Step
1 - Starting onCue
If onCue is not already running, start
onCue by double clicking on the onCue application. You will
find onCue in the aQtive folder where you installed
the software, and on your desktop and in the start menu
if you checked those options.
A small window will appear in the top right
corner of your screen. Initially the window will only contain
feedback and help icons. These direct you to the onCue documentation
and feedback pages.
As you work, these icons will change reflecting
your current focus of activity.
Try double-clicking on the aQtive icon
(the swirly one in the dark grey box) - the onCue window
will shrink to a small icon.
Try clicking on this aQtive icon just once
- a menu will appear. Notice that the bold item on the drop-down
menu is 'Expand to Window'. This is the double-click
behaviour of the icon. All the icons in onCue work this
way: a single click gets a drop-down menu; a double-click
(or a second click on the same icon) performs the default
menu action. Click on the icon again or select Expand...
from the menu (don't select Exit just yet!) to
return onCue to its full size.
The onCue documentation is also available
from the 'Help!' item on the aQtive icon drop-down
menu.
Step
2 - Using onCue
onCue works by looking at information that
is copied to the clipboard, and suggesting things that you
might want to do with that information.
onCue works with all applications that
support copying and pasting, for example Internet Explorer,
Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Office and the majority of
other desktop applications.
Try selecting (highlighting) one of the
words in the following list (by dragging your mouse over
it, or by double clicking on it) and then copy it to the
clipboard (by choosing Copy from the application's
Edit menu, or by typing CTRL-C):
Some icons, similar to the ones shown on
the right, should appear in the onCue window. These are
service icons and represent things that onCue thinks might
be useful to you at this point in time. Its suggestions
are based on the information that was copied to the clipboard.
You may recognise many of the icons, but
if you don't, simply move your mouse over the icons and
a tooltip will appear. The words in bold text are the title
of the service. The sentence underneath explains what will
happen when you double-click on it.
These are all Internet services, search
engines: Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, Deja and HotBot,
and various others: Encyclopedia Britanica online and an
online dictionary.
Double-click on one of the icons using
the left mouse button. A web browser window will open and,
if you are currently online, the results of a search or
query on the word that you selected will appear shortly.
If you click just once on the icon, a menu
will appear. Often these menus will only contain one option,
but some services offer more than one option.
If you have a copy of Microsoft Office
97 installed, and you selected the misspelled word in the
list above, you will see a further icon appear suggesting
corrected spellings.
Notice how the tooltip and the menu have
a divider with the word 'copy'
on it. This means that this service has some information
available for you to copy back to the clipboard. In this
case, you will find a list of corrected spellings. On the
menu, these items appear in italic. This means that
when you select them, that word will be copied onto the
clipboard so that you can paste the corrected word back
into your document.
Now try copying the following table:
Floppy Banana Fruits (1000's tons)
Y1Q1 Y1Q2 Y1Q3 Y1Q4 Y2Q1 Y2Q2
apples 12 15 17 19 17 15
bananas 21 20 21 22 23 24
clementines 26 25 24 20 17 20
dates 6 7 7 3 7 6
This will give you the result of adding
up the numbers (SumIt), and a suggestion to draw a 'dancing
histogram' (double-click to get the histogram and then try
clicking over the histogram bars).
If you have Microsoft Office 97 installed
then you will also get a short-cut to draw an Excel chart.
Step
3 - Working with onCue
onCue has been designed to be left on the
edge of your screen as you work. It will suggest things
to do when you copy things in the course of your everyday
tasks.
This version of onCue understands words
and short phrases, UK postcodes, web addresses (URLs), peoples
names, countries, and a few other interesting things. See
the reference guide for a full
list of the services that onCue provides.
onCue has been designed not to get in your
way or distract you. If it does, you can either shrink it
to an icon (see step 1) or move or resize it.
To move onCue, simply click and drag on
the aQtive icon or the light gray window background.
To resize onCue, just place your mouse
pointer on the outside border of its window and click and
drag the window to the size and shape that you would like
it.
Once you start to use aQtive onCue, we
hope you will never want to stop, but, if at any stage you
do want to exit onCue, just click on the aQtive icon once
and then select 'Exit' from the menu.
If you really like using onCue, you might
want to make it run automatically when you first startup
your computer. See the Easier
Access to onCue section of the installation guide for
a way to do this.
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