TUTORIAL.TXT

This file contains a text-only Quick Tutorial for Neat!

This document is best viewed/printed using WordPad, 10pt
Courier New Regular font.

                   Neat!
                    by
         Thunderbird Technology, LLC
             640 Candia Road
             Chester, NH 03036
               (603) 483-0693
              fax (603) 483-0616
      support@thunderbirdtechnology.com
         www.thunderbirdtechnology.com

TUTORIAL ALSO AVAILABLE IN WORD 6.0 FORMAT

If you have Word 6.0 on your computer you may wish, instead,
to print out the entire "Neat! User Manual.doc" file, which contains
the complete Tutorial with graphics.

The "Neat! User Manual.doc" can be found in the main Neat!
subdirectory, which by default is C:\Program Files\Neat!.

If the User Manual is not included with your version of
Neat! you may download the User Manual from our web site
at www.thunderbirdtechnology.com.

TUTORIAL ALSO AVAILABLE WITHIN NEAT!

You may also access the Tutorial directly within Neat!, when it
is running, by clicking on the Help Button (which normally has
the appearance of a question mark) and selecting the Tutorial
item from the menu. It is suggested that you print out the tutorial
and work from the printout, rather than trying to work from the
on-screen help.

QUICK TUTORIAL

If you want to get right into Neat!, start here with the
Quick Tutorial. It is suggested that you print out a copy of
this file and work from the printed copy. 

START UP NEAT!

If Neat! is not already running, you'll need to start it up.

If the Neat! icon is on the desktop, double-click on it.
If the Neat! icon is not on the desktop, click on the Taskbar's
Start button, then on the Programs button and, from the menu that pops
up, click on the Neat! icon.

FIRST TIME?

If this is the first time that Neat! has been run then a window will
come up in which you must enter several values.

Enter your own name and then the name that you want assigned to the
first Neat! screen. "My First Screen" is sufficient a this time. You can
change it later if you wish.

From the Style drop-down list, select the Neat! Bookshelf Style.

Finally, click the Finish button.

Now, skip to the section titled
"AN EMPTY SCREEN, NEAT! BOOKSHELF STYLE"
 
NOT THE FIRST TIME?

If this is not the first time that Neat! has been run on your computer
then Neat! will start up with the first Neat! screen that had been
added, whatever that may have been. Since, for this tutorial, we want to
make sure that we are looking at the Neat Style called "Neat!
Bookshelf", do the following:

Locate the Toolbar button  and click on it. If the current screen style
uses a different toolbar button image then move the cursor over the
border buttons until the cursor changes so that it looks like the
toolbar button, or watch the Help Text (on either the top or bottom
border of the screen) until it says "Click For Toolbar", and click on
the button. The Neat! Toolbar will pop up on the screen.

On the toolbar, click on the Screen List Button . This will bring up the
Screen List.

Within the list of displayed screens, click on the last item, "[Add
Screen here]", then click on the Add After button. This will bring up
another window, Initial Screen Parameters.

At this Initial Screen Parameters window enter a title for the screen
("My Tutorial Screen" is sufficient), and from the Style drop-down list,
select the Neat! Bookshelf Style. Then click OK.

This will bring you back to the Screen List Window and you will see that
the new screen has been added to the list. Click OK on the Screen List
Window. Now locate the Jump Button on the border of the screen. If the
Jump Button looks different, because the current screen's style uses a
different image for the Jump Button, then move the cursor over the
border buttons until the Help text (on either the top or bottom border
of the screen) says "Click to Jump to a Screen". Click the Jump Button.
This will bring up the Jump Window.

In the displayed list, locate the screen that you just added, click on
it, and then click the OK button. The screen will scroll to the selected
screen.

Take a Look at the screen. There is a "Style" to the screen that gives
it it's "look-and-feel". You've chosen one (Neat! Bookshelf) that has a
simple 3D bookshelf look. Neat! provides a number of different Styles,
from Victorian to Science Fiction Styles, that you can choose from.

But for now we'll leave the existing Neat! Bookshelf  Style in place and
take a tour around the screen. The large central portion of the screen
is your Work Area, where you can organize your program and data icons
and other special Neat! objects. The Borders of the screen contain the
Neat! Buttons, which provide access to several special functions. In
this case the buttons all reside on the bottom border. You will also
notice that your name and the name that you assigned to the screen
appears in the bottom border. The positioning of these buttons and text
items may be different from Style to Style but will always appear around
the borders of the screen.

INSTANT HELP

Move the Cursor around the screen. As you move, a special Instant Help
area in the bottom border provides help information about the current
position on the screen. For example, when you're positioned over the
central Work Area, it advises you that right-clicking in that area will
bring up a popup menu providing you access to the editable properties of
the Work Area.

EXTENSIVE HELP : F1

Move the cursor into the central Work Area and Press the F1 function
key. This causes the Help Window to pop up over the Neat! screen, in
this case displaying the full help text regarding the Work Area. This F1
Help function works everywhere on the Neat! screen, providing extensive
help for all buttons, borders, shelves, dividers, Work Areas, program
and data icons, etc. Whenever you need help on some object, simply
position the cursor over it and press F1. For now, click on File/Exit at
the top of the Help Window to close the Help Window.

SPECIAL CURSORS

Move the cursor over the buttons on the border. The shape of the cursor
changes to reflect the function of the button. Since the images of the
buttons are different from Style-to-Style, but these button-related
cursor shapes are constant from Style-to-Style, you can use this feature
to help identify the button locations. If you wish, you can turn off
this feature at the Overall Screen Properties menu (described later in
this tutorial).

TOOL BAR

Locate the Toolbar button  and click on it. The Neat! Toolbar will pop
up on the screen. Move the cursor over the individual buttons on the
Toolbar and stop on each button individually. A small Help window pops
up telling you the function of the button.

SHELVES

Locate the Add Captioned Shelf Button  on the Toolbar and click
on it. This puts you into Add Captioned Shelf mode. Position the cursor
in the center portion (the Work Area) of the Neat! screen and click.
This adds a "captioned" shelf to the Work Area.

You can continue to add more shelves to the Work area until you change
the mode. But for now, click on the Select Button  on the Toolbar,
taking you out of Add Captioned Shelf mode and returning you to the
normal Select mode.

MOVING A SHELF

Move the shelf that you just added by positioning the Select cursor on
it and "dragging" it to a different position. You drag items (including
shelves, dividers, program and data icons, etc.) by positioning the cursor
on the item, pressing and holding down the left mouse button, moving
the cursor to the desired positioning, and releasing the mouse button.

When you place Program Icons on Captioned Shelves, which we'll do in a
moment, the "name" of the icon is displayed by Neat! on the front of the
shelf.

NON-CAPTIONED SHELVES

You can also place Non-Captioned Shelves on the Neat! Work Area using
the Add Non-Captioned Shelf Button on the Toolbar. Non-Captioned Shelves
are thinner and can be used to conserve space in the Work Area when the
Program Icons that you place on the shelf are sufficiently familiar to
you that you do not need to see its name in order to identify it.

Each time that you add a Shelf (Captioned or Non-Captioned) you
subdivide the Work Area into smaller work areas. This is important
because some functions, like moving shelves and dividers, are restricted
to the Work Area in which they reside. Generally, you'll use these Work
Areas as your means of organizing your program icons; for example,
putting all of  your business applications into one work area and your
game icons into another.

DIVIDERS

Dividers are used to horizontally divide Work Areas into smaller Work
Areas. Locate the Add Divider Button on the Toolbar and click on it.
Position the cursor in either the upper or lower Work Area (above or
below the shelf that you just previously added) and click. This adds a
Divider to the Work Area. You can continue to add more Dividers to the
Work areas until you change the mode. You can move the Divider in the
same way that you move Shelves, providing that your cursor is on Select
Mode.

WORK AREA LABELS

Click on the Select Button on the Toolbar to put you back in Select
mode. Position the cursor within one of the Work Areas and right-click
(i.e. click the right mouse button). A small popup menu appears. Click
the Properties item on the popup menu, which brings up the Work Area
Properties menu. Enter a name, such as "My Important Applications",
and then click the OK button. The name that you just entered appears at
the top of the Work Area. You can use this method to label the various
Work Areas that you create. If you want to eliminate a label from a work
area, bring up the Work Area Properties for the Work Area and erase the
label text.

Captions always appear at the top of a Work Area.


PROGRAM ICONS

Locate the Movement Button. This is a button that resides on the Border
of the screen, not on the Toolbar. Drag the Movement Button so that the
entire Neat! screen moves off to the side, revealing the underlying
Windows Desktop. If other applications are currently occupying the
desktop, either move them off to the side or minimize them, so that the
Windows Desktop is revealed. 

Select one of your favorite Program Icons from the desktop and drag it
over to the Neat! screen and drop it within one of the Work Areas. This
has no effect on the original icon, which will still reside on the
desktop, but rather places a "copy" of it on the Neat! Work Area. After
dropping the icon, move Neat! so that it again occupies the entire
screen, by double-clicking on the Movement Button (or any "blank" part
of the Neat! screen Work Areas).

Note that some desktop icons, such as the Recycle Bin, cannot be moved
to Neat! because they are built directly into Windows, and it is Windows
that imposes the drag-and-drop restriction.

You can also drag-and-drop Program Icons onto Neat! from Windows
Explorer.

PROGRAM ICON PROPERTIES

Position the cursor on one of the Program Icons that you had placed on
the Neat! Work Area, right-click on it, and then click on the Properties
item of the popup menu that appears. This brings up the properties
window for the icon.

Most of the editable items on this window never need to be modified, but
you can change the Caption field so that the caption of the icon that
appears on the front of the shelf is shorter or more accurately reflects
the purpose of the icon. For example, you might change the default
caption for Microsoft Word, which by default is "Shortcut to Microsoft
Word", to something simpler like "Word". When you are done making the
edit, click the Close button.

LAUNCH A PROGRAM

Position the cursor on one of the Program Icons that you just placed on
Neat! and double-click. The program starts! You can get back to Neat! by
clicking on the Neat! button on the Windows Taskbar (which is the area,
normally at the bottom of the screen, that contains the Start button).
You can also launch a program from the Neat! screen by right-clicking on
the icon and selecting "Activate" from the resultant popup menu.

MOVE AN ITEM

You can re-position Program Icons, and most any other item on the Neat!
Work Area, by simply dragging and dropping. Try it.

DATA ICONS

Position the cursor on the Windows Explorer Button  on the Neat! Toolbar
and click. This brings up Windows Explorer as a window overlaying Neat!.
Locate one of your data files, such as a Word for Windows document file,
and drag and drop it onto one of the Neat! Work Spaces. If the
associated program is registered with Windows (as all properly installed
applications within Windows should be) the data file will appear within
the Neat! Work Space as the icon of that associated application, with
the name of the document appearing on the front of the shelf. Note that
if you move the cursor over the data file icon the name of the document
also appears within the Instant Help area at the bottom of the screen.

LAUNCHING A DATA APPLICATION

When a Data Icon resides on a Neat! screen you can launch the associated
application, causing it to automatically open up the data file
(document), by simply double-clicking on the Data Icon. For example, if
you had placed a Word for Windows document within one of the Neat! Work
Areas (i.e. on a shelf) then the icon will appear as the Word for
Windows icon and, if it resides on a Captioned Shelf, the name of the
document will appear on the front of the shelf. Double-clicking on the
icon will launch Word for Windows with the specified document opened
within its window.

FOLDERS

Bring Windows Explorer back up to overlay Neat!, either by clicking on
the Explorer Button within the Windows Taskbar at the bottom of the
screen, or by again selecting it from the Neat! Toolbar. Locate a folder
that you often reference and drag-and-drop it onto one of your Neat!
Work Areas. It will appear as a Folder on your Neat! screen.

This is different than dragging-and-dropping a Folder on to the Windows
desktop. When you do a simple drag-and-drop of an existing folder onto
the Windows desktop you area actually moving the folder from wherever it
had previously resided to the desktop. When you drag-and-drop a Folder
onto Neat!, you get a "shortcut" folder to the actual folder.

The appearance of the folder is different for each Style.


OPENING A FOLDER

Double-clicking on a Neat! Folder (within a Work Area) causes Windows
Explorer to be launched with the specified folder automatically opened,
providing you with a quick and easy way of accessing folders (without
winding your way through the hierarchy of folders within Explorer). If
you bring up the Properties for a Folder, by right-clicking on it, you
can specify that it "opens" as a Windows 3.1 - style window instead of
the Windows Explorer style.

You can also add Folders to your Work Area by using the Add Folder
button  on the Neat! Toolbar and then clicking within the Work Area. In
that case, no folder (Windows subdirectory) is associated with the
newly-added Folder item, and you will have to right-click on the Folder
item to bring up its properties and specify an associated Folder, which
is also the way that you can change the folder association of an existing
Neat! Folder.

Note that these Neat! Folders are, like all other objects on a Neat!
screen, merely "pointers" to the actual folders. You may delete them
without fear of losing the actual folder or its contents. If you have
multiple Neat! screens, as we'll create later on, you may place the same
folder on multiple screens. Each such  Neat! folder will then reference
the same actual Windows folder.

PICTURES

Again, bring Windows Explorer back up to overlay Neat!. Locate one of
your own picture files that has one of the following extensions:

BMP     GIF       JPG      PCX      TGA      TIF

If you have no picture files on your computer, locate the subdirectory
in which the Neat! program itself resides (usually c:\Program
Files\Neat!\) and within that subdirectory, locate the file named
"SamplePicture.bmp". Drag and drop the picture file (either your own
selected one or SamplePicture.bmp) onto one of your Neat! Work Areas.
The picture appears within a picture frame.

The visual appearance of the Frame is different in different Styles.

ADDING PICTURES VIA THE TOOLBAR

You can also place empty Picture Frames on your Neat! Work Area by
clicking on the Picture Frame Button  on the Neat! Toolbar and then
clicking within the Work Area.


RESIZING A PICTURE

You can change the size of the picture by selecting the picture
(left-click on it) and then dragging one of the corner "handles".

PICTURE PROPERTIES

You can specify the picture to be displayed within the Picture Frame by
bringing up the Properties for the Picture Frame, just as you've brought
up Properties for other Neat! items, by positioning the Select Cursor on
the Picture, right-clicking, and then clicking on the Properties item of
the menu that pops up.

PICTURE COLORS

If the colors of a displayed picture do not look quite right, it is most
likely due to your monitor and graphics adapter being configured for
256-color mode, in which case there are at most 256 colors available for
generating display images, regardless of what actual colors may be used
within the picture files. Neat! does its best to display the pictures
appropriately within the 256-color limit.  If your graphics adapter is
capable of higher color settings you might consider changing it. See the
section titled, "A FEW IMPORTANT WORDS ABOUT YOUR SCREEN".

LAUNCHING GRAPHICS APPLICATIONS FROM PICTURES

If the format of the picture file (e.g. .bmp, .tff, etc.) displayed
within a Picture Frame is registered with Windows (meaning that a
defined application program is properly associated with the file format,
via the Windows Registry) then you can double-click on the picture and
that associated application will be launched, with the picture file as
the automatically opened document. For example, on many computers the
Windows Paint program is associated with BMP files, so clicking on a
Picture Frame in which a BMP file is displayed will cause the Windows
Paint program to be started up and the BMP file displayed within it,
ready for editing. If you're a graphics artist you can use Neat! to
organize the projects you're working on and easily select from among
them.

CLOCK

Click on the Add Clock Button  on the Neat! Toolbar. Position the cursor
within one of the Work Areas and click.

The visual appearance of the Clock is different in different Styles.

You can re-size the clock, just as you resized the Picture Frame. You
can modify many of the Properties of the Clock, including selecting
between Analog and Digital versions, by right-clicking on the clock to
bring up its properties window.

CHANGE THE SCREEN STYLE

Currently, the screen has the Neat! Bookshelf style, since that is what
you selected when you started this tutorial. But you can change the
Style of the screen at any time. Position the cursor on an open area of
one of the Borders (i.e. not on any of the Border Buttons) and right-click.

Select the Overall Screen Properties item from the popup menu.

This brings up a window that has lots of options, organized by tabs.
Select the General Tab, which includes a Style drop-down list, from
which you may select an alternative Style1. After making the selection,
click the OK button and the new Style will be applied to the screen.
Note that all of your shelves and dividers and the items within the Work
Areas remain on the screen, only the Style of the screen and the Style
of the Folders, Picture Frames, and Clock will have changed.

Note that each Style has its own "look". The Border Buttons may look
different and be positioned on different parts of the borders. The text
font and colors for the User Name, Screen Title, Help, and other items
may be different.

The Overall Screen Properties window provides access to a wide variety
of options for the current screen. Come back to this window later and
experiment with the various options, to "personalize" the screen. Note
that most of these properties apply only to the currently displayed
Neat! screen.

MULTIPLE SCREENS !

Since one Neat! screen may not be sufficient to handle all of the
programs and data files that you wish to organize, Neat! lets you create
as many screens as you need. Select the Screen List Button  from the
Neat! Toolbar. This brings up the Screen List. 

At this point there will be only one Screen in the list (if this is the
first time that you've used Neat!), the screen that you've currently
been working on. Click on that screen within the list and then click the
Add After Button.
 
A window pops up in which you must specify a new screen name and select
a Style. You may select the same Style as the current screen or any
other Style that you wish. When you click the OK button the Screen List
window appears again, now with the newly added screen. Click OK on this
screen and you'll be back to the original screen that you had been
working on, but the other, newly added, screen will now be accessible to
you, and we'll get to that in a moment.

SAFE DELETES

Note that the Screen List can be used to add any number of screens, in
any order, and to delete screens that you no longer need. Deleting a
screen deletes not only the screen but also all of the items on that
screen. But these are safe deletions, in that only the Neat! version or
"shortcut" to the item is deleted. The actual item itself is never
touched. This means, for example, that if you have a Program Icon on a
screen and you delete the screen, the actual executable program that the
icon refers to remains safely within Windows at its original location.
The only thing that gets deleted is a simple "pointer" within Neat!. Of
course, this safe-delete principal also applies to the deletion of
individual items from a Neat! screen, which is done by right-clicking
the item and then selecting the Delete item from the subsequent popup
menu.

FROM ONE SCREEN TO ANOTHER

The new screen that you just added to Neat! exists to the right of your
current screen. Locate the Next Screen Button on the Border of the
current screen (look for a button that has a right-pointing arrow
appearance, ) and click. In just a moment the new screen will scroll on
from the right. Since you currently only have two Neat! screens, and the
set of screens is maintained as a "circular list", you actually could
have used the Previous Screen Button to get to the second screen.

ARROW KEYS

You may also use the left-arrow and right-arrow keys on the numeric
keypad to move to the previous or next screen.

MULTIPLE USERS

Neat! also lets you have multiple users, each with his or her own set of
Neat! screens. Click on the User List Button on the Neat! Toolbar. This
brings up the User List, which works just like the Screen List, except
that when you add a new user you must specify not only a screen name and
a Style but also a new user name. Each User may have his/her own set of
Neat! screens.

Additional users exist above (or below) the current screen. Use the Next
User or Previous User Button (which generally have an up-arrow or
down-arrow appearance) on the Border of the current screen to move from
the current screen to different users.

ARROW KEYS

You may also use the up-arrow and down-arrow keys on the numeric keypad
to move to the next and previous user.

JUMP TO A SCREEN

Rather than scrolling up, down, left, and right from one screen to
another until you locate the one you want, you can "jump" to the desired
location by clicking on the Jump Button on the Border.  On the Neat!
Bookshelf  Style the Jump Button looks like.

Note that there is a Jump "Button" on the Border, plus an Add Jump
"Box" button on the Toolbar. For now, click the Jump Button on the
Border. This brings up a list of Users and their screens.

Double-Click on a Screen to Jump to that Screen.

Double-clicking on a User Name causes that user's screens to be shown in
the list (if they are not already shown). Subsequently double-clicking
on one of the screens causes Neat! to "jump" (actually "scroll") to the
specified screen. It's a quick and easy way of getting from where you
are to where you want to be.

JUMP BOXES

You may find, in the course of your use of Neat!, that you often need
to Jump from one particular Neat! screen to another particular Neat!
screen. For example, you might have a "main" Neat! screen and
often want to go from that screen to, say, the Neat! screen that you
have organized for, and named, "Business Applications". On your
main Neat! screen you could place an appropriate Jump Box . Try it
now by clicking on the Add Jump Box Button  on the Neat! Toolbar
and then placing a Jump Box (by clicking) in one of your Neat!
Work Areas. Then click the Select Cursor Button on the Toolbar.
Right-click on the Jump Box to bring up its Properties window. In
the Properties window for the Jump Box select the desired "Target"
User and Screen. The User Name and Screen Name are
automatically copied into the User and Screen Caption fields, which
are the fields that will appear on the screen within the displayed
Jump Box. You can change these caption fields if you wish to have
them say something more descriptive than just the User and Screen
names. After you have selected the target screen, and edited the
captions if desired, click the OK button. This associates that
particular Jump Box with the specified screen for the specified user.
You may then double-click on the Jump Box to jump immediately to
that Target screen.

SOUNDS

You may have noticed that some Neat! Styles have sounds
associated with certain actions, like moving the cursor over the
buttons or clicking on a button. You can control the playing of these
sounds.

Bring up the Overall Screen properties window by positioning the
cursor on one of the borders and right-clicking. Then select the
Sounds Tab. This will bring up a Sound Properties Window.

You can turn off the sounds for the current screen by unchecking the
This Screen box. You can turn off the sounds for all screens for the
current user by unchecking the This User box. And you can turn off
all sounds for all screens for all users by unchecking the All Users
box. You may select which Sound Style you want for the current
screen via the This Screen's Sound Style combobox. Just for fun, try
selecting a different Sound Style (make sure all three check boxes
are checked), click OK, and then move the cursor around the screen.

Note that some Sound Styles have more sounds than others, and
some have no sounds at all. Try them all out and see which ones you
prefer. And note that each screen has its own Sound Style. By
default it is set to the Sounds Style associated with the (graphical
screen) Style. But you can individually set the Sounds Style for each
of your screens.

MINIMIZING NEAT!

Neat! is an application just like any other Windows application and
can be "minimized". Minimizing an application means that it
disappears from the desktop area and exists solely as a button on the
Windows Taskbar. It can always be brought back up to cover the
desktop simply by clicking on its button on the Taskbar.

To minimize Neat! simply click on the Minimize Button located on
the border of the Neat! screen. On the Neat! Bookshelf Style the
minimize button looks like.

Note that this means that you can quickly get to Neat! at any time.
There is no need to move or minimize your other active
applications, as is required to get to the Windows desktop.

TERMINATING NEAT!

Once you have become familiar with Neat! and are using it as your
smart, personal interface to Windows there should generally be no
need to terminate it. Instead, it will become an alternative to the
Windows desktop, always available to you. But if you do need to
terminate it, simply click on the Terminate Button, which in the
Neat! Bookshelf Style looks like. Unlike the standard Windows
termination button, which immediately terminates the application,
Neat!'s terminate button causes a verification prompt to appear, just
to make sure that you really do want to terminate it. 

END OF TUTORIAL

And that's Neat!! Now it's time for you to get organized. Put up
some shelves and dividers, label your work areas, drag-and-drop
your program and data icons accordingly, create additional screens
for yourself, create additional users if you need to. Select the Styles
and Sound Styles that you like the most. And begin enjoying the
organizational and personalizing capabilities of Neat!.
