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3.4: Getting Help   
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3.4: Getting Help
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Two Types of Help
Window-Eyes has two kinds of help at your disposal: the Window-Eyes on-line manual and Application help. The on-line manual is available through the Help item of the Voice Control Panel's menu bar. Choosing this item pulls down a menu with six choices: the Window-Eyes Manual, the Window-Eyes Readme, Tip of the Day, Error Reporting, the Window-Eyes Update, and About Window-Eyes (which gives you a message box about Window-Eyes, displaying among other things, the serial and version numbers). The manual contains the majority of all Window-Eyes documentation, and is organized into sections whose titles are hypertext links to the various sections. You may find this more convenient than loading the text files of the manual (located in the manual folder underneath the Window-Eyes folder) into a word processor and reading them, especially when you just have one topic you want to look up.
Application Help is entirely another matter; it helps you use Window-Eyes to access the various windows, dialog, and controls that your application software uses. If you are using application programs supported by GW Micro-supplied set files, you can get help information on many windows that your applications are likely to open. Application Help is available through a Window-Eyes hot key, CTRL-SHIFT-?, in factory-supplied set files. You can also use this valuable feature when constructing your own set files, and you can add information to the feature as you learn more about your application programs.
The Window-Eyes Application Help hot key opens a dialog containing the following controls:
Information: Edit Box – The title of this edit box, as well as the contents, will change depending on the radio buttons discussed below. The information presented in this edit box is completely user editable, and can contain notes on how to use specific features of an application.
Control: Radio Button – When selected, this option will cause the information edit box to be labeled “Control Information” and the contents of the Control Information edit box will be relevant to the control that was focused when the Application Help hot key was pressed.
Dialog: Radio Button – When selected, this option will cause the information edit box to be labeled “Dialog Information” and the contents of the Control Information edit box will be relevant to the dialog that was active when the Application Help hot key was pressed.
Application: Radio Button – When selected, this option will cause the information edit box to be labeled “Application Information” and the contents of the Application Information edit box will be relevant to the application that was active when the Application Help hot key was pressed.
Generic Control Information: Read-only Edit Box – This edit box contains information describing the control that was focused when the Application Help hot key was pressed. Generic control information includes detailed control descriptions, as well as Window-Eyes specific information on reading and interacting with controls.
Save: Button – This button, when selected, will save any information entered into the Information edit box.
Close: Button – This button, when selected, will close the Application Help dialog.
Take, for example, everyone’s favorite text editor: Notepad. If you bring up the Application Help dialog in Notepad, and select the Application radio button, you can enter details to the Application Information edit box that deal with using Notepad as a text editor. You might choose to keep track of hot keys used often in the editor, such as ALT-O, W to toggle Word Wrap, or CTRL-H for find and replace. These notes apply to the application as a whole, and would therefore be stored with the Application radio button selected. If you opened the Print dialog in Notepad, you might choose to make notes regarding what kind of paper setup you prefer for printing text document, or how to collate more than one copy. These notes apply to the print dialog alone, and would therefore be stored with the Dialog radio button selected. Once in the list of printers in the print dialog, you might then want to make notes regarding which printers are connected to your machine locally, and which are remote, or which are inkjet, and which are laser printers. These notes apply to the list view of printers located specifically in the print dialog of Notepad, and would therefore be stored with the Control radio button selected.
Once you’ve entered custom information regarding the control, dialog, or application, you can select the Save button to save all the information you entered.
If control information exists for the focused control when you open the Application Help dialog, the control radio button will be selected automatically. If no control information exists, but dialog information does exist for the dialog that is active when you open the Application Help dialog, then the dialog radio button will be selected automatically. If no control information or dialog information exists, but application information does exist for the window that is active when you open the Application help dialog, the application radio button will be selected automatically. If no information exists for any of the three categories, the application radio button will be selected by default, and the cursor will be placed in the generic control information read only edit box. You can easily review information contained in all three categories by selecting the appropriate radio button.
Tip of the Day
Window-Eyes is packed with features, and learning the ins and outs of all of them can take quite a bit of time. The Window-Eyes Tip of the Day feature alleviates the overwhelming fear of having to memorize the entire manual by providing small snippets of information about various Window-Eyes features every time Window-Eyes is launched.
The Tip of the Day dialog contains a read only edit box of tip information, a Previous button to move to the previous tip, a Next button to move to the next tip, a check box labeled Show Tips at Startup (used to control the showing of the Tip of the Day when Window-Eyes launches), and a Close button. Several tips also provide a View Help Topic button, which when selected, will open the Window-Eyes manual directly to the section that corresponds with the tip information. If a tip has a web site associated with it, a View Web Site button will be available. When the View Web Site button is selected, the associated page will load in your default web browser.
If you elect to hide the Tip of the Day dialog when Window-Eyes launches, you can always choose to view the Tip of the Day dialog using the Tip of the Day menu item in the Window-Eyes Help menu.
Each time the Tip of the Day dialog is displayed, a new tip will appear, much like using the Next button moves to the next tip. Window-Eyes will remember the last tip displayed so that you don’t always start on the same tip every time Window-Eyes launches.