Walkthrough Tutorial

Step 1 - Starting onCue

If onCue is not already running, start onCue by double-clicking on the onCue application icon. 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 during the installation process. (If you didn't, More ways to access onCue tells you how.)

A small window will appear in the top right-hand corner of your screen. At first the window contains only 3 icons: the aQtive logo, the feedback (!) icon and the help (?) icon.

Try double-clicking on the aQtive icon (the swirly one in the dark grey box) - the onCue window will shrink to a small icon.

Double-click this small icon and the window will expand. Now double-click again to shrink the window back to the icon.

Try clicking on this aQtive icon just once - a drop-down menu will appear. You'll see that the bold item on the menu is Expand to Window. This shows you the default behaviour of the icon - the thing that happens when you double-click it. All the icons in onCue work this way:

Click on the icon again or select Expand... from the menu (don't select Exit just yet!). Either action will expand the window to return onCue to its full size.

You can get to these help pages at any time by choosing the Help! item on the aQtive icon drop-down menu. (Use More... to edit the preferences, and Exit to quit onCue.)

Starting onCue | Using onCue | Working with onCue

Step 2 - Using onCue

onCue works by looking at information that you copy to the clipboard, and suggesting things that you might want to do with that information. As you copy different words, names, numbers, etc., the icons in the onCue window will change, reflecting your current focus of activity. You will only see this when the onCue window is expanded.

onCue works with all applications that support copying and pasting, for example Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Office and most 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). Then copy it to the clipboard (by choosing Copy from the application's Edit menu, or by typing CTRL-C):

• advantage
• example
• mistak

Some icons, similar to the ones shown on the right, will appear in the onCue window. These are service icons and represent things that onCue thinks might be useful to you at this moment. Its suggestions are based on the information that you copied to the clipboard.

You may recognise many of the icons, but, if you don't, simply move your mouse over the icons (without clicking) 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 the icon.

The icons on the left all belong to Internet services: search engines such as Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, Deja and HotBot; and various others: Encyclopedia Britannica online and an online dictionary.

Double-click on one of the icons in your onCue window using the left mouse button. A web browser window will open, unless you already have one open, and, if you are connected to the Internet, the results of a search or query on the word that you selected will appear shortly. (You may find that this replaces the help page you are looking at now. If so, just click the back button to return to the tutorial.) If you aren't online, the search will fail.

If, instead of double-clicking, you click just once on an icon, a menu will appear. Often the menu will only contain one option, but some services offer more than one option.

Spelling checker

If you have a copy of Microsoft Office 97 installed, and you selected the misspelled word 'mistak' in the list above, you will have seen a further icon appear suggesting corrected spellings.

Notice how the tooltip and the menu associated with this icon display a divider with the word 'copy'. This means that this service has some information available for you to copy back to the clipboard, if you want to. In this case, you will see a list of corrected spellings. On the menu, they appear in italic. If you select one of them, it will automatically be copied onto the clipboard so that you can paste the correct spelling back into your document.

Figures

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

Icons will appear showing:

• the result of adding up the numbers (SumIt), which you can select and paste into your document
• 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) a short-cut to draw an Excel chart.

Starting onCue | Using onCue | Working with onCue

Step 3 - Working with onCue

onCue is designed to stay on the edge of your screen as you work. It will suggest things to do when you copy items in the course of your everyday tasks.

Version 1.2 of onCue recognises words and short phrases, UK postcodes, web addresses (URLs), people's names, countries, dates, ISBN numbers and IP addresses. See the Icon Guide for a full list of the services that onCue provides.