-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= |-=>CompuNotes<=-| -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Notes from The Cutting Edge of Personal Computing March 2, 1997 Issue 69 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Managing Editor: Patrick Grote -- mailto:pgrote@inlink.com Assistant Editor: Writer Liaison: Doug Reed-- mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com Graphics Editor, Webmaster: Judy Litt mailto:jlitt@aol.com Archives: ftp://ftp.uu.net/published/compunotes/ Website: http://users.aol.com/CompNote/ email: mailto:notes@inlink.com fax: (314) 909-1662 voice: (314) 909-1662 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= CONTENTS My Notes: 1=> Monday Chat! 2=> This Week's Winner! Columnists' Corner: 3=> A Clarification from Jeffrey L. Fishbein, mailto:jlfish@riverweb.com 4=> Our First Annual Reader's Award Winners! Readers Questions: 5=> Uncompressing and Windows95 Drive and Iomega Rebates! Reviews: 6=> Product: WinHelp Office 4, Reviewed By: Roger W. Klein, mailto:rklein@compucom.com 7=> Product: Special Edition Using Access95 by Roger Jennings Reviewed By: Robert Hering, mailto:crhering@acy.digex.net Interview: 8=> Interview with Jensen Harris author of CD Alarm! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= CompuNotes is: Available weekly via email and on-line. We cover the PC computing world with comprehensive reviews, news, hot web sites, great columns and interviews. We also give away one software package a week to a lucky winner for just reading our fine publication! Never dull, sometimes tardy, we are here to bring you the computing world the way it is! Please tell every online friend you know about us! CompuNotes B440 1315 Woodgate Drive St. Louis, MO 63122 notes@inlink.com +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= SYSOPS SEE END OF ISSUE FOR SYSOP INFORMATION! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= To subscribe, send this email to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SUBSCRIBE COMPUNOTES-L FirstName LastName To unsubscribe, send this email to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SIGNOFF COMPUNOTES-L +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Patrick's Notes 1=> Chat Session with CompuNotes! Every Monday night at 8:00pm, CompuNotes hosts a chat session on Yahoo! Chat! Last Monday was our first night and a fun, informative night was had by all! This week we will be announcing the winners of our first annual readers awards. We will have our writers as guests to shed some light on the products coming out in 1997! We invite you to attend and join in on the conversation and fun! The address is . We are located in the SCIENCE&TECHNOLOGY area in the Computer/CompuNotes room. All you have to do is type WHERE IS COMPUNOTES and a guide will help you. Also, please plan on signing on Yahoo! 30 minutes prior to your chat if this will be your first chat. You'll need to download a plug-in for your browser to support the chat! As always, we'll be giving away a free software package to someone in attendance. 2=> Winner! This week's winner is ameng@datamade.com! Send them a congrats message mailto:ameng@datamade.com! 3=> Jeff's Clarification" Glad to be a new contributor to your newsletter. But, if I can be a thorn just this one time, I'd like to remind you of the follow up/clarification on my column that appeared in #67 ... "At the time I wrote my editorial, the America Online "busy signal" problem had yet to be reported widely. Although that later became the focus of the various state attorneys' general investigations, at the time my column was published, the AG of Pennsylvania (and AGs in most other states) were strictly looking into the price change issue. I support the actions of AGs who moved, even if slowly, to protect the interests of consumers who paid for a service (AOL) they could not use due to a lack of modem availability." 4=> Reader's Choice Awards! We'd like to thank everyone for participating in the reader's awards. We were happy to see the response and we hope you'll send your comments to Patrick at mailto:pgrote@inlink.com! The results are also available on the web at: Best Overall Product: Winner: Microsoft Office95, Professional Edition Runner=Up: WinZip Ver. 6.2 Best Business Application: Winner: Microsoft Office95, Professional Edition Runner=Up: ABC Graphics Suite Best Internet Application: Winner: Hot Metal Pro 2.0 Runner=Up: HTML:The Definitive Guide Best Utility Software: Winner: WinZip Ver. 6.2 Runner=Up: Norton Navigator Best Communications Software: a Tie! Winner: Delrina CommSuite 95 Winner: Procomm Plus 3.0 Best Game: Winner: Warcraft II Runner=Up: Civilization II Best Educational Software Winner: Encarta 95 Runner=Up: Mighty Math Numbers Heroes Best Programming Tool Winner: Visual Basic 4.0 Runner=Up: The Java Programming Language (book) Best Reference Material Winner: Complete User's Survival Guide Runner=Up: Dictionary of PC Terms and Hardware 5=> Reader's Questions Every so often we get questions from readers with tough to answer technical issues. We'll pass these on from time to time in an effort to use the 11,000 or so subscribers to CompuNotes as a resource. If you have an answer for Sonja you can contact her at mailto:sonjam@worldnet.att.net. -=> Start Question From: Sonja To: pgrote@inlink.com Subject: can you help me? i don't even know where to direct this question......I compressed my win95 pc and now I have an H disk....can I undo what I did and what do I do? Thanks so much.... sonja -=> End Question Here is a question looking for answers concerning Iomega. If you can help Chad mail him at mailto:chadl@nti.net: -=> Start Question Date forwarded: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 01:05:35 +0000 Date sent: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 15:44:24 -0600 To: pgrote@inlink.com From: Chad Luker Subject: IOMEGA rebates Dear Mr. Grote, I have been a reader of your newsletter for a while but I was wondering if u could give me some assistance. I was wondering if you would publish a small article in your newsletter about Iomega not returning their rebates. I am one of the many customers who haven't received my rebate and would like to let the rest of your readers know about my (and others) experience with the Iomega Corp. support and service center. Thank you, Chad Luker -=> End Question 6=> Product: WinHelp Office 4 Reviewed By: Roger W. Klein, mailto:rklein@compucom.com Reviewed on: P166, 64 MB EDO RAM, Windows 95 Requires: Word 7 for Windows 95 or NT, 35 MB free space, 8 MB RAM MSRP: WinHelp Office 4 - $699 (Includes RoboHELP), RoboHELP - $499 For those of you that remember the predecessor to CompuNotes, "CyberNews", you remember that it was a graphical electronic magazine created in the Windows help file format. You probably also remember that is was really cool! By using the Windows help format we were able to include screen shots of the applications being reviewed and use graphics and hot spots to jump to different sections of the magazine. Even if you do remember CyberNews you might not know that is was developed using RoboHELP by Blue Sky Software. RoboHELP is by far the best application I have ever seen for automating the creation of help files. I've used several other products and RoboHELP is the most flexible and intuitive of them all. The first issue of CyberNews was produced back in September of 1994 and even back then RoboHELP was a very powerful Help Authoring Solution. Since then, RoboHELP has evolved into a multi-platform, feature rich, Help Authoring Environment. To go a step further, Blue Sky has come out with WinHelp Office 4 which includes a suite of Help and HTML authoring solutions. These include: RoboHELP 4, ActiveX controls, Moving-to-HTML Kit, WinHelp Hyperviewer, What's This? Help Composer, WinHelp Tool Kit, WinHelp Video Kit, and Mastering WinHelp. RoboHELP 4 turns Microsoft Word 7 for Windows 95 and Windows NT into a help authoring tool for creating Windows Help, HTML-based Help, printed documentation, and Intranet/Internet Web sites from a single source file. RoboHELP 4 includes a host of powerful new features for use in creating Windows Help systems and the new Microsoft HTML Help and Netscape NetHelp files. Some of the other new features added to RoboHELP are an Enhanced Tool Palette, Dynamic WYSIWYG (allows you to see what your help project will look like while you are creating it, in previous versions of RoboHELP you had to compile the project each time you made a change to see the results)/TrueCode (displays the actual WinHelp code), 1 Click Single Source Technology - creates all of the files needed for Windows Help, HTML-based Help, printed documentation, and Intranet/Internet Web sites all from a single source, What's This? Help Composer - allows Help Authors to easily add What's This? context-sensitive Help to any applications' dialog box controls without programming, Advanced Index Technology - simplifies the creation of a Help index, Rich Graphics Support - automatically converts popular graphic formats into WinHelp graphics including 256 color graphics (something missing in the first version of RoboHELP), ActiveTest - allows you to view your work in progress without compiling, ActiveEdit - on-the-fly editing feature, WinHelp Internet Access - allows you to jump to an internet site from within a help file, ActiveX Controls - support for ActiveX and OLE Control standards, International Support - RoboHELP 4 supports U.S. and major international versions of Microsoft Word 7 for Windows 95 and Windows NT, AutoUpdate Program - allows you to update RoboHELP to the latest standards via the World Wide Web. RoboHELP/WinHelp Office works as a snap-in to Microsoft Word adding custom tool bars and additional options to the standard Word drop-down menus. What's great about this is you really don't have to completely learn a new interface to get started using RoboHELP. Sure, there are a multitude of features to be used with RoboHELP, but the basic interface is Word's. When you launch RoboHELP it automatically launches Word and then runs the RoboHELP add-in to create the RoboHELP authoring environment. The RoboHELP floating toolbar offers options for creating topics, editing topics, creating jumps and popups, inserting graphics, inserting buttons, Active Test, goto topic, add contents, What's This?, saving in RTF format, setting up and making you Help project, a very intuitive Error Wizard, Run Project, and RoboHELP Help which is of course superb! The online Help for RoboHELP includes "How To" buttons which include step by step instructions on how to complete specific tasks. Combined, the online and printed documentation provide detailed information for accomplishing any task or project with RoboHELP. Of the new features for RoboHELP 4 one of the best is the "Contents Tab Composer". Anyone familiar with Windows 95 or NT has seen this new help format. All of the Help topics are arranged in a hierarchical tree that is displayed when you run a Help file and click on the Contents Tab. The Contents Tab replaces the "Contents" central to legacy Windows 3.x Help systems. Using RoboHELP you can graphically design the Contents Tab layout for Help systems you are creating using the Contents Tab Composer. To add the Contents tab to your existing help system you simply open your project, add the Contents tab information and compile. Once the tab has been created you can visually organize it be simply dragging-and-dropping the different help topics and subjects within the books to suit your needs. For Help authors and programmers updating their old Windows 3.x Help systems to 95 and NT this can be a real time saver! As you can tell RoboHELP is the central product in WinHelp Office 4. Although as mentioned earlier, there are several other products included that make WinHelp Office a strong suite of Help authoring tools. The SmartHelp and WebPopupHelp ActiveX Controls allow Help authors to easily add Help buttons to any application developed in an environment that supports the ActiveX and OLE control standards. This allows an author to add popup Help to any Intranet/Internet Web site using Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 or any other browser supporting ActiveX controls. The WinHelp Video Kit supplies everything a Help author needs to integrate video and sound into Windows Help systems and to create "live" video product tutorials. The Video Kit includes a Software Video Camera, a Video Wizard, a Video Tester, a Video Player, and Video for Windows Runtime. The WinHelp Tool Kit is a set of tools for use by the Help author. These include: Help-to-Word, Help-to- Source, WinHelp Inspector, WinHelp BugHunter, WinHelp Graphics Locator, WinHelp Graphics Library, and the Moving to WinHelp '95 Porting Tool. WinHelp HyperViewer allows Help authors to add Windows 95 type help to Windows 3.x Help systems. WinHelp HyperViewer also includes the Compatibility Wizard which allows you to add the Windows 95 Contents, Find, and Index tabs to Windows 3.x Help systems. The included Mastering WinHelp video is great for beginning Help authors who want to begin producing professional looking Help systems right away. The video also has a companion book "Mastering Windows 95 Help" aimed at Windows 95 and Windows NT Help. Finally, the Moving-to-HTML Kit provides Help authors with the Moving-to HTML-Help tool and the Help-to-HTML Converter. The kit also includes the book "Mastering HTML". As mentioned at the top of this review, the MSRP for WinHelp Office 4 is $699 - individually all of these products would cost nearly $1,600! So for a full featured, powerful, Help authoring system, WinHelp Office 4 is the only way to go. Blue Sky(r) Software 7777 Fay Avenue, Suite 201 La Jolla, CA 92037 1-800-793-0364 Tel: 1-619-459-6365 Fax: 1-619-459-6366 7=> Product: Special Edition Using Access95 by Roger Jennings Reviewed By: Robert Hering, mailto:crhering@acy.digex.net MSRP: $44.99 U.S. $59.99 Canada Pages: 1,290 Book Audience: Intermediate through professional database designers will benefit from this significant reference work. Author Credentials: Mr. Roger Jennings is a consultant specializing in Windows database design and multi-media applications. He was a member of the MS beta-test team for previous versions of Access, and several versions of the MS Windows Operating System. Content: This reference work describes how to use Access 95, Version 7.0, under Windows 95, in detail. The "Special Edition" description refers to specific sections added since the first edition was published in 1995. In addition to in-depth guides on how to use Access 95, this book covers the new 32-bit program features, 32-bit OLE 2.1, Structured Query Language (SQL), and Visual Basic for Applications programming techniques to be used in Access95. The book is organized into the following parts: Part 1. Learning Access Fundamentals These chapters cover how to create, edit and manipulate database tables, the basic element of Access databases. Part 2. Querying for Specific Information These chapters demonstrate how to create queries with Access's graphic query-by-example (QBE). Part 3. Creating Forms and Reports These chapters cover the primary application objects of Access. In Access, tables and queries are considered database "objects." Part 4. Powering Access with Macros This section covers the first level of programming provided in Access 95. Part 5. Integrating Access with Other Office 95 Applications Introduction into the use of the new 32-bit Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) 2.0 features of Access 95 with MS Graph 5.0, plus OfficeLinks to Excel 95 and Word 95. Part 6. Using Advanced Access Techniques Covers the theoretical and practical aspects of relational database design, and Structured Query Language (SQL). It also describes how to use the Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) Application Programming Interface (API) to create Access front-ends for client/server databases. Part 7. Programming with Visual Basic for Applications This section assumes the user has no prior programming experience in any language. Part 8. Completing an Access Application Focuses on the completion of a tailored application for use by other individuals in the context of specific business requirements. Areas covered include: Using the Access Developer's Toolkit; Adding Online Help for Users; and Migrating Access 2.0 Applications to Access 95. Format: Part of the reason for this book's length, and content value, is the extensive use of graphics and exhibits, from what you see on the screen to examples of actual results, including handy reference charts showing related commands and short-cuts. Review Comments: This reference book attempts to accomplish three main objectives, namely a) using Access 95 to create a database; b) introduction and examples of relational database design; and c) the use of Visual Basic programming techniques in Access 95. The first of these objectives, (eighteen chapters) is accomplished by thoroughly discussing and demonstrating how to build a database using all the capabilities of Access 95, without resorting to programming or other special techniques. This is accomplished by using the Northwind Traders database example provided with the Access 95 application. Next, starting with Part 6, the reader is introduced to relational database design and implementation, how to design a relational database, create tables that comply with relational database requirements, introduction to data dictionaries, and how to ensure the integrity of database records. Sharing database files with peer-to- peer and Windows NT 3.51 Server networking is explained. In Part 7, the reader is introduced to Access Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). The chapters contain many examples of data access objects (DAOs), with an explanation of how to manipulate them with VBA. Also, this section includes an exploration of Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) 2.0 in relation to Access 2.0 and the hierarchical structure of classes of objects, such as Forms and Reports. This book should be considered the standard reference for Access 95. It assumes a level of basic knowledge about databases in general, and then steeps the reader into the specific methods and tools based on Access 95 rules and programming techniques. For the amount of material covered, it represents a very significant effort to introduce the intermediate user into the highly sophisticated and complex world of relational databases. QUE Corporation 201 W. 103rd Street Indianapolis, IN 46290 Sales: 1-800-428-5331 Compuserve Forum: GO QUEBOOKS Ratings: Install/ease of use: Not Applicable User Friendliness: GOLD Support: Not Applicable Quality: GOLD 8=> Interview Section Jensen Harris is the author of one of the coolest programs for the PC going today, CD Alarm. For $6.00 your PC acts like a clock/radio with a CD player. Sporting features like an alarm that start off soft and gets louder to preprogrammed tracks to wake you up! Jensen not only churns out great software, but he has a very interesting life. Enjoy the interview! For a copy of CD Alarm download it from 1) Where did the inspiration for CD Alarm come from? My roommate my sophomore year in college had a stereo with a clock built-in to it. He could set a digital alarm and the stereo would wake him up with a track from a CD. This made me very jealous, and I set out to create a program which would let me duplicate the functionality of these CD alarm clocks without spending extra money on equipment. 2) How many people use CD Alarm? Best guess . . . I have about 2242 registered users in my database as of February 26. The number of people who actually use CD Alarm is probably much higher than that, evidenced by the number of e-mails and comments I get. I receive about 5000 downloads per month just on servers I have usage statistics on--and CD Alarm is available on a ton of servers and online services which I have no control over. Correction: I have *exactly* 2242 registered users in my database... :) 3) Where do new ideas come from? Describe some of the latest? After the first version, all of the new feature ideas have come from users. I get hundreds of e-mails from CD Alarm users a week, many of them with great suggestions on how to improve the program. I quantify the number of requests for a certain feature and balance that with the difficulty of implementing a set of features and I decide what to put in based on that. One feature which was often requested was an automatic volume control which would start the alarm quietly and then slowly raise it--sort of a gradual wake-up feature. This was added about two months ago. I'm working on a brand new release, 2.2, right now which will include the features I am now asked for most, specifically CD playlists, a "sleep" feature which will allow you to listen to a certain number of minutes of a CD as you are going to sleep, and support for MP3 sound files. I am always open to suggestions; I take user feedback very, very seriously. 4) What type of computer do you use. Describe the configuration, etc. I have a 150MHz Pentium PC. I have 80 MB of RAM, an Imagine 128 4MB video card, a Sound Blaster AWE32 sound card, a 2.5 GB hard drive, a GoldStar 8x CD-ROM, a Ditto 3200 tape drive, a 3Com 509 Ethernet card, and a Smart and Friendly 2X CD Writer. I run Windows NT Workstation 4.0 as my operating system of choice, although I do use Linux and Windows 95 (for testing) occasionally. I only have a 15" ADI Microscan monitor, though. I'd like to get a 17" at some point. 5) What do you do for a living? If student, what will you do when you grow up I am a music major here at Yale with a concentration in composition. I went to a fine arts high school (Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan) as a composer and had very little contact with computers. On the other hand, I interned at Microsoft last summer as a Program Manager in Kids Software, and I'm hoping to be back next summer. The short answer is probably that I will do one of two things: go to a conservatory and get a M.M. in composition, or work for some software company straight out of school. I haven't really decided which though- -it depends on how the next year or so goes. 6) Why did you choose Visual Basic as the development platform? CD Alarm was originally written totally in Visual Basic. With each new version, more of the code is being rewritten in Visual C++--but the interface will likely always be done in Visual Basic because of the difficulty in transferring it over correctly. I chose Visual Basic because I never intended to release CD Alarm as a shareware application. I wrote it purely for my own use, and Visual Basic was the quickest way to get something that was functional without having to do a great deal of debugging. Eventually I showed the program to my friends, and they all wanted copies too. One of them said "why don't you release it as shareware?" I thought about it and decided that I had nothing to lose--so I cleaned up the code and released version 1.0. CD Alarm is one of the only projects I work on now which is still in VB. I do about 80% of my development in Visual C++ at this point-- but Visual Basic still has great strengths as a rapid development tool. It has served me well in that capacity. 7) WHat is the coolest thing about the internet? What is the coolest thing on the internet? The greatest thing about the internet is the huge wealth of information available. I love being able to keep up with world news, computer news, software releases, sports scores, and everything else right from my room in New Haven, CT. It's also great to be able to keep in touch so easily with friends all over the world--I have great friends in Massachusetts, Seattle, and Italy which I would probably not still be very good friends with if it weren't for e-mail. The biggest problem with the Internet is the difficulty in finding information--but I think as intelligent agents and selective push technologies become more refined and prevalent, this will get better. The coolest thing on the Internet? At one point I would have said my once-popular Mediocre Site of the Day web site, but since I no longer update it, it is not so wildly popular anymore. I enjoy the online magazines Suck and Slate quite a bit (although in some ways, they are very different). I also enjoy (strangely) looking at home pages of people I don't know. I find it very interesting. 8) Why don't you charge much for using CD Alarm? Well, CD Alarm *is* shareware--but the registration fee is very, very low compared to all of the other alarm programs on the market. I would much rather have many people using my program and enjoying it than to have only a few people using it but me getting a lot of money. I don't develop CD Alarm for money--as long as I continue to make enough to justify the time I spend supporting and developing CD Alarm, I am happy. And I hope I give some of the best support available for any product, shareware or commercial. Most of my other software IS freeware. Right--they can evaluate it for 30 days before registering though... just want to be clear. Anyone can download it and use it-- only if they like it and want to use in indefinitely do they have to register. (just wanted to be clear). 9) Any other computer projects on the horizon? I am very interested in developing extensions to the Windows shell-- I've already started work on a program which will offer an easy way to modify the Start Menu. In addition, I am working on a program called NTPopUp which is a Winpopup-like program for NT. I may have a surprise or two up my sleeve for the coming year. I don't want to give too much away. :) 10) Who's had the most influence on your life and why? Undoubtedly the teachers and mentors I spent three years with at Interlochen. I learned how to think for myself at Interlochen. I learned what it meant to have ambition, and I learned how to follow through on that ambition. I have always had a great deal of creative energy, but I didn't learn to channel it until I came to Interlochen. It didn't matter that I studied music in particular--the values and work ethic I learned at Interlochen stretched across everything I have done since, from getting in to Yale (and I had about a D average my freshman year in high school) to writing CD Alarm. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= SYSOPS READ HERE! We want to make CompuNotes available on as many BBS as possible. Sysops who volunteer upload this newsletter to their BBS as a ZIP file will be listed in our sysops directory shipped with each newsletter. We'll also link to your website. If you are interested, fill out the following lines and return them to notes@inlink.com with SYSOPS as the subject. After processing this, we'll send you a weekly UUEncoded version of CompuNotes. BBS NAME: BBS SYSOP: BBS NUMBER: URL: +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= To subscribe, send this email to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SUBSCRIBE COMPUNOTES-L FirstName LastName To unsubscribe, send this email to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SIGNOFF COMPUNOTES-L +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= --END OF ISSUE