the previous pass correctly, the program will reset and the next pass will again ask ALL the pairs. Try cranking through this process a few times the next time you need to master some content in a hurry. You'll be surprised how effective it is! Note: This feature is not available in WinFlash Basic. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you have earned free upgrades to v10 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v10 if you haven't upgraded yet or v11 when it comes along if you're already at v10). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing the order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 4) Study Tip - Managing Peaks In Due Pairs In Leitner Study Files When using the Leitner System mode with large study files you may encounter a situation when a much larger than usual number of pairs is due on a particular day. This can occur for a number of reasons: 1. You haven't looked at the deck for quite some time and many pairs are overdue - hence all are due today 2. Although you've been doing the pairs every day as they're due, convergence of different intervals for different box numbers results in a large number of pairs from different boxes being due on the same day 3. In an ambitious mood, you did a large number of pairs and promoted them all to the same box on the same day - they're now all due again today Regardless of the reason, you're faced with a daunting number of due pairs given today's available time, ambition level, etc. What to do? Simply do as many pairs as you are prepared to do today - the others will still be waiting tomorrow. By spreading out the bulge of due pairs over a few days you'll decrease the likelihood of future bulges. If you always insist on doing ALL due pairs on the day you encounter them, you'll be prone to a future 'big day' because of reason #3. --------------------------------------------------- 5) How To - Choose An Intermediate Format For Data Importation In our last newsletter we discussed the handling of fonts when importing materials. If this is your key consideration in choosing an intermediate import format, you'll want to review that How To here: http://www.openwindow.com/newsletters/ow20071201.txt If the content you want to import doesn't require specialized font handling - i.e. it is fine if the default Q and A fonts are used - then the following considerations may help you choose between the various intermediate formats. It's always a good idea to use a scrap file as the target to see how the import is going to work out. Make sure your procedure and your data to be imported works correctly before importing data into your valuable working study files! WinFlash Educator can import the following formats - those with an * support importation of Unicode fonts and embedded font effects: - Flashcard Exchange - (.hc extension files) * This is the best format to use when dealing with files downloaded from Flashcard Exchange. You can simply use File|Open to open the .hc file you have downloaded and it will be automatically converted to WinFlash's .flu format. The Educator|Import menu is not needed when using .hc files (though it will still operate correctly). - HandyCards For Palm/PocketPC - (.hc extension text files) If desired, regular HandyCards .hc files can also be imported using File|Open rather than the Educator|Import menu. - JTutor For Palm (.jt extension text files) Specialized format for JTutor files only. - Text File - Excel Export Format (.csv extension text files) If your data is already in Excel, or if it is easy to convert to a text file where the Q and A of each pair are on the same line, separated by a comma, this format is a good choice. Note that any pairs that include commas must be enclosed in double quote marks as in this three-pair example (when exporting from Excel, this is handled automatically): "A question including, for example, two commas",The first answer The second question,"An answer including, for example, two commas" The third question,The third answer - Text File - Two Lines Per Pair (.txt extension text files) The easiest format to construct from scratch - simply put each Q and A on its own line: A question including, for example, two commas The first answer The second question An answer including, for example, two commas The third question The third answer - Text File - User-specified Delimiter (.txt extension text files) If you have more complex data that includes carriage returns within the Q or A you can use this format. In the example we use #$@$ as the delimiter. Note that each pair STARTS with the delimiter and separates the Q and A with the delimiter: #$@$This question has two lines separated by two carriage returns. This is the second line in the question.#$@$This is the answer to Q1. #$@$This question has two lines separated by a single carriage return. This is the second line in the question.#$@$This is the answer to Q2. #$@$This question has a single long line with no carriage returns. This is the second sentence in the question.#$@$This is the answer to Q3. - Windows Clipboard - Tab-separated - One Line Per Pair * If your data is already in a two-column Word table, this format can be used. The program takes more time to import data in this format because of the Unicode and font effects support and large files can take several minutes to import. Be sure to select only two columns of content from the source table and DON'T select the column titles or you'll end up with a Q&A pair whose Q is the title of the first column and whose A is the title of the second column. --------------------------------------------------- 6) In-line Program Updates Since the Last Newsletter If you're running something older than v10.10.05, you're missing out on some nice improvements in the 'look' of the program - "Complete icon facelift throughout the program" The 10.10.06 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected line height issue on opening of Editor's Table View 2. Fixed 'repeated pair' bug when adding or removing pair to/from the Priority List 3. Corrected problem where pressing Help button in the editor closed the editor 4. Added explanatory dialog when program thinks another copy is already running 5. Changed back to DO Show Glossary Buttons as default 6. Added progress bar to Import from Windows Clipboard operation 7. Corrected non-progressing progress bar bug when using default 'Blue Glow' skin The 10.10.05 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Complete icon facelift throughout the program 2. Fixed error caused when returning from editor to a no-longer-existing deck location 3. Repaired location for user-supplied correct and incorrect icons 4. Added line height adjustment when changing font size in Editor's Table View The 10.10.04 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected issue with Find when the search word was a Category name 2. Sped up editor loads and saves for large files 3. Added warning dialog when entering Table View for large files 4. Fixed the Help file which was missing an important 'How To Use Graphics' section in the last release --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 © 2008 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Winter 2007/8 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash v10.10.03 Update 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - All About Fonts 3) 30% Off Holiday Gifts of WinFlash! 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 5) Study Tip - Be Ruthless with Your Leitner Answers 6) How To - Work with Fonts When Importing Material 7) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v10.10.03 Update Usually we don't highlight a release noted only by a change in the right-most of the six digit version number. However, we think that v10.10.03, released on November 28, has enough fixes and additions to warrant a newsletter mention. Some of the noteworthy changes (these include changes first introduced in v10.10.02, released a week earlier): * Incorrect printing of right-to-left text has been corrected * For those folks frustrated with trying to use the outline format in their Q&A's, the necessary Increase and Decrease Indent buttons have been added to the editor * When you click (rather than tab) into an editor box that contains default text, double-click on any one of the words - the editor will now select the default text in its entirety. A small change, but handy * The annoying warning about directly pasting graphics that was generated on EVERY paste from Microsoft Word has been corrected so that it really only flags pastes containing graphics * For heavy users of the Subject Outline, there's now an option that will only open the tree to the first level down when opening the outline dialog. This allows most outline organizations to fit without scrolling * We've added the overlooked "Insert Symbol" button on the multi-answer FIB panel as well as a new spin-edit to change between Glossary Button groups on the fly * Paste Special (Ctrl-Alt-v), for pasting copied text without its original formatting, has been added to the .rtf editor * Problems with the interaction of the Copy, Move and Insert operations have been corrected * A Cancel button and Previous Tip button have been added to the Tips dialog --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - All About Fonts Note: This information is also available in the updated Help file included with v10.10.03. WinFlash supports a complete range of font effects as well as Unicode fonts, with both global and character-level control. Except for the Global Control settings, all other font control options are available only in the standard .flu source file format (introduced in v10.0). The older-style .fls source file format does not support these capabilities. Global Control WinFlash maintains a default font setting for both the question and the answer text. These are initially set to Arial 12-point Black for the questions and Tahoma 12-point Black for the answers. These two settings control which font is used when you enter or edit a pair in the WinFlash Editor. You can change these settings in Options|Colors and Fonts. Important Note: The default fonts for the Q's and A's are intentionally set to two different typefaces initially. This allows them to be modified independently. If they are ever set to the SAME typeface, the distinction between the fonts for the Q's and the A's is lost (for that particular study file) and you cannot then change them independently. If you attempt to set them to the same typeface, WinFlash will show a warning, but will allow you to proceed if you wish. If you are SURE you never wish to have the default font for the Q's be different in any way (including color, size, bolding, etc.) from the default font for the A's it is alright to go ahead and make them the same. Right-To-Left Default Control For study files where either the questions or answers (or both) will be entered in a right-to-left language, set the default text order for the Q's and/or A's to right-to-left by checking the appropriate options in Options|View|Alignment & Q/A Dialog Control. Character-level Control WinFlash allows you to adjust the font settings for sections of text in a number of ways. In all cases you'll need to first select the portion of text for which you wish to adjust the font characteristics. Once you have a section of text selected you can use the editor's vertical row of font effect and alignment buttons to make changes to the text's appearance or, for more exacting control, use the right-click-invoked popup menu. Character-level Control Using Font Effect Buttons The small buttons located in a vertical row in the WinFlash editor can be used to quickly add or remove an effect from the currently-selected text string. They are, in order from top to bottom: Toggle Bold Toggle Italic Toggle Underline Toggle Overline Toggle Strikethrough Shrink One Point Enlarge One Point Change Font Color (select from palette that appears) Change Font Background Color (select from palette that appears) Left Justify Center Right Justify Increase Indent (when using an outline style) Decrease Indent (when using an outline style) Insert Symbol Character-level Control Using Popup Menu Right-clicking with the mouse on a selected text string will bring up a popup menu. Selecting the Font... item will, in turn, bring up the font dialog. This dialog's font tab allows setting many of the most common font attributes. The layout tab will allow more advanced manipulations of the selected text - including adjustment of the vertical offset - used to generate sub and superscript effects. Take a few minutes and experiment with all of the variations that you can achieve using multiple fonts and font effects. Then draw on these possibilities when you're looking for ways to enliven the content of your study files! --------------------------------------------------- 3) 30% Off Holiday Gifts of WinFlash! Here's a gift that can really make a difference for the students on your shopping list! Go here for instructions for obtaining the discount http://www.openwindow.com/pages/xmas.htm --------------------------------------------------- 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you earned free upgrades to v10 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v10 if you haven't upgraded yet or v11 when it comes along if you're already at v10). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing the order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 5) Study Tip - Be Ruthless with Your Leitner Answers It's nice to see your pairs climbing into ever-higher bins when you check your Leitner study file's stats. When using standard pair format or when the Allow Manual Override of Demotion option is set, it's sometimes tempting to tell yourself "Awww - I really knew that - I was just wrong about this or that little detail..." Just "say no" to this temptation and mark it incorrect! If you're running through all the due pairs in the deck, this will give you a chance before you finish to review the pair again, reenforcing the missing piece of info you forgot on the first pass. Assuming you get it on this 'second chance' the pair will hop up into bin two and be on its way back up the ladder - with its content doubly refreshed in your memory. --------------------------------------------------- 6) How To - Work with Fonts When Importing Material It can be a bit confusing to understand the variables affecting how fonts are handled when importing content from other formats. The most important fact to remember is that when content is imported from ANSI text format files the Q's will use the Question Default Font and the A's will use the Answer Default Font. These are set in Options|Colors and Fonts. This covers all cases of importing content except for importing .hc files downloaded from Flashcard Exchange and importing content from the Windows clipboard. When importing .hc file from Flashcard Exchange, the font used will be the Question default font - for both the questions and the answers. Importing from the Windows Clipboard poses the most complex considerations. Since the incoming Q's and A's will maintain the font and font effects settings that they have in the table from which they are copied, this is the best method for importing formatted content. In order to be able to control the fonts in the imported Q's and A's with the WinFlash option settings for the Q and A Default Fonts, you must be certain to set the font face (e.g. Arial) of the column of Q's in the source table to be DIFFERENT from the font face for the column of A's in the source table (e.g. Tahoma). Arial and Tahoma are the initial settings for the default fonts used by WinFlash - see the discussion in 2) above. If you also wish to be able to globally change the color of either the Q or the A fonts, you'll need to be sure the settings for the source font colors are NOT "Automatic" but rather black or some other color. After importing the content, you must 'synchronize' the settings for WinFlash's Q and A default fonts with those of the imported content. Let's say the content has Arial, 12 pt, bold, red for most of the text in the Q's and Times New Roman, 10 pt, black for most of the text in the A's. You'll first need to set the default fonts in Options|Colors & Fonts to these settings and OK the dialog. This will 'synchronize' the content fonts with the WinFlash default fonts. You can then use the settings to make global changes to the Q and A fonts in the material that you have imported. A caution - if you import content by appending to an existing deck and the new content has different 'default' fonts from the ones in the other pairs already in the deck, there's no way to get them in synch with each other short of manually changing all the pairs in the imported section of the deck to match those in the preexisting portion or vice versa. The moral of the story? Don't be too fancy with fonts when you're planning to frequently import material. --------------------------------------------------- 7) Latest In-line Program Updates The 10.10.03 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Added Previous Tip button on Tips dialog 2. Fixed incorrect targeting of Browse button pick in Comments editor page 3. Corrected issues regarding Insert operations following a Move operation 4. Added Glossary Button Group selector spin-edit to the multi-answer FIB answer entry panel 5. Cleaned up interaction between the button face fonts and the other fonts on the multi-answer FIB answer entry panel The 10.10.02 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Glossary Buttons are now NOT shown by default in the Editor and the FIB answer panel 2. The false "graphics warning" when pasting text from Word has been corrected 3. The missing Insert Symbol button has been added to the multi-answer FIB answer entry panel 4. The Subject Outline can now be set to only show the first sub-level of the tree on startup 5. Some Educator Menu item inconsistencies that occurred when the menu was password-protected have been corrected 6. Paste Special (Ctrl-Alt-v) capability has been added to the .rtf editor 7. A cancel button has been added to the tips dialog 8. Select entire 'default text' in Q and A edit boxes in the editor when double-clicking on any word with the mouse 9. Added indent and outdent toolbar buttons to editor allowing full outline functionality 10. Corrected misprinting of right-to-left text in all print operations 11. Fixed incongruity of numbering fonts used in Create Compiled Source File dialog 12. Added section on Font Control in the Help file and made several minor corrections and updates --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 © 2007 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Fall 2007 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash Feature Highlight - AutoMC and AutoFIB from Standard Pairs 2) 25% Off Back-to-school Upgrades 3) Adding Content to Leitner-mode Files When No Pairs Are Due 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 5) Study Tip - Use Notepad to Practice Long-answer Standard Pairs 6) Expansion of Wildflower Study File 7) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash Feature Highlight - AutoMC and AutoFIB from Standard Pairs This highlight is taken from the How Do I Decide Which Pair Types To Use in the How Do I...? section of the Help file's Contents tab. A good place to check when you have a "How Do I...?" question! WinFlash Educator has a very useful option that can automatically generate fill-in-the-blank or multiple-choice Q&A pairs from standard Q&A pairs. This feature is accessed in Options|Q&A Modes. This raises the question "why should I bother to enter 'real' fill-in-the-blank or multiple-choice Q&A pairs when the program will do this automatically?" Maybe you shouldn't. If you're building informal vocabulary files or other topics for personal study, the questions framed by the program's automatic algorithms may be quite sufficient for your use - especially if you make good use of the Categories field when building your files. The program chooses 'wrong' MC answers from within the same category first, thus improving their believability. Here are some reasons why you may want to take the time to enter 'real' FIB and MC Q&A pairs: FIB - You want to allow more than one answer to be accepted as correct - e.g. in the program's Quick Tour demo file the second Q&A pair asks the FIB question "2 + 2 = ?". The answer is programmed to allow either "4" or "four" to be accepted as a correct answer. An automatically generated FIB can only accept one answer as correct - the one given in the standard Q&A pair's Text for Answer field. Thus, if "4" was entered as the answer when constructing the Q&A pair, "four" would be marked incorrect if entered as the FIB answer in study mode. - You want to require multiple entries for a single FIB Q&A pair - e.g. the program's Spanish Vocabulary demo file Q&A pair that asks you to conjugate the verb 'ser'. This type of FIB cannot be auto-generated. MC - You want to make the choices more difficult. The program constructs the auto-generated MCs by using between three and five of the answers for other Q&A pairs to be the wrong answers for the current Q&A pair. The quality of the wrong answers is improved if you use Categories when constructing your file, since the program tries to pick wrong answers from within the same category as the current Q&A pair. - A teacher may wish to tailor the wrong answers to be harder to discern from the correct answers - especially for use in tests. - You want to use the 'multiple correct answer' feature of the real MC function - e.g. the Quick Tour demo file's question about the Boston Tea Party. Auto-generated MC's have one and only one correct answer. --------------------------------------------------- 2) 25% Off Back-to-school Upgrades Are you or your child heading back to class? Upgrade to the latest version and get a 25% discount from the usual upgrade price. Just enter "Back-to-school Discount" in the comments section of the on-line order form! --------------------------------------------------- 3) Adding Content to Leitner-mode Files When No Pairs Are Due Those of you who have been reading our newsletter for a while will remember that we've encouraged users to trust the Leitner-mode scheduling - "Have time to study but there aren't any pairs due today? Read a book, learn a new subject or go out and get some fresh air!!" This was in the 20070201 issue available on the website if you'd like to read the entire article. Unfortunately, earlier versions of the program had a problem when you wanted to add a pair or otherwise edit the deck and no pairs were due. Opening the deck would bring up the 'Leitner Pair Status' dialog offering to switch on the Allow Pairs To Be Asked Before Due option. To get to the editor you had to click "Yes" to this, open the editor, do your edits and then turn the option off again if you wanted to continue to use the Leitner scheduling. Now you can simply open your study file using File|Open in Editor. Leitner-mode files will open directly into the editor whether or not any pairs are due. After completing work in the editor, the file will be re-opened appropriately. If new pairs have been added they will, of course, be due. If not, or if the pairs have been added outside the currently selected range, the Leitner Pair Status box will appear allowing you to close the file. --------------------------------------------------- 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you earned free upgrades to v10 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v10 if you haven't upgraded yet or v11 when it comes along if you're already at v10). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing their order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 5) Study Tip - Use Notepad to Practice Long-answer Standard Pairs One of the uses for the Standard pair type is to ask questions like "Discuss the relative importance of the primary causes for the Civil War." An essay question if I ever saw one :-) If you have files that contain this type of pair this tip is for you! Instead of mumbling to yourself in your head, composing a stream-of-consciousness answer for this weighty assignment, open a copy of Notepad and actually type in your answer. Typing in your answer will let you compose a much better response and also allow you to compare what you've written with the text stored in the answer. You'll be less likely to kid yourself that your mental answer was correct when, in fact, it wasn't really complete or well organized. I strongly believe that typing in an answer (using FIB whenever possible and the above strategy when it's not) is the quickest way to master material. The more senses involved in the study session, the better! --------------------------------------------------- 6) Expansion of Wildflower Study File Over the summer I've been using the library's wildflower study file as a basis for expanding my own study of the local Rocky Mountain wildflowers. The collection is now up to 41 different flowers and I've re-uploaded this file to the library. Many of the flowers are found in other areas of the country as well as Canada, so if you're interested in wildflowers you can use this deck as a starting point for your own collection. Here's the URL for the link to the file on the library page: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/wfusers.htm#Wildflowers --------------------------------------------------- 7) Latest In-line Program Updates The 10.10.01 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected issue where selecting NO in the warning for saving .fls file didn't save as a .flu file as the warning says it will 2. Enhanced QuickDeck so that Shift-Tab moves backwards through the file 3. Corrected hang in Editor when Leitner mode file has Intro and no pairs due 4. Added Warning Dialog when pasting a graphic into the text portion of a file 5. Added code to save Editor's One Line per Pair setting between sessions The 10.10.00 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Disabled ShowMyAnswer button when displaying the answer for Standard Pairs 2. Enhanced the Import from Windows Clipboard mode to handle Unicode and font effects 3. Corrected issue where an overwrite of a file by imported data did not correctly remove some of the support files that had been associated with the overwritten pairs 4. Fixed problem that caused imported text to be difficult to select and edit 5. Fixed similar problem with files created by the Create Composite Source File tool 6. Corrected problems with the server version caused by Vista 7. Fixed problem where a pasted table in Q or A text didn't restore/display properly 8. Fixed crash in Basic and Scholar when creating .fls (old source format) file 9. Fixed problem in filter where the deselected field(s) referenced the wrong attribute 10. Corrected problem in returning from an Open In Editor session in a Leitner-mode file 11. Enabled hyperlinks in regular text for Q and A 12. Fixed the installer so it doesn't remove the uninstall for previous versions of the program 13. Added shortcut keys to toggle Bold, Italic and Underline in editor The 10.00.06 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected problem on some systems where the internal program menu links to Help items and Demo items were non-functional 2. Fixed problem where the Q number did not always match the A number on the first pair displayed after returning from an editing session The 10.00.05 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected problem with saving the audio file associated with the introduction 2. Fixed problem with running study files located on CDROM's 3. Fixed 'Can't locate v10.jpg' error when new file was created immediately after viewing the Unicode demo file 4. Corrected conflict between the Bullets and Numbering dialog and having skins turned on 5. Modified right-click popups in the Editor so that they are consistent, adding the Thesaurus function that was missing from most of them The 10.00.04 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. No longer need to have an 'actual character' in the Q or A - a stand-alone graphic or object will now work correctly 2. Locked out redisplay of Intro when AutoPilot is running 3. Added 'possible delay' warnings when the advance statistics button is pressed and when a print preview is being generated 4. Printer setup can now be called from Produce Printed Test 5. Open to Editor Find and Replace "no more matches" message corrected 6. Modified filtering so priority pairs can be extracted 7. Changed defaults for table/card printing 8. Modified directory usage to run properly on Windows '9x --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 © 2007 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. Open Window Software News --------------------------------------------------- Summer 2007 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange We don't usually send out a newsletter over the summer, but are doing so this time because we feel our most recent update to the WinFlash programs is important enough to bring to your attention. If you use or are planning to use graphics in your study files, please be sure to read Recommendations for Using Graphics in WinFlash as well. Contents: 1) WinFlash v10.1 Released 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Embedded web links 3) Recommendations for Using Graphics in WinFlash 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 5) Study Tip - Keep Your Study Files 'Live' 6) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v10.1 Released V10.1 of the WinFlash programs includes several bug fixes and a couple of significant feature additions. The first new feature is that content can now be imported from Microsoft Word two-column table format and will retain any formatting present in the original document. Since MANY sources of information can be pasted into MS Word in table format, this is a big step forward in being able to handle complex formatting from outside sources. Another feature enhancement is the addition of shortcut keys for the most frequently used font effects. In the editor, simply select the text you wish to format and then type Ctrl-B to make it bold, Ctrl-U to underline it or Ctrl-I to make it italic. Note: there's a known issue with this new capability - you must open the right-click popup window in the editor one time after the first time you open the editor in the session to 'load' these shortcuts. We're working with the component developer to remove this inconvenience and, hopefully will be able to fix it soon. Lastly, we've added the ability to embed web links into the regular Q and A text - a handy feature for referencing web-based documentation in your answers. --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Embedded web links This feature allows you to insert one or more links to external targets - e.g. web pages - in your Questions and Answers. Here's how: 1.Position the cursor at the point you wish to insert the link and right click the mouse. 2. In the popup menu, click Hypertext Link... 3. In the Insert Hyperlink dialog's Text edit box, type the text you wish to appear for the link in the text - e.g. "Click Here". 4. In the Target edit box, type the link you want - e.g. http://www.openwindow.com if you wish the link to start your browser and go to the Open Window web site. However, links don't have to be just web pages - the target could be a Microsoft Word document on your computer - e.g. C:\WordDocs\mywordfile.doc. In this case, when the link is clicked, Word will open with mywordfile.doc loaded. Remember when using this type of link that it likely WON'T work if someone else uses the file on another computer - unless the target file is contained in the same directory as the .flu file. 5. OK the dialog and save the file in the editor as usual. This is a good way to include a great deal of optional information in your deck without actually having it as part of the deck. This can keep the deck fast and manageable while still having access to a huge amount of backup information if it's desired. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Recommendations for Using Graphics in WinFlash Graphics can be included in a study file in several ways: 1. Pasted into the regular text area of a Q or A 2. Pasted or inserted into an .rtf support file with optional text added 3. Pasted from the clipboard into an Editor-generated associated file using the editor's Associated Files panel 4. As an existing graphic file linked to a Q or A using the editor's Associated Files panel 5. Specified to be associated with ALL Q's or A's that do not otherwise have their own graphic associated with them The method used in the Bring On The Multimedia tutorial segment is the fourth in the above list and the Add an Intro and .RTF Support File tutorial segment illustrates the use of the second method. While the first alternative may seem attractively simple, we STRONGLY discourage its use except when the file will contain only one or two graphics entered in this way. Using this approach for files containing many graphics causes the .flu source file to become enormous and can slow editing operations to a crawl. If you want to use graphics by pasting them into the program, we suggest using either methods 2. or 3. If you don't have other reasons for using the .rtf support file, method 3. is probably the best one to use: With the editor open to the pair to which you wish to add the graphic, select the Associated Files panel. Place the graphic you wish to add on the clipboard and click the Paste from Clipboard button in the Associated Files for Question or Associated Files for Answer areas. If you're planning to use already-existing graphics files you can use the fourth method. We suggest putting copies of the graphics files you're going to use in the source file's directory and using a separate directory for each source file. This way you can simply copy the directory anytime you wish to move the project to a new machine. To link a graphic to the given Q or A just browse for the file in the appropriate Associated Files for Question or Associated Files for Answer areas. Lastly, if you'd just like to associate a graphic with each Q and/or A that doesn't have a specific graphic of its own, use Options|View's lower area to browse for or type in filenames for the qraphic(s) to associate with these pairs. --------------------------------------------------- 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you earned free upgrades to v10 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v10 if you haven't upgraded yet or v11 when it comes along if you're already at v10). Just have your friend mention 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 - Keep Your Study Files 'Live' Consider the construction of your study file just the beginning. Even if you have a fixed set of data you're trying to learn, you can enrich the file by adding new interrelationships and associations while you study. You know the feeling - you're looking at the question for a pair for which you know the answer, but you think "Yeah, but what about the case where...". While you have that thought fresh in your mind, just type the shortcut Ctrl-I or right-click on the Question dialog's text and select Insert New Q&A Pair After This One. This will bring up the editor and allow you to add a pair that contains the refinement that you've just conceived. Click Save, then close the editor and continue with your study session. --------------------------------------------------- 6) Latest In-line Program Updates The 10.10.00 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Disabled ShowMyAnswer button when displaying the answer for Standard Pairs 2. Enhanced the Import from Windows Clipboard mode to handle Unicode and font effects 3. Corrected issue where an overwrite of a file by imported data did not correctly remove some of the support files that had been associated with the overwritten pairs 4. Fixed problem that caused imported text to be difficult to select and edit 5. Fixed similar problem with files created by the Create Composite Source File tool 6. Corrected problems with the server version caused by Vista 7. Fixed problem where a pasted table in Q or A text didn't restore/display properly 8. Fixed crash in Basic and Scholar when creating .fls (old source format) file 9. Fixed problem in filter where the deselected field(s) referenced the wrong attribute 10. Corrected problem in returning from an Open In Editor session in a Leitner-mode file 11. Enabled hyperlinks in regular text for Q and A 12. Fixed the installer so it doesn't remove the uninstall for previous versions of the program 13. Added shortcut keys to toggle Bold, Italic and Underline in editor The 10.00.06 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected problem on some systems where the internal program menu links to Help items and Demo items were non-functional 2. Fixed problem where the Q number did not always match the A number on the first pair displayed after returning from an editing session The 10.00.05 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected problem with saving the audio file associated with the introduction 2. Fixed problem with running study files located on CDROM's 3. Fixed 'Can't locate v10.jpg' error when new file was created immediately after viewing the Unicode demo file 4. Corrected conflict between the Bullets and Numbering dialog and having skins turned on 5. Modified right-click popups in the Editor so that they are consistent, adding the Thesaurus function that was missing from most of them The 10.00.04 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. No longer need to have an 'actual character' in the Q or A - a stand-alone graphic or object will now work correctly 2. Locked out redisplay of Intro when AutoPilot is running 3. Added 'possible delay' warnings when the advance statistics button is pressed and when a print preview is being generated 4. Printer setup can now be called from Produce Printed Test 5. Open to Editor Find and Replace "no more matches" message corrected 6. Modified filtering so priority pairs can be extracted 7. Changed defaults for table/card printing 8. Modified directory usage to run properly on Windows '9x --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 © 2007 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Spring 2007 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Sub/Superscripting 2) Importing from Flashcard Exchange 3) HandyCards for Windows Mobile v5.0 Now Available!! 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 5) Study Tip - Continue Leitner Review of Languages Over the Summer 6) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Sub/Superscripting One of the little-used font effects supported by WinFlash is the ability to produce sub and superscripted text. This is not needed for most study files, but is a useful tool for subjects like mathematics or chemistry. While entering H2O is understandable, it is better to create your study files with the proper syntax. Since this newsletter is produced in "plain text" it is not possible to show the results of using this effect, but we'll describe how to achieve it: 1. Open a 'junk' study file or create a new one 2. In the editor, enter "H20 is more commonly known as?" as the text for the question 3. Select just the "2" in H20 4. Right-click in the edit area 5. Select Font... from the pop-up menu 6. Click the Layout tab on the font dialog 7. Enter "25" as the Offset % and select the Down radio button 8. Click OK You'll see that the "2" is now properly positioned below the line. Superscripting can be similarly accomplished by selecting the Up radio button in the above example. Take that extra moment to add the sub or superscripting that your question or answer calls for and you'll enjoy seeing the information displayed in its correct format during your studies. --------------------------------------------------- 2) Importing From Flashcard Exchange This feature is for those of you who are members of Flashcard Exchange and want to use study files from their site with WinFlash Educator. There are two main approaches to importing from FE - the best one to use depends upon whether you wish to append to an existing WinFlash study file and/or use the Force Category of All Imported Pairs To option. We'll review each of these techniques below. Each description assumes you have already exported the file to your computer from Flashcard Exchange using the Export To WinFlash Educator button on their export page: http://www.flashcardexchange.com/export Since FE always uses the same default filename in the resulting SaveAs dialog - flashcard_exchange.hc - it's a good idea to change this to something you'll recognize later before continuing with the export. For purposes of the examples below we'll assume the file has been downloaded to your computer as myfefile.hc. A. Open Using Educator's File|Open Menu If you just want a .flu deck with the same contents as myfefile.hc, this is the easiest approach. The file will be automatically converted to the WinFlash .flu format, saved as myfefile.flu and added in the first position of the used file list. After this the program will close (required to clear internal data structures). Re-open Educator and select your newly-created .flu file from the list at the bottom of the File menu. B. Import Using Educator's Educator|Import Content Menu If you want to append myfefile.hc's contents to an already-existing .flu file or if you wish to use the Force Category of All Imported Pairs To option, you'll need to employ this approach. Open the WinFlash file you wish to append to or, if you're creating a new .flu file to use as the import target, complete that operation. With the target .flu file open, select Educator|Import Content... from the Educator menu and select the desired Overwrite/Append setting and, if desired, enter the category name you wish to be used for the imported pairs. C. Importing FE Files Containing Graphics If the FE file that you're importing contains graphics, these must be individually added after completing the regular import using A or B above. Once you've completed the initial import, open the original file on Flashcard Exchange in your browser and select the Export To Word Processor view from the Export menu. This will display the file showing its pictures in a table format. Next open the converted WinFlash .flu file you created in A or B in Edit mode, using the File|Open In Editor menu selection in Educator. Uncheck the Open To Quickdeck checkbox on the right hand side of the editor and select the Associated Files Panel. Arrange the two representations of the file (Flashcard Exchange's table in your browser and Educator's Editor) so that you can switch back and forth between them easily on the screen. Now, for each Q or A that contains a graphic in the FE representation, first go to the corresponding WinFlash pair in the editor. Next, right-click on the graphic for the Q or A in the browser and select Copy from the browser's pop-up menu. Now switch to the Editor window and click the Paste from Clipboard button for the Q or A, depending on which part of the pair the graphic is associated with. While the above sounds a bit complex, it is actually a very simple, repetitive, operation that can be accomplished quite quickly. "It takes more to explain it than to do it." --------------------------------------------------- 3) HandyCards for Windows Mobile v5.0 Now Available!! I know many of you have been eagerly awaiting the availability of HandyCards for Windows Mobile v5.0. Our partner, HandyMed, has recently released HandyCards v5.3 which brings all your favorite HandyCards features to the latest Windows PDA operating system. Owners of the current HandyCards for PocketPC v5.0 can upgrade for free by contacting HandyMed at support@handymed.com. Those Educator owners wanting to add HandyCards to their study toolset can obtain a $5 discount by ordering on our site. Just select HandyCards for PocketPC/Windows Mobile v5.3 from the second drop down list and enter "Current Educator owner" in the comments section. --------------------------------------------------- 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you earned free upgrades to v10.0 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v10.0 if you haven't upgraded yet or v11.0 when it comes along if you're already at v10.0). Just have your friend mention 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 - Continue Leitner Review of Languages Over the Summer Many of you use WinFlash to learn and maintain fluency in a foreign language. For most language students, this endeavor spans multiple school years. You'll do yourself a huge favor by NOT letting your WinFlash language files gather electronic dust over the summer vacation. With the Leitner system's highly efficient use of study time, you can review your files every week or so for half an hour and continue to maintain and improve your vocabulary. Since you aren't adding new words, the time invested in this maintenance operation is minimal and will pay big dividends when the fall semester starts! --------------------------------------------------- 6) Latest In-line Program Updates The 10.00.06 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected problem on some systems where the internal program menu links to Help items and Demo items were non-functional 2. Fixed problem where the Q number did not always match the A number on the first pair displayed after returning from an editing session The 10.00.05 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected problem with saving the audio file associated with the introduction 2. Fixed problem with running study files located on CDROM's 3. Fixed 'Can't locate v10.jpg' error when new file was created immediately after viewing the Unicode demo file 4. Corrected conflict between the Bullets and Numbering dialog and having skins turned on 5. Modified right-click popups in the Editor so that they are consistent, adding the Thesaurus function that was missing from most of them The 10.00.04 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. No longer need to have an 'actual character' in the Q or A - a stand-alone graphic or object will now work correctly 2. Locked out redisplay of Intro when AutoPilot is running 3. Added 'possible delay' warnings when the advance statistics button is pressed and when a print preview is being generated 4. Printer setup can now be called from Produce Printed Test 5. Open to Editor Find and Replace "no more matches" message corrected 6. Modified filtering so priority pairs can be extracted 7. Changed defaults for table/card printing 8. Modified directory usage to run properly on Windows '9x --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 © 2007 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Winter 2007 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) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Paste vs. Paste Special 3) WinFlash v10.0 - Selecting in the Editor's Table View 4) Thanks for Voting for Us in the 2006 ESC People's Choice Award 5) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 6) Study Tip - Trust the Leitner Intervals for Long Term Learning 7) New Freeware Color Flashcards 8) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v10.0 - Unicode/Font Effects - Finally!! This was the headline in our last newsletter - in May of 2006. We decided to go with it again, since this time v10.0 is OUT! It was a long and challenging development cycle and our beta team started working with the code last June. They were a tremendous help in bringing out a complex release with very few bugs! Rather than list all of v10.0's new features in the newsletter, here's a link to the 'What's New' page on our website: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/newin.htm Download a copy the latest version of your program here: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/download-flashcards.htm You don't need to uninstall your current version in order to try out the features of the new one. We think you'll agree that the new range of editing capabilities alone is worth the upgrade. And little touches such as having the editor open directly to QuickDeck when you access the editor from study mode make file maintenance easier than ever. --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Paste vs. Paste Special We plan to include this new section on a regular basis. We'll highlight a not-so-obvious program feature - perhaps one you've overlooked - that we think can enhance your use of WinFlash. One of the advantages of the 'good ol' days' before WinFlash became multi-font-capable was that when you pasted a clip from somewhere else into the WinFlash editor there was no need to worry about what kind of formatting was associated with it. You just pasted it in and the clip politely assumed the font of the Q or A that you were editing. With the arrival of v10 things became more complicated. Let's say you're using the default Arial 12 font and working on a question. You've typed in part of the question in the default font and you're going to add a clip from a Word document that you have open. Let's say that document is in Times New Roman 10 point. When you copy that section from Word and paste it into the WinFlash editor, it'll come in with the Times New Roman 10 point font - probably not what you wanted... Here's where Paste Special comes in. If, instead of using the standard Ctrl-V to paste the clip, you use Ctrl-Alt-V, the clip will be pasted WITHOUT formatting - assuming the font style that is in force at the insertion point. Remember this one - it'll save you a lot of 'fixing up' if you cut-and-paste frequently. --------------------------------------------------- 3) WinFlash v10.0 - Selecting in the Editor's Table View Some of you may have been disappointed to find that your old approach to using the Editor's Table View to find and then select a pair for editing no longer seems to work. Actually, you CAN select in v10's Table View - it's just more "subtle" than in previous versions :-). Move the mouse pointer just to the left of the of the pair number - until the cursor turns into a right-pointing arrow - then left-click. This selects the row and, if Open To QuickDeck is checked, takes you to that pair in QuickDeck, ready to edit. --------------------------------------------------- 4) Thanks for Voting for Us in the 2006 ESC People's Choice Award We've been so busy finishing up v10.0 that we haven't had a newsletter out since last May! In that letter we asked you to cast a vote for us in ESC People's Choice Award. Thank you all for your votes - we DID win the award for the second time - and by a wide margin, according to the folks responsible for the tally! --------------------------------------------------- 5) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you earned free upgrades to v10.0 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? We'll give you a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v10.0 if you haven't upgraded yet or v11.0 when it comes along if you're already at v10.0) 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! --------------------------------------------------- 6) Study Tip - Trust the Leitner Intervals for Long Term Learning If you're using WinFlash to maintain your knowledge of a language or other large volume of material over a long period of time, you can save yourself many hours of study time by allowing the Leitner timing algorithm to determine when the pairs are due for review. From questions we've received, it's clear that many users override the algorithm by checking one or both of the Leitner options Allow Pairs to be Asked Before Due and Allow Pairs to be Promoted Before Due. Rather than putting in 'extra' study time reviewing the pairs before they're due, give the method some time and see how it works using the program's recommended timing. If you seem to be getting too large a percentage incorrect when they come due, try making this adjustment: with the deck open, go to Options|Q&A Modes and click the Mode-specific Settings button. This will bring up Options for Leitner Box System dialog. Move the slider one or two positions towards Hard Questions and click OK on both this dialog and the Options main dialog. This will shorten the review intervals. Conversely, if you hardly ever miss a pair when it's up for review, move the slider one or two positions towards Easy Questions - this will lengthen the review intervals. In this way, you can 'tune' your Leitner intervals to provide the best retention vs. study time setting. Have time to study but there aren't any pairs due today? Read a book, learn a new subject or go out and get some fresh air!! --------------------------------------------------- 7) New Freeware Color Flashcards This small deck contains eight Q&A pairs to help pre-schoolers identify the primary and secondary colors along with the "colors" black and white. The questions are simply a solid block of color with an audio (credit due my lovely parnter and wife) asking "What is this color?". The answer has the color's name in large type against the same block of color (useful after kids learn their colors to get a bit of a head start with spelling) and an audio responding "This color is " In order to make this deck editable so that you can add additional colors, I've included all support files and the source .flu and .fld files in a single .zip file. You can download this file (2.14 Mb) by clicking on the link below: http://www.openwindow.com/ftp/colors.zip Unzip the file into its own directory and open it using the File|Open dialog in WinFlash or by double-clicking on the colors.flu file in Windows Explorer. 8) Latest In-line Program Updates The 10.00.03 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected printing issue where graphics were conflicting with auto-generated question and answer text. The 10.00.02 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Added "paste special" capability - paste WITHOUT font attributes 2. Corrected problem with missing answers when MC pair had no 'intro text' 3. Fixed crash when using Multi-user mode The 10.00.01 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected problem when A first and Auto Fill-In were both selected (only Q's were displayed) 2. Corrected program crash when opening expired Leitner file in Subject Outline using Edit File 3. Fixed several non-critical but annoying behaviors --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 © 2007 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 © 2006 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Winter 2006 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash v9.1 Released - Skins! 2) Editor Speed In v9.1 3) Importing Decks From Flashcard Exchange 4) A New Way To Earn Free Upgrades 5) Study Tip - Cramming 6) What's New in v9.0/9.1? --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v9.1 Released - Skins! In response to a number of requests for a more vibrant-looking user interface, we've added a library of 'skins' to the WinFlash programs. What are skins? A 'skin' is a set of colors and control behaviors that changes the appearance of a program without changing its functionality. Skinning allows the user to select from interfaces that mimic the Mac OS, the various XP themes or many other, more fanciful, looks. We hope you like this new capability and find a look for the program that's just right for you! There are 22 skins included with the latest versions of the program and an additional 77 that can be downloaded from the skins page on our website at: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/skins We thought this enough of an enhancement to warrant a full tenth step in the version identifier. IMPORTANT NOTE: The v9.1 update uses a new third party control for display and editing of the Introduction and RTF Support Files. While this new software provides needed capabilities beyond that previously used, it does NOT yet support the embedded object functionality that was present in earlier versions of WinFlash Educator. If you require this support, please stay with v9.00.03 until we announce an in-line release of v9.1 which contains OLE support. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. You can download v9.1 from our downloads page at http://www.openwindow.com/pages/download-flashcards.htm What? STILL haven't upgraded to v9? Perhaps the cool look of the new skins will entice you :-) Check out the other great features added to v9.0 below in 6) What's New in v9.0/9.1? and purchase your upgrade from our secure order page here: https://www.openwindow.com/pages/oworder.htm --------------------------------------------------- 2) Editor Speed In v9.1 When working in the editor, WinFlash does a complete save of your information each time you move from an edited pair to another pair location. When it does this, it ALSO redisplays the program. The computational overhead required by the skins processing when refreshing the editor and main screens increases the time the computer takes for this operation. This is not an issue on fast machines but may cause an objectionable pause on slower ones. If you find this to be the case and you're planning to edit or add several pairs, just turn off the skins in Options|View|Skins and then turn them back on when you're done editing. Or, if you prefer, simply leave them off altogether. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Importing Decks From Flashcard Exchange If you haven't checked out Flashcard Exchange yet, you owe it to yourself to give it a look. They currently have over 3 million flashcards available! They may already have just the deck you need or, at least, a great start on which to build. If you decide you'd like to become a member, we offer a $5 discount for users who already own or are upgrading to WinFlash Educator - only $11.50 for a lifetime membership! As a member of Flashcard Exchange you can download any decks that you wish and use them with WinFlash Educator and/or HandyCards. One caveat - decks using the Unicode font sets such as Chinese or Japanese cannot be imported by Educator or HandyCards at this time. We are working on an upgrade that WILL allow the use of Unicode, but this won't be available for some time. To export flashcards so they will work in WinFlash Educator, access your Flashcard Exchange account using your web browser. 1. Click on the flashcard file you want to export and then click the Export/download link under Activities. 2. From the export formats list click the “Export to WinFlash Educator” button. 3. In the File Download dialog that appears, click the Save button. 4. The standard Save As dialog will appear. Select the location where you want the file to be stored and give it a name ending in .hc – e.g. multiplication.hc. Click the Save button. Your file has now been saved in the directory you selected with the name you entered. 5. Open WinFlash Educator and create a new file into which to import the flashcards you have saved in the step above. Close the editor that opens upon creation of a new file, leaving the newly created file open. 6. From the Educator menu select Import Content… Choose Flashcard Exchange as the Import Format and select the Overwrite Currently-Open file option. Click OK. 7. In the Import From File: dialog window that appears, navigate to the .hc file that you saved in step 4 (multiplication.hc in this example) and click on it – this will enter it in the Filename box of the dialog. Click Open. 8. A message will appear confirming that you have successfully imported your flashcard file. Click OK and your flashcards will be opened in Educator ready for your use. --------------------------------------------------- 4) A New Way To Earn Free Upgrades You've already heard about earning free upgrades by referring your friends or contributing a deck to the WinFlash Users Library. We're now offering a third method for you to get your next upgrade free! If you're an artistic person with a flair for computer graphics, try out our free Skin Builder application available here: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/skins.htm After you've created an original look that you're proud of, send us the .skn file. If we add it to our collection you'll get a free upgrade to the current release. If you're already current we'll flag you for an upgrade to v10.0 when it becomes available. --------------------------------------------------- 5) Study Tip - Cramming Note - We thought that this tip, first run in 2003 was worthy of a repeat for our newer readers. While we don't recommend cramming as a study mode, who hasn't had to occasionally prepare at the last minute? If you're stuck with learning a week's worth of vocabulary words for Friday morning's test and it's now Thursday night, what's the quickest way? What's needed is a time-compressed version of Frequency Based on History, so that you don't waste time on learning words that 'stick' right away. The best way to do this is with the simplest Q&A mode, Ask All Questions Equally Often with a few additional options. Here are the steps and settings needed: 1. Open the study deck and set Options|Q&A Modes to Ask All Questions Equally Often. 2. In Options|Pair Order & Size select Repetition = One Pass 3. Run through the deck and, after the pass is complete, click 'Yes' in Continuation dialog and 'Yes' again in the 'Only Include Missed Pairs? dialog. As you continue to repeat the deck, the 'learned' pairs will drop off while the tough nuts will continue to appear. Once you've gotten all the remaining pairs correct the deck will automatically reset to asking all of the pairs again, letting you review the full set again, working through it until all are answered correctly again. 4. Repeat step 3 until you feel confident you've mastered the deck. You can add variety to the 'cram session' by using the Options|Pair Order & Size|Order = Random setting as well as the features in the Options|Q&A Modes|Settings Common To All Modes grouping. Take an occasional break and don't burn yourself out - and start a little earlier NEXT week :-) Note: WinFlash Basic does not support the 'Run Only Misses From Previous Pass' feature. --------------------------------------------------- 6) What's New in v9.0/v9.1? The following new features are available in all three WinFlash versions: * Skins! Now the most powerful learning system available is also the most beautiful :-) * New editing mode - QuickDeck - allows the fastest possible creation of text-only decks. Simply tab between Q and A and then on to the next pair * Graphics can be pasted directly from the clipboard into a Q or A - making it much easier to include graphics. No need to first convert the desired graphic to a file and then select that file for use in a Q or A * Decks can now be opened directly into the editor from the File|Open menu * Visible down-counter in timed mode * Desktop shortcuts to WinFlash files can now be invoked while the program is open with another file - the open file will be closed and the file targeted by the shortcut will be opened * Clear List function added to Used Files list - remove all the files from the list and start afresh *Hint and Comment buttons now 'flash' to more easily alert the user to the presence of a related hint or comment The following new features are available in WinFlash Scholar and Educator: * Decks can now be opened directly into the editor from the File|Open menu and from the Subject Outline view * Copy Pair now has a shortcut key - Ctrl-d The following new features are available in WinFlash Educator: * Text-to-speech capability - Educator can now read your decks to you - albeit in a somewhat robot-like fashion. One caveat - the text is read in English - thus the feature is NOT useful for language study - i.e. it doesn't know how to pronounce non-English words Note: Text-to-speech relies on Microsoft's SAPI4 system being installed on the computer. If you do not yet have this capability installed you can download an installer for it from the Open Window Software website's downloads page at: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/download-flashcards.htm Export to .wav or .mp3 and use your iPod or other personal audio device to study in on-the-go situations where a PDA or laptop isn't practical. Use that commute time to work on your studies * Direct Import/Export From/To Flashcard Exchange – This great on-line flashcard library is now directly supported in Educator’s import/export menus * Pairs can now be imported into the deck by copying two-column text from common table formats (e.g. Microsoft's Word, Excel and Access programs) to the Windows clipboard and then importing the data directly from the clipboard. The import feature has also been enhanced by adding direct import of .csv files * Improved Advanced Statistics, with more meaningful data displayed depending on the deck's current study mode *Background color of the Introduction can now be set to your choice of color Note: Old .FLS files will work just fine with v9.1 - see above for the exception relating to embedded OLE objects. Simply open them with the new program and the new entries for the .FLD file will be automatically created the first time you open the file in v9.1 --------------------------------------------------- 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 © 2006 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Fall 2005 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards And ProUpdater Contents: 1) WinFlash v9.0 Released! 2) Using v9.0's New QuickDeck Feature 3) Adding Internet Graphics To Your Decks 4) Free Upgrades For Deck Contributors 5) Study Tip - Expand Your Study Opportunities With .MP3's 6) What's New in v9.0? --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v9.0 Released! We're happy to announce that all three levels of WinFlash - Basic, Scholar and Educator - have been upgraded to v9.0, with new features and improvements added at every level. While the most noticeable new feature is the Text-To-Speech capability in WinFlash Educator, there are many changes which improve the user experience by making the program easier to use. The new QuickDeck mode in the editor is a good example. It reduces the number of keystrokes used in creating text-only decks to the absolute minimum - simply tab between Q and A and then tab to move to the next pair after entering the Answer text. For a complete rundown of the new features, see 6) What's New in v9.0? We hope you'll take a look at the new release of your level of WinFlash and take advantage of our upgrade pricing. Download a trial copy of v9.0 here: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/download-flashcards.htm and purchase your upgrade from our secure order page here: https://www.openwindow.com/pages/oworder.htm --------------------------------------------------- 2) Using v9.0's New QuickDeck Feature One of our favorite enhancements - to all three of the WinFlash levels - is the new QuickDeck feature. Give it a try using this step-by-step mini-tutorial. 1. Create a new deck using File|New. The deck will open in the editor, to the regular Question tab. 2. Click on the QuickDeck tab or type Alt-u to move to the QuickDeck page in the editor. You'll notice that the text "This is the first dummy..." is already selected for you, ready for you to replace with the text of the first question. 3. Type "Q1" and then the Tab key. You should now see "Q1" as the text for the first question and the cursor now in the Text For Answer edit box with the "First dummy answer" text selected, ready for replacement. 4. Type "A1" and then the Tab key. This will enter "A1" as the text for the first answer and then move you to pair 2 with the dummy text in the Text For Question box selected. 5. Go ahead in this manner, using the Tab key to move from Q to A and then on to the next pair - entering "Q2","A2" and "Q3","A3" for the Q&A text for pairs 2 and 3. 6. At the point where you have entered "A3" for the third pair's answer text, hit Tab again. The editor will automatically add a fourth pair to the deck and position the entry point in the Text For Question box, awaiting your entry. 7. Complete this exercise by entering "Q4" and "A4" for the Q&A text for pair 4, then close the editor by clicking the Close button or typing Alt-e. We hope you'll like this new mode for entering "Quick Decks"! You can also use it as a fast start for entering text for decks to which you DO wish to add graphics, sounds, etc. - just use the regular tabs in the editor to add enhancements to the pairs on a second pass through the deck. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Adding Internet Graphics To Your Decks Sometimes a perfect graphic to go with one of your study pairs pops up while you're surfing the net. Before v9.0, adding it to your deck entailed first copying the graphic and then saving it to a file using Paintbrush or other graphics applet - then searching for the newly-saved file using the WinFlash editor's Associated Files tab to associate the new graphics file with the Q or A of the pair in question. Now it's quick and easy: 1. Right click on the graphic in your Internet browser and choose Copy from the pop-up menu. 2. Open the WinFlash editor to the pair where you want to add the graphic and click the Associated Files tab. 3. Click the Paste From Clipboard button in either the Associated Files For Question or Associated Files For Answer area, depending on the part of the pair to which you wish to add the graphic. That's it - you'll see that the Delete and Display buttons are now enabled for that section and you can use these to view the new graphic while in the editor or to remove the graphic from the pair should you decide against keeping it. You can use this technique for quickly adding any graphic that you can copy to your clipboard to one of your WinFlash decks. --------------------------------------------------- 4) Free Upgrades For Deck Contributors Isn't it time to put the final polish on that study deck of yours and contribute it to the WinFlash Users Group Library? We'll give you a free upgrade to the new v9.0 of your edition 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 e-mail you a free upgrade code for v9.0. --------------------------------------------------- 5) Study Tip - Expand Your Study Opportunities With .MP3's You've heard us talk about using your PDA to turn unproductive time into study time - when you're waiting in line, riding the bus or engaged in a similar activity. How about those times where you can't use your PDA - riding your bike, driving your car, etc? Turn these additional opportunities into study time by using Educator's new Text-To-Speech export capability. Here's how: 1. Open the deck that you wish to convert to audio using WinFlash Educator. It's best to try a small deck first to check results. Remember, the program has to read the text of the deck in real time, so the export operation can take quite a while for larger decks. 2. Select Export Content... from the Educator menu. 3. Select Sound File - Text To Speech from the Select Output Format drop-down list. 4. Set the Export Pauses values. Try the 5 second defaults in your first experiment and then adjust from there if you wish. 5. Select the audio output format. MP3 produces much smaller files with generally-acceptable audio quality. 6. Click OK and give the output file a name in the dialog that appears. 7. Spot-check the result by playing it with Windows Media Player or other audio software on your PC. 8. Transfer the file to your iPod or other personal music player using your regular software. Note: The above instructions assume that you've installed the SAPI4 Text To Speech support on your computer and have selected the voice you'd like to use in Options|Speech. See the Help file's Text To Speech section for more detail. --------------------------------------------------- 6) What's New in v9.0? The following new features are available in all three WinFlash versions: * New editing mode - QuickDeck - allows the fastest possible creation of text-only decks. Simply tab between Q and A and then on to the next pair * Graphics can be pasted directly from the clipboard into a Q or A - making it much easier to include graphics. No need to first convert the desired graphic to a file and then select that file for use in a Q or A * Decks can now be opened directly into the editor from the File|Open menu * Visible down-counter in timed mode * Desktop shortcuts to WinFlash files can now be invoked while the program is open with another file - the open file will be closed and the file targeted by the shortcut will be opened * Clear List function added to Used Files list - remove all the files from the list and start afresh *Hint and Comment buttons now 'flash' to more easily alert the user to the presence of a related hint or comment The following new features are available in WinFlash Scholar and Educator: * Decks can now be opened directly into the editor from the File|Open menu and from the Subject Outline view * Copy Pair now has a shortcut key - Ctrl-d The following new features are available in WinFlash Educator: * Text-to-speech capability - Educator can now read your decks to you - albeit in a somewhat robot-like fashion. One caveat - the text is read in English - thus the feature is NOT useful for language study - i.e. it doesn't know how to pronounce non-English words Note: Text-to-speech relies on Microsoft's SAPI4 system being installed on the computer. If you do not yet have this capability installed you can download an installer for it from the Open Window Software website's downloads page at: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/download-flashcards.htm Export to .wav or .mp3 and use your iPod or other personal audio device to study in on-the-go situations where a PDA or laptop isn't practical. Use that commute time to work on your studies * Pairs can now be imported into the deck by copying two-column text from common table formats (e.g. Microsoft's Word, Excel and Access programs) to the Windows clipboard and then importing the data directly from the clipboard. The import feature has also been enhanced by adding direct import of .csv files * Improved Advanced Statistics, with more meaningful data displayed depending on the deck's current study mode *Background color of the Introduction can now be set to your choice of color Note: Old .FLS files will work just fine with v9.0. Simply open them with the new program and the new entries for the .FLD file will be automatically created the first time you open the file in v9.0 --------------------------------------------------- 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. --------------------------------------------------- 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. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Winter 2004/5 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards And ProUpdater Contents: 1) New Year's Resolution #1 From PC Magazine 2) New Freeware Canadian Capitals Flashcards 3) Free Upgrades For Deck Contributors 4) Study Tip - Use The Category Feature When Creating Study Decks 5) Version 8.0 Updates - v8.00.08 Just Released --------------------------------------------------- 1) New Year's Resolution #1 From PC Magazine Michael J. Miller, writing in the January issue of PC Magazine, says "Back up. I say this every year, and every year I get e-mails from people who want advice because they lost all their data. I love computers, but I don't completely trust them." Michael's right, of course. It's not a matter of IF your computer will experience a catastrophic drive crash or other data-destroying event - it's only a question of WHEN. With this in mind, we decided to rerun these two articles from earlier newsletters in hopes that our readers will be in a receptive frame of mind at this most "THIS year I'm really going to ....." time of the year :-) To make it even EASIER for you to be protected, we're offering 30% off ProUpdater purchases for all orders placed in January that mention this offer in the comments section of the order form. So don't hesitate - make it a priority to put your backup system in place today! Automatically Backing Up Your Home Network Backing up our data is one of those dirty little chores that we tend to prioritize off of our todo lists until it's too late... Our hard disk crashes and all of our data, including that todo list, suddenly takes a giant step back into the past - to the state of our last restorable backup. Your last one was when? If you're like me, the only way you can get around this aversion is to totally automate the backup process. The good news is that if you have a network with at least two computers on it you can delegate this chore to the Windows Task Scheduler. You'll also need backup software that will run unattended (we suggest our own ProUpdater, of course :-)). http://www.openwindow.com/pages/winupd8r.htm We've long ago decided that backing up EVERYTHING on our computer is an unnecessary waste of storage space. The really irreplaceable stuff is the data you create with your applications. Everything else can be restored by reinstallation - albeit a somewhat time-consuming exercise. It's a GREAT help if you can organize your data files a bit. At Open Window we use a simple structure like the example below: C:\ | |- LarrysData | - Word Files | - Excel Files etc.. You can, of course, create further sub-directories such a Business, Personal, Volunteer, etc. under each application directory. Another approach is to reverse the hierarchy above like this: C:\ | |- LarrysData | - Business | - Personal | - Volunteer etc.. with the applications listed below each category. Either way, this approach places the vast majority of your data in a hierarchical directory structure below a single top directory - LarrysData in the above example. Let's say you have a two-computer network, one belongs to Larry and the other is used by Mary and the kids, Joe and Lucy. To back up both machines we can simply copy the directory LarrysData to the family machine and the directories MarysData, JoesData and LucysData to Larry's machine. Assuming we're running the backups from Larry's machine and that the family machine's hard drive is mapped as drive F:\ on Larry's machine we could do this with four simple entries using ProUpdater's Batch File Mode: DirPair1=c:\LarrysData!f:\LarrysData DirPair2=f:\MarysData!c:\MarysData DirPair3=f:\JoesData!c:\JoesData DirPair4=f:\LucysData!c:\LucysData Now, making sure that we leave both machines on overnight, we can use Windows' Schedule Task function (for Windows 9x use Programs|Accessories|System Tools|Schedule Tasks; for Windows XP use Settings|Control Panel|Scheduled Tasks) to run the backup at, say, 1:00 am every morning. For more detailed instructions on setting up this type of regimen, see ProUpdater's help file. There! You're now protected against data loss from a disk crash on either machine. Note: Leaving your machines on 24x7 uses very little power (assuming you turn off your monitors when you're not using them) and most experts agree that the disks last longer when spinning continuously than when they're being turned on and off every day. Continuous operation allows you to use the Task Scheduler to perform OTHER tasks during the night as well. Virus checking, defragging and checking the disk for errors are three other maintenance tasks that tie up the machine and can be scheduled to automatically run at night. In the paragraphs above we talked about how to set up an automatic backup system for your home network. That system guards against a large majority of the data loss scenarios that you might encounter. What about that tiny minority of cases, though, when your ENTIRE home computing environment is destroyed - either by natural disaster or through vandalism or theft? The only way to recover from this type of event is to have a copy of your data stored in a secure location off-site. While some web-based companies offer services of this type, to use such services you'd need a very high-speed connection to backup any serious amount of data. At Open Window we use a system where we maintain three sets of writeable CD's: the newest at our bank, the next oldest in a fireproof storage box in our home and the oldest in our office desk. While we generally destroy the oldest set when a new set is created, we keep the last set from each year as a permanent record. Depending on the extent of your data and the capacity of your removable media, you may want to backup less data than you do on a daily basis. For instance, on our daily backups we copy our in-progress programs' .exe files, all the previous versions, .zip files we host on our site, etc., since these go to an 80Gb drive that has plenty of spare space. When we do our monthly offsite backups we use a different set of settings for ProUpdater, stored in a separate option (.opt) file, that excludes all data that we can regenerate with simple compilations of our source code archives. We also periodically write a CDR of archival data that will never change and LEAVE this in the safe deposit box. This data is then excluded from the monthly backups. Whatever removable media you decide upon, the key is to set up a routine where you periodically back up your data and move the media to a safe, off-site location. If you don't have a bank safe deposit box, you can arrange to swap backups with a friend - thereby providing the off-site safety net for each other. Since the likelihood of a system-wide disaster is much lower than the risk of a simple disk crash, unintentional format, or other every-day data wipeout, we've settled on once a month for offsite backups. You may be comfortable with a longer interval. Just ask yourself "How many weeks (months) of data would I be comfortable losing permanently?" Some of my friends who only use their computer for e-mail and web surfing are comfortable with starting over totally from scratch if they were to lose their data. Many others, however, have either financial data, digital photos of the family, collections of carefully assembled music files or other fruits of significant effort that they'd be loath to part with. If you're in this latter group, think about setting up that off-site backup routine! --------------------------------------------------- 2) New Freeware Canadian Capitals Flashcards We had a study deck on the US state capitals in our library before we even had a website. It seemed high time that we created a similar deck covering our northern neighbor! This proved to be a quicker task than the US version, since Canada was less aggressive with its geographic knife - only cutting their country into 13 provinces and territories. Our thanks to wikipedia's compilation of Canadian facts at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_provinces for the source materials for this deck! If you haven't yet browsed this phenomenal 'free encyclopedia', give it a look! Because of the included graphics, I've created this file as a 'compiled .flz file' - hence, not editable. If you'd like a copy of this deck that CAN be edited, just drop a note to support@openwindow.com and we'll send you a .zip containing the source files. You can download the file (~1.0 Mb) by clicking on the link below: http://www.openwindow.com/ftp/canada.flz Remember to choose 'Save' rather than 'Open' in the dialog which appears - otherwise your browser will just save a temporary copy to your computer that won't be accessible for future use. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Free Upgrades For Deck Contributors Isn't it time to put the final polish on that study deck of yours and make it a solid contribution to the WinFlash Users Group Library? We'll give you a free upgrade to v8.0 of your edition 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 e-mail you a free upgrade code for v8.0. Already have v8.0? - no worries, we'll flag your entry in our database for a free upgrade to v9.0 when IT'S released this fall. --------------------------------------------------- 4) Study Tip - Use The Category Feature When Creating Study Decks One of the under-utilized features of WinFlash is its support of category information within study decks. A single deck can support up to 100 categories and each category name can be up to 20 characters in length. When beginning a new study deck, take a few minutes to decide on a useful organization for the deck's categories. For instance, if the deck is a growing list of spelling words, you might decide to use the beginning letter of each word as its category. Thus the categories would be the letters A through Z. Since this only requires 26 categories, you could go further and categorize by common parts of speech - Verb, Noun and Other (this would result in 26x3 or 78 categories). In this case a category example would be "Noun-A". When we created the flashcard deck of Canadian provincial and territorial capitals, we used the category to indicate whether the subject of the question was a province or territory. Once you make the extra effort to add category information to your decks you'll be able to take advantage of the filtering available in the Options|Pair Order & Size panel. Using this feature you can study subsets of your deck that include some combination of categories but not the rest. In the first example above you might choose to study just the words beginning with 'Q' if these were difficult for you; in the second you might choose all the nouns. Categories can be used to segment your decks in a number of ways: the book chapter the information is from, the alphabetic organization of the information, the week the information was added, etc. Just keep in mind the limitations of 20 characters for the category name and 100 categories per deck when designing your category system. You'll also find categories useful when creating "Composite Source Files" - i.e. output decks comprised of subsets of one or two different input decks. For instance, if you had French vocabulary in two decks, one from each of two previous years, and they were categorized by parts of speech, you could create a third deck using the nouns from both of the original decks. Experiment with using the category feature when you create your decks and you'll find it useful in a number of ways! --------------------------------------------------- 5) Version 8.0 Updates - v8.00.08 Just Released 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 v8.00.08, released 12/16/04). Here are the releases to date and a compilation of the changes that were made in each: 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. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Fall 2004 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards And ProUpdater Contents: 1) Version 8.0 Updates - v8.00.06 Just Released 2) New Freeware Wildflower Flashcards 3) HandyCards For PocketPC v5.0 Available Now! 4) Sharing Your Study Decks With Others 5) Free Upgrades For Referring Your Friends 6) Study Tip - Leave WinFlash Open When Using Your Computer --------------------------------------------------- 1) Version 8.0 Updates - v8.00.06 Just Released Since Version 8.0 was shipped on October 12, 2003 there have been six '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 v8.00.06, released 10/15/04). Here are the releases to date and a compilation of the bugs that were fixed in each: 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. --------------------------------------------------- 2) New Freeware Wildflower Flashcards This small deck contains 10 Q&A pairs to help outdoor enthusiasts identify various common wildflowers. The pictures were taken on various hikes in Colorado during this past summer. In order to make this deck editable so that you can add wildflowers from your OWN area, I've included all support files and the source .fls file in a single .zip file. Consider this the beginning of a project rather than a completed one. If you have some pictures of flowers from your area (and their identifications), I'd love to build on this deck with contributions from the readers. You can download this file (~1.3 Mb) by clicking on the link below: http://www.openwindow.com/ftp/wflowers.zip Unzip the file into its own directory and open it using the File|Open dialog in WinFlash or by double-clicking on the wflowers.fls file in Windows Explorer. --------------------------------------------------- 3) HandyCards For PocketPC v5.0 Available Now! HandyMed has released its latest 5.0 version of its PocketPC edition of HandyCards. Current users of HandyCards can order the upgrade on our site for $14.95. If you also need the upgrade to WFEducator v8.0, simply add $14.95 to the cost of the Educator upgrade and note in the Comments section that you want the latest PocketPC version of HandyCards as well. Unfortunately it has not been possible to add these new features to the PalmOs version of HandyCards - it will remain at its current revision level of 1.8. WFEducator v8.00.06's export to HandyCards now supports all of the new features of HandyCards listed below: All-New Testing Methods Leitner Testing -- advanced learning methodology based on time-delayed exposure to questions, with increased focus on those areas which need more attention Subset Testing -- force the program to grab cards in user-defined groupings and then advance to the next group on demand Timed Testing -- rapid-fire testing with user-defined testing intervals Unfamiliar Testing -- test those questions which have been answered below a user-defined percentile Hidden-Answer Testing -- testing designed specifically for those working on conjugating verbs, where multiple-choice answers remain hidden until each individual answer has been tapped Category Testing -- testing based on files containing different categories (e.g. addition, subtraction, division, etc.) Testing Enhancements Enhanced testing statistics * Single-card testing performance * Category testing performance * Graphical view of single-card performance * Export your testing statistics User-defined hardware button support Hints can be shown with each question; Comments can be shown after each question has been answered Auto-rewind -- on reaching the end of a flashcard deck, the testing is automatically reset to the beginning and restarted without user intervention Auto-score -- for true/false questions, or questions with two or more answers, HandyCards will automatically record whether the question was answered correctly or not (single-answer questions will still need to be manually scored) Auto-advance - when a user indicates an answer was scored correctly or incorrectly, the testing automatically advances to the next question, thereby eliminating a click to advance to the next question. Auto-save -- to preserve testing statistics, a flashcard set can be automatically saved on exiting the program or closing a flashcard set Questions and answers can now have their own images, sounds, and movies. Supported formats include .jpg, .bmp, .2bp, .gif, .wav, .mp3, .wma, .wmv, and .asf. Edit screen question style can now be maintained when making multiple flashcards to allow for rapid creation of numerous flashcards using the same style Edit screen saving will no longer require closing a "Question Saved" message box multiple times Colors -- user-defined text and background colors Options -- now moved to Tools menu Enhanced Question/Answer swapping -- choices are now ask question, ask answer, or randomly switch between asking question or answer Full-screen single-answer testing to enhance readability File menu now stores the last four data files for rapidly recalling recent testing files File | New -- rapidly create a new data file, especially when a file is currently open, because it automatically closes the file --------------------------------------------------- 4) Sharing Your Study Decks With Others We often receive questions about the best way to share study decks with other WinFlash users. As with many questions the answer is "it depends". If one person is the sole author and editor of the deck and the other user(s) will simply be using it for study then it is simplest to create a .flz "compiled study file" to distribute to the other users. This has the great advantage of including any required support files (graphics, audio, rtf, etc.) in a single file. This file can then be e-mailed or transfrerred via CD-R or other removeable media to the other users. See the help file topic Creating Compiled Files as well as the tutorial section Create A Compiled Study File (.FLZ) From The Composite .FLS File for information on how to create such a file from your regular .fls source deck. The drawback of the .flz distribution is that others cannot edit or add to the deck. If you want the other users to be able to do this, you'll need to provide them with the deck in the .fls format (the "source" format with which decks are initially created). The easiest way to make this manageable is to create a separate directory for such a deck. Place all audio and graphic files that will be used with the deck into this directory as well. Once the deck is ready to distribute, use a zipping program to compress all of the files in the directory into a single .zip file. Including ALL the files in the directory assures that any files that may have been automatically created by WinFlash and are needed for proper deck operation will be included. Many zip utilities are available on the Internet - we recommend WinZip from http://www.winzip.com - the long-standing champ in this area. Again, this file can be distributed as an e-mail attachment or by removable media. Users can unzip this file into a single directory and can immediately add, edit and otherwise contribute to the project. For multiple-author projects, one person should be the editor for the group and be responsible for assembling the contributions of each of the authors using WinFlash Educator's Create Composite Source File tool which allows cards from two decks to be added together to create a third deck. In this way, each contributor's cards can be added to the master deck to produce a combined version of the previous master deck and the latest contribution. Try enlisting your fellow students in a joint deck-creation project. It's fun and can be a good way to get a large amount of data quickly available to all in easy-to-master WinFlash format! --------------------------------------------------- 5) 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 your friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 6) Study Tip - Leave WinFlash Open When Using Your Computer In a similar vein to the tip in the last issue (Your PDA - Don't Leave Home Without It!) try leaving your current 'hot' study deck open but minimized on the desktop while using the computer for other tasks. When you need a quick break or have just launched a task that may take some time to complete (such as a large file download) restore your WinFlash deck and run a few more pairs through. You've probably heard that repeated, shorter, study sessions are more effective than intense cramming. This is another way to add some more of those short sessions to your everyday computer use routine. --------------------------------------------------- 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 © 2004 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Spring 2004 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards And ProUpdater Contents: 1) Version 8.0 Updates 2) New Freeware Decimal Equivalent Flashcards 3) New Version Of HandyCards Available Soon! 4) Using Launchable Hints And Comments 5) Free Upgrades For Deck Contributors 6) Study Tip - Your PDA - Don't Leave Home Without It! --------------------------------------------------- 1) Version 8.0 Updates Since Version 8.0 was shipped on October 12, 2003 there have been five 'slipstream' releases to fix various bugs that have surfaced since the initial release. If you are experiencing any problems with your WinFlash program, first be sure that you are using the latest version (currently v8.00.05, released 6/8/04). Here are the releases to date and a compilation of the bugs that were fixed in each: 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. --------------------------------------------------- 2) New Freeware Decimal Equivalents Flashcards This deck contains 27 Q&A pairs to help students memorize the decimal equivalents for common fractions. The deck includes all the n/2,n/3,n/4,n/5,n/6,n/8,n/12 and n/16 values that are useful in daily 'practical math'. This is a good deck to try with Educator's Automatic Fill In The Blank From Standard feature. This lets you study standard mode pairs in FIB mode - automatically checking the entered answer against the text in the main Answer dialog box. Also try the Answer First Followed By Question mode to check recognition of the fraction in its decimal equivalent form. You can download this file (~98.8 Kb) by clicking on the link below: http://www.openwindow.com/ftp/decequiv.zip Unzip the file into its own directory and open it using the File|Open dialog in WinFlash or by double-clicking on the decequiv.fls file in Windows Explorer. --------------------------------------------------- 3) New Version Of HandyCards Available Soon! HandyMed will soon be releasing its latest 5.0 version of its PocketPC edition of HandyCards. Current users of HandyCards will be able to order the upgrade on our site for $10. If you also need the upgrade to WFEducator v8.0, simply add $10 to the cost of the Educator upgrade and note in the Comments section that you want the latest PocketPC version of HandyCards as well. Unfortunately it has not been possible to add these new features to the PalmOs version of HandyCards - it will remain at its current revision level of 1.8. The WFEducator export to HandyCards does not yet support the newest features of HandyCards v5.0 (hints, comments, both Q&A graphics, categories) but this will be added with the v8.00.06 slipstream release due out before the end of the summer. Here are the new features available in HandyCards v5.0 for the PocketPC: All-New Testing Methods Leitner Testing -- advanced learning methodology based on time-delayed exposure to questions, with increased focus on those areas which need more attention Subset Testing -- force the program to grab cards in user-defined groupings and then advance to the next group on demand Timed Testing -- rapid-fire testing with user-defined testing intervals Unfamiliar Testing -- test those questions which have been answered below a user-defined percentile Hidden-Answer Testing -- testing designed specifically for those working on conjugating verbs, where multiple-choice answers remain hidden until each individual answer has been tapped Category Testing -- testing based on files containing different categories (e.g. addition, subtraction, division, etc.) Testing Enhancements Enhanced testing statistics * Single-card testing performance * Category testing performance * Graphical view of single-card performance * Export your testing statistics User-defined hardware button support Hints can be shown with each question; Comments can be shown after each question has been answered Auto-rewind -- on reaching the end of a flashcard deck, the testing is automatically reset to the beginning and restarted without user intervention Auto-score -- for true/false questions, or questions with two or more answers, HandyCards will automatically record whether the question was answered correctly or not (single-answer questions will still need to be manually scored) Auto-advance - when a user indicates an answer was scored correctly or incorrectly, the testing automatically advances to the next question, thereby eliminating a click to advance to the next question. Auto-save -- to preserve testing statistics, a flashcard set can be automatically saved on exiting the program or closing a flashcard set Questions and answers can now have their own images, sounds, and movies. Supported formats include .jpg, .bmp, .2bp, .gif, .wav, .mp3, .wma, .wmv, and .asf. Edit screen question style can now be maintained when making multiple flashcards to allow for rapid creation of numerous flashcards using the same style Edit screen saving will no longer require closing a "Question Saved" message box multiple times Colors -- user-defined text and background colors Options -- now moved to Tools menu Enhanced Question/Answer swapping -- choices are now ask question, ask answer, or randomly switch between asking question or answer Full-screen single-answer testing to enhance readability File menu now stores the last four data files for rapidly recalling recent testing files File | New -- rapidly create a new data file, especially when a file is currently open, because it automatically closes the file --------------------------------------------------- 4) Using Launchable Hints And Comments The ability of the WinFlash programs to work with hints and comments that can invoke other applications offers a powerful way of adding dimension to your study decks. As an example, let's say you've created a study deck containing questions relating to decimal equivalents. You might wish to make a calculator available to generate the decimal equivalent if you don't know it right away. Here's how: 1. With the deck open to the first pair, open the editor by selecting Edit|Edit Current Q&A Pair from the main menu. 2. Click on the Hints/Comments tab at the bottom of the editor. 3. Click the Browse button to the right of the HINT 1 entry box. 4. Navigate to the location of the applet CALC.EXE on your computer. 5. Double click on the CALC.EXE in the browse dialog. The browse window will close and the complete path/filename to CALC.EXE will be entered in the HINT 1 entry box. 6. You can check what will happen when the user selects the hint button of the pair by clicking the Play button next to the Browse button used in step 3. 7. Repeat the above steps for each pair for which you would like the calculator to be an available hint. Note 1: In the example deck, the hint looks for the Windows calculator at c:\windows\system32\calc.exe. You can edit the example file by changing this path to be correct for the calculator for your version of Windows. For instance, in Windows 95 the path for the calculator is c:\windows\calc.exe. If the program can't find the path entered - for instance if a user is using the deck on a different machine that doesn't contain the indicated file - WinFlash will assume that the path is actually a text hint and display it as such. Note 2: When the user closes the .exe file after using whatever application has been launched, a dialog appears saying "That Was The Last Hint". In v9.0 this dialog will be suppressed for launched executables, as it requires an extra, non-useful, mouse click. Note 3: v9.0 will have the ability to 'run' application data that the system 'knows'. E.g. you'll be able to use a Word .doc file as the 'hint'. When the user clicks the hint button, Word will launch, opening the document. --------------------------------------------------- 5) Free Upgrades For Deck Contributors Isn't it time to put the final polish on that study deck of yours to make it a solid contribution to the WinFlash Users Group Library? We'll give you a free upgrade to v8.0 of your edition 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 e-mail you a free upgrade code for v8.0. Already have v8.0? - no worries, we'll flag the database for a free upgrade to v9.0 (well, it WILL be a while... probably mid-2005) when IT'S released. --------------------------------------------------- 6) Study Tip - Your PDA - Don't Leave Home Without It! If you're still not leveraging your WinFlash study decks by using HandyCards on your PDA, you're missing out on a sure thing! Taking your current study decks along with you on your PDA gives you the opportunity to turn that otherwise-wasted time that we all have too much of in our days into 'free' study time. Think about it - wouldn't it be nice to trade the time waiting in line at the post office for some extra time at the beach next weekend? Studying during these 'wasted' moments can free up your prime time for activities OTHER than studying! So don't wait - get yourself a PDA (we recommend the PocketPC variety, although HandyCards is also available in a less-capable version for the Palm) and start freeing up more time for fun! --------------------------------------------------- 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 © 2004 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Winter 2004 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards And ProUpdater Contents: 1) Version 8.0 Updates 2) New Freeware Roman Numerals Flashcards 3) Using The Default Graphic Feature 4) Free Upgrades For Referring Your Friends 5) Study Tip - Minimize Extraneous Information In Pairs --------------------------------------------------- 1) Version 8.0 Updates Since Version 8.0 was shipped on October 12 there have been four 'slipstream' releases to fix various bugs that have surfaced since the initial release. If you are experiencing any problems with your WinFlash program, first be sure that you are using the latest version (currently v8.00.04). Here are the releases to date and a compilation of the bugs that were fixed in each: 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. --------------------------------------------------- 2) New Freeware Roman Numerals Flashcards This deck contains the first 100 Roman numerals. Question is the standard decimal number representation, answer is correct Roman numeral for that number. Each card is categorized by the group of 10 that it is in (e.g. Twenty's) so smaller groups of numerals can be studied as desired. Under the category "Extended" there are 25 pairs that test the user on the understanding of the rules for numbers larger than 100. This is a good deck to try with Educator's Automatic Fill In The Blank From Standard feature. This lets you study standard mode pairs in FIB mode - automatically checking the entered answer against the text in the main Answer dialog box. Also try the Answer First Followed By Question mode to check recognition of the number in Roman numeral form. You can download this file (~221Kb) by clicking on the link below: http://www.openwindow.com/ftp/roman.flz --------------------------------------------------- 3) Using The Default Graphic Feature One of the more obscure features of WinFlash Scholar and Educator is the ability to display a default graphic file for any Question or Answer that doesn't have a specific graphic file associated with it. If your deck has no real need of graphic support, why not use this feature anyway - even if just to provide some color to your study time. Maybe a picture of a favorite recreation spot - to remind you where you can be if you just finish the studying you need to do. Or perhaps a picture of that special girlfriend or boyfriend to inspire you to greater efforts. Since the Q's can be assigned a different default graphic than the A's, you could do one of each :-) Here's how: 1. With the deck open, select Options|View and check the box next to the Show Graphic Below For Text-only Questions (and the similar one for Answers if you want a graphic for both). 2. Using the browse button, browse to the graphic file that you wish to use and either double-click on the file or highlight the file and click the Open button on the Browse dialog. Again, you can use a different graphic file for Q's and A's. 3. Click OK on the main Options dialog. That's all there is to it. Now while you're studying that list of French vocabulary words you can also be enjoying a scenic shot of the Riviera. --------------------------------------------------- 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 (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 your friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 5) Study Tip - Minimize Extraneous Information In Pairs Our memories operate best on 'nuggets' of information - as opposed to long, flowery descriptions peppered with extraneous adjectives and adverbs. Take advantage of this when you construct your study decks - especially when you're using imported material. As an example let's use state capital memorization and suppose that you are importing the information from a source that has first a paragraph about the state and then a paragraph about the state's capital. Like this: New Hampshire, the Granite State, is a lovely member of the New England family with many streams, lakes and rivers sprinkled among its green forests and signature rugged mountains. New Hampshire's capital, Concord, is located in the southern part of the state and is the home of the Franklin Pierce Law Center and the St. Paul's School, a famous preparatory school. Concord has also been known historically by the names Rumford and Penacook. If you simply leave this pair as is after the import, you'll be confusing the task of memorizing the New Hampshire <-> Concord linking with the other facts about rivers, law centers and prep schools as well as taking the chance of mis-remembering something like New Hampshire <-> Penacook. Best to take the time to go back into the deck and edit imports like this to read: New Hampshire Concord Apply this technique to pairs that you create yourself as well. Include only the information that you are trying to remember - don't clutter up the pair with 'fluff'. --------------------------------------------------- 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 © 2004 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Fall 2003 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards And ProUpdater Contents: 1) Version 8.0 Released! (Finally...) 2) What's New In V8.0 3) Using Direct Audio Record For Spelling Drill 4) Free Updates For Deck Contributors 5) Study Tip - Limiting Initial Number Of Pairs --------------------------------------------------- 1) Version 8.0 Released! (Finally...) First it was early September, then late September... then... I'm pleased to say that we DID get v8.0 shipped out on October 12. There have been two 'slipstream' bug fixes since then, so if you don't have v8.00.02 (check in Help|About) you don't have the latest version. --------------------------------------------------- 2) What's New In V8.0 The following new features are available in all three WinFlash versions: * A user-friendly version of the well-regarded Leitner Box System as been added as another available primary study mode. Users can adjust the algorithm to suit their preferences and the type of material being studied with a simple one-panel interface. This mode is ideal for studying and retaining long-term material - especially foreign language vocabulary. When combined with WinFlash's other language-study-specific features it's a winner! * Improved 'click to insert' built-in replacement for Charmap. Located in the same place in the editor as the old Charmap button. Also accessible as the 11th glossary button for use with FIB answers * Custom colors can now be created and saved for future use in the Colors dialog (for setting Main, Question and Answer window backgrounds). * Removed long-standing prohibition on using "%" and "<" in pairs. * Optionally run more than one copy of the program at the same time - Options|Misc/Audio|Allow Multiple Program Instances. * Student 'sign in' for tests now on a single form. * Launch your favorite graphics editor directly from the displayed graphic in the editor. * Use your favorite text editor when selecting "Open Current Q&A File In NotePad". The following new features are available in WinFlash Scholar and Educator: * Powerful Subject Outline feature. Allows instant access to all of your decks and shows last-used date, Leitner System 'due date' as well as allowing access to the decks' statistics without opening them. * Pseudo multiple choice 'wrong' answers now selected first from the category of the current pair THEN remaining slots filled with out-of-category answers. This gives more realistic 'wrong' answers. * Copy Pair and Move Pair buttons added to editor. Copy complex pairs with a single operation. * Assign a default graphic (one for Q and one for A) to be displayed if a specific graphic is not defined for a given Q or A. Allows for very easy 'dressing up' of plain decks * Selectable/programmable Correct/Incorrect icons for showing result of auto-scored pairs. Change the default Correct.ico and Incorrect.ico in the application directory to insert your own preferred icons for these. Have fun with this one :-) The following new features are available in WinFlash Educator: * The Create Composite .FLS File tool has been enhanced to be able to create output files with multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank pairs (suitable for creating .flt files) from source files containing only standard pairs. 'Fake' MC answers are drawn from other pairs in the same category first, creating much more 'consistent' MC pairs * Pairs imported into the deck can be assigned a particular category so that they don't need to be individually edited after importation * Direct recording of .wav audio into the Q or A. Much faster way of adding sound to your files. Located on the editor's Associated Files tab. Use with properly-configured microphone-equipped sound card. Note: Old .FLS files will work just fine with v8.0. Simply open them with the new program and the new entries for the .FLD file will be automatically created the first time you open the file in v8.0. However, files created with v8.0 may NOT be compatible when used with older versions. See Backward Compatibility for detailed information on this topic. --------------------------------------------------- 3) Using Direct Audio Record For Spelling Drill One of the problematic applications for flashcard programs has always been spelling lists for younger children. How does one ASK the question? Certainly not with text! Before v8.0 the student - or more likely Mom or Dad - had to use an external application to record the spoken word to be spelled, name and save the audio file, then use the editor to browse for the audio file and finally, add it to the pair as the sound for the Question. Doing this each week or even more frequently quickly becomes tedious. With Educator v8.0 this chore is now a snap! Let's do a step-by-step example. We'll just do three spelling words for this - aardvark, bureaucrat and cacophony. Note - you'll need Educator for this example - Scholar and Basic to not support direct record to pairs. 1. Attach a microphone to your sound card and verify that the sound card and internal Windows drivers are operating properly by recording a short audio file using the Windows Sound Recorder applet (in Accessories|Entertainment). This applet must operate properly before the record capability in Educator can be used. 2. If step 1 is successful, create a new deck, SPELLING.FLS, using File|New 3. In the editor, for pair 1, clear the text from the Question memo edit box 4. Select Fill-In-The-Blank as Type Of Question 5. Go to the Answer tab 6. Enter "aardvark" - without quotes - as the first FIB answer. 7. Repeat steps 3-6 for pairs two and three, entering "bureaucrat" and "cacophony", respectively for the FIB answer. 8. Go back to pair 1 9. Switch to Associated Files page 10. In the Associated Files For Question section, click the Record/Overwrite button. This should bring up the recording control titled Direct Record To Question with three radio buttons controlling recording quality and a Start Recording/Stop Recording button pair. Leave the setting on high quality for now. 11. Be prepared to clearly speak the word "aardvark", click the Start Recording button, wait a half second or so then say the word, wait half a second and click the Stop Recording button. Close the recording control dialog by clicking on the upper-right-hand-corner "x". 12. The Play button will now be enabled. Click it to hear your rendition of "aardvark". If you want to re-record your efford, simply repeat steps 10 and 11 and the sound for the Question will be replaced with your new recording. 13. Repeat steps 10-12 for pairs two and three, recording "bureaucrat" and "cacophony", respectively for the sound files. 14. Close the editor and check out the operation of the file. It should "speak" the spelling word and allow you to type in the proper spelling of the word - then grade your effort when you click the Check My Answer button. 15. We've dressed up the sample file a little by adding a common graphic for the Q's and A's by using the Options|View|Hints, Comments, Tips and Associated Graphics Files|Show Graphic Below for Text Only Questions (and Answers) options to display an appropriate graphic file and also selected horizontal and vertical text centering from the Options|View|Alignment & Q/A Dialog Control section. You can download the completed file, which has been compiled into a .flz study file, at http://www.openwindow.com/ftp/spelling.flz to see how the end result should appear and operate. --------------------------------------------------- 4) Free Upgrades For Deck Contributors Now that you've read about the new features in v8.0, isn't it time to put the final polish on that study deck of yours to make it a solid contribution to the WinFlash Users Group Library? We'll give you a free upgrade to v8.0 of your edition 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 e-mail you a free upgrade code for v8.0. Already have v8.0? - no worries, we'll flag the database for a free upgrade to v9.0 (well, it WILL be a while...) when IT'S released. --------------------------------------------------- 5) Study Tip When initialy learning a large amount of material, you may find it overwhelming when bombarded by, say, 100 new vocabulary words. You may benefit by limiting the initial onslaught to a smaller number of cards - say the first 20. You can set this up by selecting Options|Pair Order & Size|Range and clicking the radio button From Question, and entering the range of questions you wish to concentrate on - in our case 1 to 20. Next time you're wondering if you'll EVER remember one of the pairs correctly, try this strategy to focus on fewer pairs. --------------------------------------------------- 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 © 2003 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Summer 2003 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards And ProUpdater Contents: 1) Version 8.0 Available Soon! 2) WinFlash Educator Honored At The Shareware Industry Conference 3) Freeware Study Deck - Morse Code 4) Free Updates For Deck Contributors 5) Study Tip --------------------------------------------------- 1) Version 8.0 Available Soon! We've been busily working away on the latest version of the WinFlash programs and plan to have them ready for you sometime late in August - just in time for the new school year :-) Here's a little preview of some of the features we've added to v8.0: * The Study Outline view lets you enter your decks in a tree-structure organized by subject. Here's a crude example limited by the text-only nature of this newsletter: Subjects Outline View | - Math | | | - c:/program files/wfeducator_80/math/algebra.fls | - c:/program files/wfeducator_80/math/geometry.fls | - French | - c:/program files/wfeducator_80/french/nouns.fls - c:/program files/wfeducator_80/french/verbs.fls - c:/program files/wfeducator_80/french/phrases.fls This view is accessible via a speed-button on the button bar, so with one click you can see all of your current study files along with their Last Used Date and, if it's a Leitner-mode deck, the Review Date and the number of pairs due for review (not shown in the example above). You can open a file by double-clicking on it or check its stats by highlighting it and clicking the Statistics For Selected File Button. Our beta testers agree that this is now the first place they go when opening the program. * For those of you who often add new pairs that are very similar to already existing pairs we have added the ability to Copy the entire pair in one step. Everything associated with the source pair - including all support files as well as hints/comments and MC/FIB answers - is transferred to the target pair. We've also added a Move function to allow you to rearrange the position of pairs in the deck. * The well-respected Leitner Box System has been added as a new primary Q&A mode. This is similar to the Frequency Based On History mode, but allows for more levels of mastery (up to nine). It's a great way to learn and maintain a large knowledge base such as the entire vocabulary for a foreign language. It's integrated with the Subjects Outline View, so you can see when your material is scheduled for its next review. * You can directly record audio into your Questions and Answers without having to fool with filenames, entry into the associated files dialog, etc. Just hit the Record button and an applet will pop up allowing you to start and stop the recording to be associated with the Q or A. * Want a nice graphic to go along with all the pairs in a certain deck but don't want to have to enter it in every pair? V8.0 lets you specify a graphics file that will be displayed for all Q's (and a different one for all A's) in the deck where a specific graphic has not been entered. Great for dressing up your study decks with negligible effort! Hope we've piqued your appetite with this little sampling. We'll be sending you a special Version 8 Release edition of the newsletter when the programs are available for download. For those of you who are wondering if you should wait on purchasing v7.0 or a v7.0 upgrade until the release of v8.0 - definitely NOT! :-) All purchases and upgrades of v7.0 that occurred on or after June 1, 2003 will be eligible for a free upgrade to v8.0 when it becomes available. So get your upgrade NOW! --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash Educator Honored At The Shareware Industry Conference The highlight of the annual Shareware Industry Conference is always the Awards Banquet on Saturday night. Open Window Software was one of this year's nominees for the Best Educational Program - itself a coveted honor. We're happy to let you know that when the envelope was opened this year, WinFlash Educator won the Best Educational Program award! As if that weren't enough to have us puff out our virtual chest, the next day at the Educational Shareware Cooperative's luncheon Open Window Software received this year's Outstanding Achievement Award for our efforts in the educational software field. We thought you'd be pleased to hear this, too - and that's all based on v7.0. Wait'll they see v8.0! --------------------------------------------------- 3) Freeware Study Deck - Morse Code Remembering my boyhood Scouting experiences, I decided to create a deck to help the aspiring telegraphers out there get a start on learning the code. Each letter is given in its dot-dash representation as well as a slow-speed audio rendition. Using the deck will give you a good start at recognizing the letters of the alphabet, basic punctuation, and the numbers 0 through 9. Download and open with WinFlash: http://www.openwindow.com/ftp/morse.flz --------------------------------------------------- 4) Free Upgrades For Deck Contributors Now that you've read about the new features in v8.0, isn't it time to put the final polish on that study deck of yours to make it a solid contribution to the WinFlash Users Group Library? We'll give you a free upgrade to v8.0 of your edition 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. --------------------------------------------------- 5) Study Tip While we don't recommend cramming as a study mode, who hasn't had to occasionally prepare at the last minute? If you're stuck with learning a week's worth of vocabulary words for Friday morning's test and it's now Thursday night, what's the quickest way? What's needed is a time-compressed version of Frequency Based on History, so that you don't waste time on learning words that 'stick' right away. The best way to do this is with the simplest Q&A mode, Ask All Questions Equally Often with a few additional options. Here are the steps and settings needed: 1. Open the study deck and set Options|Q&A Modes to Ask All Questions Equally Often. 2. In Options|Pair Order & Size select Repetition = One Pass 3. Run through the deck and, after the pass is complete, click 'Yes' in Continuation dialog and 'Yes' again in the 'Only Include Missed Pairs? dialog. As you continue to repeat the deck, the 'learned' pairs will drop off while the tough nuts will continue to appear. Once you've gotten all the remaining pairs correct the deck will automatically reset to asking all of the pairs again, letting you review the full set again, working through it until all are answered correctly again. 4. Repeat step 3 until you feel confident you've mastered the deck. You can add variety to the 'cram session' by using the Options|Pair Order & Size|Order = Random setting as well as the features in the Options|Q&A Modes|Settings Common To All Modes grouping. Take an occasional break and don't burn yourself out - and start a little earlier NEXT week :-) Note: WinFlash Basic does not support the 'Run Only Misses From Previous Pass' feature. --------------------------------------------------- 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 © 2003 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Spring 2003 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards And ProUpdater Contents: 1) Optimizing Graphics For Use In WinFlash 2) Ideas For More Decks For The Library? 3) Freeware Fonts Supporting The Greek Symbol Set 4) Increase Your Backup Security With Offsite Storage 5) All About Fonts In WinFlash 6) Free Updates For Deck Contributors 7) Study Tip --------------------------------------------------- 1) Optimizing Graphics For Use In WinFlash You can make your graphics-content decks look a bit more professional by taking a little extra time when preparing the graphics for use. When we create our demo decks we first assemble the graphics based on the needed content. Next we open all the graphics at once using a program such as Paint Shop Pro (our personal favorite for graphics manipulation and creation). This allows us to consider the overall 'feel' of the set of graphics - if something plainly doesn't fit we try to find a substitute that is more in line with the overall style of the deck. We may also make small changes such as changing the background color, removing distracting features, etc. As a last step, we make all of the graphics the same size (520 x 400) - usually by enlarging the canvas by adding additional 'white space' that matches the color of the original's background. This size fits the default graphic window of the Q and A dialogs nicely without wasting space within the window. Have a favorite tip for using one of WinFlash's capabilities? E-mail it to us and we'll try it out for use in an upcoming newsletter. If we use it we'll credit you with the suggestion and flag you in the database for a free upgrade to the next major release. --------------------------------------------------- 2) Ideas For More Decks For The Library? We're looking for fresh suggestions for our featured study decks that we release with our newsletter. Is there a topic you'd like to see that you think would have a significant user base? If you send us an idea that we use we'll credit you in the newsletter when it's released as well as flagging your name for a free upgrade to the next major release. Send us your suggestions - the deck we release with our next newsletter could be yours! --------------------------------------------------- 3) Freeware Fonts Supporting The Greek Symbol Set Instead of a flashcard deck or pair generator, this issue we're featuring two fonts that'll be useful for those of you using WinFlash for subjects which make use of Greek symbols (math, physics, etc.). See the feature on fonts in WinFlash below for a thorough discussion of the general topic. These two fonts support all of the normal keyboard characters AND provide all of the small and capital Greek characters in the 'upper' portion of the font, accessible using Charmap or the Alt-Keypad # method. The first one is a Times New Roman-style for the 'regular' characters and the second is Arial-style. Download these fonts from our WinFlash Users Group Library page at http://www.openwindow.com/pages/wfusers.htm or, if your mail client supports it, by clicking directly on the links below: Arial: http://www.openwindow.com/ftp/arialsym.ttf Times New Roman: http://www.openwindow.com/ftp/timessym.ttf --------------------------------------------------- 4) Increase Your Backup Security With Offsite Storage In the last issue of the newsletter we talked about how to set up an automatic backup system for your home network. That system guards against a large majority of the data loss scenarios that you might encounter. What about that tiny minority of cases, though, when your ENTIRE home computing environment is destroyed - either by natural disaster or through vandalism or theft? The only way to recover from this type of event is to have a copy of your data stored in a secure location off-site. While some web-based companies offer services of this type you'd need a very high-speed connection for backup of any serious amount of data. At Open Window we use a system where we rotate three sets of removable Zip disks between our bank, a fireproof storage box in our home and our office desk. We established this procedure before writeable CD's were available at such inexpensive prices. These days we'd probably use CDR's for our monthly backups, sticking with the three-generation approach and destroying the oldest set when the new one is created. Depending on the extent of your data and the capacity of your removable media, you may want to store less data than you do for your daily backups. For instance on our daily backups we copy our in-progress programs' .exe files, all the previous versions, .zip files we host on our site, etc., since these go to an 80Gb drive that has plenty of spare space. When we do our monthly offsite backups we use a different set of settings for ProUpdater, stored in a separate .opt file, that excludes all data that we can regenerate with simple compilations of our source code archives. We also periodically write a CDR of archival data that will never change and LEAVE this in the safe deposit box. This data is then excluded from the monthly backups. Whatever removable media you decide upon, the key is to set up a routine where you periodically back up your data and move the media to a safe, off-site location. If you don't have a bank safe deposit box, you can arrange to swap backups with a friend - providing the off-site safety net for each other. Since the likelihood of a system-wide disaster is, hopefully, a lot lower than the risk of a simple disk crash, unintentional format, or other every-day data wipeout, we've settled on once a month for these backups. You may be comfortable with a longer interval. Just ask yourself "How many weeks (months) of data would I be comfortable losing permanently?" Some of my friends who only use their computer for e-mail and web surfing are comfortable with starting over totally from scratch if they were to lose their data. Many others, though, have either financial data, digital photos of the family, collections of carefully assembled music files or other fruits of significant effort that they'd be loath to part with. If you're in this latter group, think about setting up that off-site backup routine! If you don't yet have a backup tool to assist with this chore, check out ProUpdater on our site at http://www.openwindow.com/pages/winupd8r.htm --------------------------------------------------- 5) All About Fonts In WinFlash The use of fonts in WinFlash probably causes more confusion than any other single topic. First a little background on fonts. Starting with Windows 3.1, the standard Windows display fonts have been TrueType fonts. These fonts contain 'only' 256 characters - not all of which are printable. The positions 33 - 126 comprise the commonly-accessible keyboard characters. These 'lower' positions are fairly standard across most TrueType fonts as they must correspond to standard keyboard assignments. Positions 127 - 255 are less standard across fonts and contain additional characters that can be entered using Charmap or the numeric keypad. Starting with Windows XP, Unicode fonts became part of the standard operating system. Unicode fonts contain many more characters and require two bytes of data (16 bits) to represent each character. Because of this requirement, documents which contain Unicode font characters above position 255 cannot be stored in standard ANSI text format (the format for WinFlash .fls files) - thus WinFlash does not universally support the characters above position 255 in Unicode fonts. WinFlash DOES support Unicode characters in the .rtf support files which can be created and edited with Educator (this includes the deck's Introduction). See the Tutorial topic "Add An Intro And .RTF Support File" for information on using these capabilities. If you are using WinFlash to learn facts that can be expressed with the characters available from the standard keyboard, you're in luck - select any font that you like for the Question and Answer - both of these fonts are independently selectable in Options|Colors & Fonts. The rub comes when you want to use 'special' characters in addition to the regular keyboard characters - for instance the British pound symbol "£" or perhaps Japanese or Korean characters. You must be certain when using such characters with CharMap that Charmap is set to the SAME font as the Questions (or Answers if an answer is being edited). In addition, in Windows XP, you need to be sure that you're selecting the character from the first 255 positions in the font. In short - all the characters universally recognized correctly by WinFlash can be entered by holding down the Alt key, typing a number between 33 and 255 on the numeric keypad and releasing the Alt key. There are a number of tactics you can use to get around this issue if you need to make use of 'special' character sets. If you simply need foreign language characters for non-Asian alphabets you can obtain TrueType fonts from many locations on the net. Do a search for TrueType fonts on Google and you'll quickly locate sources for your font. Install your font on your computer and then set the Answer font to this new font and you're set to go. See http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ttfinst/ttfinst.htm for a nice step-by-step tutorial, including screenshots, on how to install a new font on your computer. If you need access to the extended capabilities of Unicode fonts - to create study decks for Japanese, for instance - consider using the .rtf support file capability in Educator. This will place the Unicode text in the right-hand side 'graphics' window. You'll need to 'phrase' your questions so that you don't need the 'regular' part of the WinFlash pair to contain these Unicode characters. For instance, you could enter Japanese vocabulary words in the Question's .rtf support file and then use the Auto Fill-In-The-Blank capability in Educator to study the words where the Japanese word is the question and the English word is the answer. To go in the other direction, though, you'd need to revert to 'standard' mode, since WinFlash cannot accept the Japanese characters as entries in the FIB box. The fairly complicated information above can be managed by understanding and applying a few simple facts about WinFlash: 1. All 'regular' text in WinFlash must be entered using the lower 255 characters of a font. 2. The Questions' regular text must all be in a single, user-selectable, font. The Answers' regular text must also all be in a single, user-selectable, font - a different one than the Questions' if desired. This setting is accessed through the Options|Colors & Fonts dialog. 3. ANY mix of fonts and characters can be used in the Introduction and in each pair's .rtf support files. (See the Tutorial topic "Add An Intro And .RTF Support File" for information on using these capabilities.) --------------------------------------------------- 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 An excellent way to reinforce your memory of the facts you're studying is to change the format in which they're presented. That way you integrate the basic facts themselves, regardless of the format that they're presented in. WinFlash Scholar and Educator both have Option settings that allow you to present "standard format" pairs as Fill-In-The-Blank or Multiple Choice pairs automatically. This is especially useful for fact pairs like vocabulary words. If you enter all of your vocabulary words as standard format pairs you can then study them in a variety of ways - standard, fill-in and multiple choice for starters. But then throw in Display Answer After x Seconds time limiting, A First Followed By Q - Always or Randomly and you have a large menu of ways to reinforce your memorization AND to keep from getting bored with the same old study routine! Note: All mentioned options can be found in Options|Q&A Modes|Settings Common To All Modes. --------------------------------------------------- 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 © 2003 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News February/March 2003 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards And ProUpdater Contents: 1) Full XP Themes Support In Version 7.00.08 2) WinFlash's Category Feature 3) New Freeware Fraction Problem Generator 4) Automatically Backing Up Your Home Network 5) Make WinFlash's Main Window A 'Floating Tool Bar' 6) Free Upgrades For Referrals 7) Study Tip --------------------------------------------------- 1) Version 7.00.08 Available Since our last newsletter, we've released two minor updates. These updates affect all three versions of the program - Basic, Scholar and Educator. Version 7.00.08, including the changes from version 7.00.07, contains fixes for the following problems: 1. We've added full support for Windows XP themes. If you're running XP, it's worth downloading and installing the new version JUST for the improved appearance! 2. Again, for XP, we've modified the program so that users of the machine who do not have Administrator-level rights can still use the .FLZ and .FLT file types. 3. We've fixed a bug that allowed duplicate choice possibilities when using the Automatic Multiple Choice From Standard Pairs and the A First Followed By Q options together. 4. The table view in the editor now updates correctly on its initial use with the SECOND and subsequent files opened on a new startup of WinFlash. 5. Some vagaries with the enable/disable of the 'Redisplay Intro' button have been corrected. 6. Display issues of some of the dialogs when Large Fonts display setting was used has been corrected. 7. And yes, we FINALLY managed to get the spelling of California's state capital correct in the Capitals demo file :-) If you would like to upgrade your installation, download the new version from our website and install it into the same directory as your current version. This will not change any of your decks or settings, but will simply replace the .exe file with the newer version. --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash's Category Feature One of WinFlash's features that gets less use than it should is Categories. It's very easy to include this designator on each pair that you create - just type the category name (up to 20 characters) into the Category Of This Pair box on the right-hand panel of the editor. After you've typed in a category you can assign it to any subsequent pair by simply selecting it from the drop down list contained in this box - click on the little down-pointing arrow at the right side of the box to access this list. When you begin a new deck, consider what the best way to use the Category designator might be. For example, if you're taking a foreign language course you might use the Categories to indicate which chapter the vocabulary words were from. With a little more thought, though, you might see that you can include the TYPE of vocabulary word (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) AND the chapter with a bit of shorthand: Ch12 - V for Chapter 12 Verb, etc. Spending a few minutes working out the way you'll organize the cards by category when you begin will pay dividends in increased flexibility in using the deck. Later, when studying, you can use the Options|Pair Order and Size|Use Named Range option to include a specific subset of the deck's categories for focused study. You can use Categories for filtering cards for printing or for export to your PDA. You can also use Categories to select pairs for inclusion in a new deck created using the Create Composite .FLS File tool's filter settings. See the Create A Composite .FLS File help topic for detailed information on using this feature. --------------------------------------------------- 3) New Freeware Fraction Problem Generator This month I initially decided to offer a deck for math study - fractions, to be specific. After creating a dozen or so pairs it became obvious that this was a REALLY tedious undertaking. So, as is often the case with programmers, I decided to write a tool to create them. As is ALSO often the case with programmers, writing the tool took MUCH more time than just writing the fractions study file would have. But hey, it was WAY more fun :-) Using the generator, you can create .fls study files with from 3 to 5000 pairs that include fraction problems in reduction, addition, and multiplication. You can also adjust the complexity between easy, medium, and hard. You can download this file (~593Kb) by clicking on the link below: http://www.openwindow.com/ftp/fractions.exe Just run the file, select the type, complexity, and number of pairs you want, click Create File and give the new file a name. In a wink you'll have a deck to use to study fractions. I hope your young student(s) will forgive me for creating this monster!! --------------------------------------------------- 4) Automatically Backing Up Your Home Network Backing up your data is one of those dirty little chores that we tend to prioritize off of our todo lists until it's too late... Our hard disk crashes and all of our data, including that todo list, suddenly takes a giant step back into the past - to the state of our last restorable backup. Your last one was when? If you're like me, the only way you can get around this is to totally automate the process. The good news is that if you have a network with at least two computers on it you can delegate this chore to the Windows Task Scheduler. You'll also need backup software that will run unattended (we suggest ProUpdater, of course :-)). http://www.openwindow.com/pages/winupd8r.htm We've long ago decided that backing up EVERYTHING on our computer is an unnecessary waste of storage space. The really irreplaceable stuff is the data you create with your applications. Everything else can be restored by reinstallation - albeit a somewhat time-consuming exercise. It's a GREAT help if you can organize your data files a bit. At Open Window we use a simple structure like the example below: C:\ | |- LarrysData | - Word Files | - Excel Files etc.. You can, of course, create further sub-directories such a Business, Personal, Volunteer, etc. under each application directory. Another approach is to reverse the hierarchy above like this: C:\ | |- LarrysData | - Business | - Personal | - Volunteer etc.. with the applications listed below each category. Either way, this approach places the vast majority of your data in a hierarchical directory structure below a single top directory - LarrysData in the above example. Let's say you have a two-computer network, one belongs to Larry and the other is used by Mary and the kids, Joe and Lucy. To back up both machines we can simply copy the directory LarrysData to the family machine and the directories MarysData, JoesData and LucysData to Larry's machine. Assuming we're running the backups from Larry's machine and that the family machine's hard drive is mapped as drive F:\ on Larry's machine we could do this with four simple entries using ProUpdater's Batch File Mode: DirPair1=c:\LarrysData!f:\LarrysData DirPair2=f:\MarysData!c:\MarysData DirPair3=f:\JoesData!c:\JoesData DirPair4=f:\LucysData!c:\LucysData Now, making sure that we leave both machines on overnight, we can use Windows' Schedule Task function (Programs|Accessories|System Tools|Schedule Tasks) to run the backup at, say, 1:00 am every morning. For more detailed instructions on setting up this type of regimen, see ProUpdater's help file. There! You're now protected against data loss from a disk crash on either machine. In our next newsletter we'll offer some suggestions on expanding this system to guard against a REAL catastrophe - the loss or destruction of your whole network in a single mishap! Note: Leaving your machines on 24x7 uses very little power (assuming you turn off your monitors when you're not using them) and most experts agree that the disks last longer when spinning continuously than when they're being turned on and off every day. Continuous operation allows you to use the Task Scheduler to perform OTHER tasks during the night as well. Virus checking, defragging and checking the disk for errors are three other maintenance tasks that tie up the machine and can be scheduled to automatically run at night. --------------------------------------------------- 5) Make WinFlash's Main Window A 'Floating Tool Bar' One of the tech support questions we get fairly often goes something like "I'm always losing the Q or A dialog 'underneath' the main window - how can I easily get it back?" The best way to fix this is to avoid the issue entirely. Since WinFlash remembers the size and location of its main window from the last session, just resize the main window so that it's only tall enough to show the menu and the speed buttons. Make it just wide enough to show all of the menu items. Now reposition it in an out-of-the-way location - I prefer the upper left corner of the screen. Now whenever you open WinFlash it'll start up as this unobtrusive 'toolbar' - allowing you access to all of the controls without getting in your way once you start to work with your decks! --------------------------------------------------- 6) Free Upgrades For Referrals Have a friend that could use WinFlash? We'll give you a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program 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 your friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 7) Study Tip If the course you're studying uses a companion text, be sure to copy the 'check for understanding' questions that are included at the end of each chapter into your WinFlash study deck. It would be hard to do poorly on an exam if you can answer all of these questions correctly! If the course is highly lecture-based you'll need to take good notes. After each lecture try to create 3-5 likely exam questions that were covered in the lecture and enter these in your study deck. Use the Category field to group the questions for later focused study. --------------------------------------------------- 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 © 2003 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News Holiday Issue 2002 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards And ProUpdater Contents: 1) Special Holiday Gift Offer 2) New Freeware State Capitals Flashcards 3) Version 7.00.06 Update Available 4) Add A PDA To Your Holiday Wish List 5) Back Up Your Study Decks 6) Free Updates For Deck Contributors 7) Study Tip --------------------------------------------------- 1) Special Holiday Gift Offer Give the gift of learning! Purchase any WinFlash program as a gift for a friend or relative and we'll give you 30% off the list price. You must already have purchased a regular-priced copy of the program for yourself to qualify for this offer. This is REALLY the 'gift that keeps on giving' in terms of long term academic success!! Place the order on our site using your own name, contact info and credit card information. In the comments section mention this offer and enter the name, mailing address and e-mail address of the recipient. Also enter the date that you'd like us to send them an e-mail notification of your gift and any personalized message you'd like us to include. We'll also send them their gift program on a CD (and add appropriate S&H at the regular rate) if you do not ask for an 'e-mail only order'. --------------------------------------------------- 2) New Freeware State Capital Flashcards Continuing in the geography vein, we've focused on the 50 states of the US. Each pair is a six-part fill-in-the-blank-type question asking the subject state's capital, nickname, bird, flower, tree, and song. For more manageable memorization the states have been categorized into five regions - Pacific States, Mountain States, Midwestern States, Southern States and Northeastern States. Each pair also has a simple outline map of the state highlighting the location of the capital. By using the Options|Pair Order And Size|Use Named Range setting, you can choose any one (or more) of the five categories to concentrate on. You can download this file (~490Kb) by clicking on the link below: http://www.openwindow.com/ftp/statecap.flz --------------------------------------------------- 3) Version 7.00.06 Available We've released an update which affects all three versions of the program - Basic, Scholar and Educator. It contains fixes for the following problems: 1. Occasionally, when opening a SECOND flashcard deck in the editor during a WinFlash session (without closing WinFlash) the very first edit made to this second deck would be lost. 2. The timer controlling the automatic display of the answer when using the Display Answer After ___ Seconds did not automatically start up when using a .flz-type study file (problem evident in the Multiplication Table Example in the Demo menu). 3. The Auto Play Audio option has been added to Options|View|Hints,Comments,Tips & Associated Files. It is normally selected, indicating that an audio file associated with the Q or A will play automatically upon the display of the Q or A dialog with which it is associated. If the option is deselected, the audio will play only if the Play button on the VCR control in the dialog is clicked. If you would like to upgrade your installation, download the new version from our website and install it into the same directory as your current version. This will not change any of your decks or settings, but will simply replace the .exe file with the newer version. --------------------------------------------------- 4) Add A PDA To Your Holiday Wish List If you've been using WinFlash to successfully improve your study efficiency but haven't yet expanded your scope to the PDA, now's the time! Put a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) on your Holiday shopping list. If you can't convince someone to get it for you, buy it for yourself! You've probably already heard the standard reasons for owning a PDA, including on-the-go reference for your address book, appointment schedule and phone book. Some of the more advanced PDA's also let you take along your music collection as well! But the reason you really should acquire one of these great little tools is to capitalize on those odd moments spent waiting in line, riding the bus, stopped in commute traffic or the hundred other little time slices that we let get away from us. Using your PDA and your already-existing WinFlash decks you can get in a quick 5 or 10 minutes of review time for your latest study deck during these otherwise-frustrating time wasters. Imagine what this would add up to over a week's time! Take the plunge - get yourself a PDA (we like the WinCE-type, but HandyCards supports both the Palm and PocketPC platforms) and upgrade your WinFlash product to the WinFlash Educator/HandyCards Bundle. You'll save $5 over the price of these products separately and will be thanking yourself for that present on every upcoming exam! --------------------------------------------------- 5) Back Up Your Study Decks After putting hours into creating and studying your decks, the last thing you need is for them to suddenly disappear the day before that critical final. This can happen, though, unless you take steps to safeguard your data. If you've never had a catastrophic disk crash, you're fortunate - best not to trust in luck to continue to protect you, however. If your study files are text-only, you can fit a lot of .fls files on a single floppy disk. Just copy your .fls and .fld files over to a spare floppy from time to time. If you have more complex decks, perhaps including audio, graphic and .rtf support files, you'll probably need more space for your backups. Today's inexpensive CD burners are an ideal answer. Just burn your entire set of study files onto a CDR once a week or so. For a more system-wide approach to data backup, check out ProUpdater at http://www.openwindow.com/pages/winupd8r.htm --------------------------------------------------- 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 Learn to use the Frequency Based On History mode (Options|Q&A Modes) and its associated frequency customizations. This mode asks questions that you haven't mastered more often than ones that you've learned, making your study much more efficient. One of the biggest wastes of study time is excessive review of already-mastered material. Experiment with the frequency settings so that you find those that minimize forgetting short and long term learned pairs while maximizing the percentage of time you are studying unlearned pairs. You'll find that you master more material in less time! --------------------------------------------------- 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 © 2002 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Open Window Software News October/November 2002 A Free E-mail Newsletter From Open Window Software Featuring Tips On Using The WinFlash Suite, HandyCards And ProUpdater Contents: 1) Introduce Us To Your Friends 2) New Freeware World Capitals Flashcards 3) Entering New Cards Faster - Use The Shortcuts 4) Optimizing Decks For Use With PDAs 5) Customize Your Cheers & Jeers Files 6) Free Upgrades For Deck Contributors 7) Study Tip --------------------------------------------------- 1) Introduce Us To Your Friends If you're enjoying our newsletters and finding them helpful, please forward them to friends who may also find them useful. --------------------------------------------------- 2) New Freeware World Capitals Flashcards This deck contains all 193 nations of the world. Question is the country name, answer is the country capital with the graphic of the country's flag. Each card is characterized by continent, so the deck can be studied one continent at a time. This is a good deck to try with Educator's Automatic Fill In The Blank From Standard feature. This lets you study standard mode pairs in FIB mode - automatically checking the entered answer against the text in the main Answer dialog box. Also try the Answer First Followed By Question mode to see if you can identify the country from being shown the capital and the flag. If you have a child taking World Geography, they may find this deck most helpful. You may also want to give it a try yourself. I was rather embarrassed about my own lack of knowledge in this area as I was creating the deck! You can download this file (~658Kb) by clicking on the link below: http://www.openwindow.com/ftp/worldcap.flz --------------------------------------------------- 3) Entering New Cards Faster - Use The Shortcuts If you're adding new cards to the deck, it really speeds things up to learn a couple of the shortcut keys that control the WinFlash Editor: Ctrl-L - Opens the current card deck with a new pair ready to edit in the Editor inserted at the end of the deck Alt-A - Go to the Answer entry panel For instance, if you were entering a vocabulary list, the sequence might go something like: Open the editor. Check Auto-save Edits and Auto-reset Page Ctrl-L (Add a new card at the end of the deck) Type in the Question - you're already focused in the Question edit box Alt-A (Move to Answer page); Type in the Answer - you're already focused in the Answer edit box Ctrl-L (Insert a new card at the end of the deck) : If you're constructing more complex pairs you can access each of the most-used panels via an Alt-key combination: Alt-Q - Question Panel Alt-A - Answer Panel Alt-F - Associated File Panel Alt-C - Hints & Comments Panel Experiment with moving the cursor between fields by using the tab key rather than the mouse. Even several tabs are quicker to enter than moving your hand away from the keyboard to reach for the mouse. Speed isn't everything when creating your decks, however. Remember that the very task of organizing and entering the Q&A pairs is, itself, a powerful aid in helping you retain the information. Pay attention to the content as you're entering the data - that's one or two fewer passes you'll need to master each pair! --------------------------------------------------- 4) Optimizing Decks For Use With PDA's If you're using the Educator/HandyCards bundle to get maximum coverage from your study decks you'll want to plan the construction of your files carefully. For instance, if you'll be using a PalmOS device you'll want to be sure that the primary content of the question and answer is contained within the text portion of the pair, since the HandyCards for the Palm cannot display images or play sounds. If you have a WinCE machine, you'll be able to use pictures and sounds, but only if you limit your file types to .bmp or .jpg's and your sound files to .wav's. For a complete discussion of how decks are exported for use with HandyCards, see the Help file topic HandyCards Compatibility Guidelines. --------------------------------------------------- 5) Customize Your Cheers & Jeers Files Virtually all computers have the ability to record and play back sound files. You can use this functionality to liven up your decks with your own Cheers & Jeers. Parents who are creating decks for their younger children can add encouraging comments in their own voices. Older kids can have fun recording and adding their own 'more colorful' comments and sound effects. The Windows operating system provides a simple but effective tool to record sound files called, appropriately enough, Sound Recorder. This is located in the Programs|Accessories|Entertainment section of the Start Menu. You'll need a microphone connected to the mic input of your sound card or, on many laptops, simply use the built-in microphone. Experiment with the recorder, noting how to record and playback sounds. You'll want to save your finished candidates for Cheers & Jeers with names of the form CJC*.* for cheers and CJJ*.* for jeers. CJCGoodJob.wav and CJJIDoubtIt.wav are usable names for a cheer and jeer, respectively. For details on where to place your newly-created Cheers and Jeers (up to 50 of each) see the Help file topic Cheers & Jeers. --------------------------------------------------- 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 As you review a deck, be as thorough as possible in framing your answers. Using the fill-in-the-blank mode helps to ensure completeness and actually entering each answer is more reenforcing than just 'saying it in your head'. Type it, say it, visualize it - maybe add sound as a key if that's appropriate. The more senses you involve in your review the better the material will 'stick'! 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. --------------------------------------------------- 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 © 2002 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- 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. --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------