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. ---------------------------------------------------