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.