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(This is actually chapter 2 of the evaluation User's Guide. It can help you install Magic Menus and get started immediately). Chapter 2 -- A Quick Start Tutorial If you are like most people, you want to start using a software product "right out of the box". While Magic Menus has many advanced features that will require some thought and planning to fully exploit, it is also friendly and easy enough to use immediately. This tutorial, though brief, will lead you through the setup and main features. You can then take your time and study the rest of the User's Guide in depth. We are assuming that you have not yet installed or configured Magic Menus. If you have already installed it, skip section 2.1. If you've played with it some (and made some data entries), please keep in mind that the tutorial can't know this and some of the screens may not appear exactly as described. 2.1 Quick Install This "quick-install" feature assumes that you have an IBM PC (or true compatible) with a hard disk (labelled drive C) running DOS 2.0 or higher. If not refer to chapter 1, "Installing Magic Menus". Insert your Magic Menus distribution disk in drive A. Type: A: and then <return>. Now type: MMINST and <return>. The Magic Menus installation screen will appear. Select "1) First Time Install" by pressing a "1" and then <return>. Read the instructions that are displayed and press return again. When Magic Menus asked what drive you are installing, press: C and then <return>. Answer "Y" (and <return>) to the next question and away we go!. The installation program will have copied all of the Magic Menus file to the hard disk. Now you will be asked five questions. Magic Menus comes pre- configured for a standard IBM PC, so simply press <return> and accept the defaults for each. (Press <return> five times. The installation procedure will indicate that it has saved the new setups, and Magic Menus is ready to run!). Chapter 2: A Quick Start Tutorial 1 2.2 Running Magic Menus After the installation, you will be in the root directory of your hard disk. To start Magic Menus, simply type MAGIC and press <return>. Magic Menus opening screen will appear. Press any key at this point to continue. You should now be in Magic Menus' main screen. Before we go any further, press the <F1> key. You will see Magic Menus' help window appear. The window is context-sensitive, and you can pop it up anytime for instant assistance. Use your up and down arrow keys, or the <PgUp> and <PgDn> keys to move through the help message. Press <ESC> and the help message will disappear. The <ESC> key is the universal back-up key in Magic Menus... you can always press <ESC> to get back to where you just were. Notice the menu bar across the top. Use your left and right arrow keys to move the high-lighted bar from choice to choice. Try it now. Now press <return>, and you will see that Magic Menus will "pull- down" another menu! The up and down arrow keys will move the high- lighted bar through the choices. Also try the left and right arrow keys. They still work as well! Press <ESC> and the pull-down menu will disappear. Try it. Now let's continue with the Magic Menus tutorial. Use your left arrow key to move the bar over the "DOS" choice. Press <return> to pull the menu down. You should see a list of familiar choices. The first one is "Directory". Make sure the high-lighted bar is over the word "Directory" and press return. Magic Menus will pop-up a window. Press <F10> now, and watch what happens. Magic Menus passed the "DIR" command to DOS, just as if you had typed it yourself! Press any key now to return to Magic Menus. Press <ESC> to exit the "Directory Window", and then <ESC> again to exit the "DOS" menu. Most of Magic Menus' functions work in this way. You may want to play with the functions available in the DOS menu a while to familiar- ize yourself with the concepts. 2.3 Setting Up Applications Magic Menus' main purpose is to allow you to create and execute your own menus and choices. Move the high-lighted bar over the word "Applications" and pull the menu down. You will see two choices: Add application Edit application We can't edit an application since we haven't defined any yet. Put the bar over "Add application" and hit <return>. The "Application Entry Chapter 2: A Quick Start Tutorial 2 Window" will appear. Now I'm going to lead you through a simple application set up. Just follow my instructions, and you'll soon catch on. Steps: 1) Your cursor should be at the "Menu Prompt" field. type Directory and press <return>. 2) For the "Hot Key", type D and <return>, and then press <return> again (to skip the "Prompt for Disk" field). 3) You should now be at the the line that reads "Command 1:". Enter dir and press <return>. 4) Where it says "Pause", type Y and a "YES" will appear. 5) That's it! Press <F10> now, and Magic Menus will save your setup. After saving the setup, you will notice that Magic Menus clears the data from the window. That's because it is setting you up to enter another application. We're done for now, so press <ESC> to exit the entry window. See what's happened? Magic Menus has "magically" inserted your setup into the "Applications" menu! It should now look like this: Directory Add application Edit application Place the high-lighted bar over the word "Directory" (if it's not there already) and press <return>. You should now be looking at the directory on your disk! Press any key to return to Magic Menus. Chapter 2: A Quick Start Tutorial 3 That's a pretty simple example, and it may not seem like much. But Magic Menus will allow you to execute your own programs as well (such as Lotus 123, WordStar, CheckMate, etc), as well as simple DOS commands. And you can execute more than one command in an application and use powerful parameter prompting commands. We're not going to talk about all of Magic Menus' features in this tutorial, especially the more advanced ones. They are covered in detail in the User's Guide. Let's try one more applications example. Select "Add application" again so that you are back in the "Application Entry Window". Now, follow the steps: 1) In the "Menu Prompt" field. type Type a file and press <return>. 2) For the "Hot Key", type T and <return>, and then press <return> again (to skip the "Prompt for Disk" field). 3) You should now be at the the line that reads "Command 1:". Enter type %1 and press <return>. 4) Where it says "Pause", type Y and a "YES" will appear. 5) Now keep pressing <return> until the cursor is in the "Prompt 1 (%1):" field. Type the following line: File to Type: and press <return>. Chapter 2: A Quick Start Tutorial 4 6) You should now be in the "Response Length" field. Type 12 and then <return>. 7) Now keep pressing <return> until the cursor is in the "Description" field. Type the following line: This function types a file to the screen and press <return>. 8) That's it! Press <F10> now, and Magic Menus will save your setup. Press <ESC> to exit the entry window. Once again, Magic Menus has added the choice to the menu. Your menu should now look like this: Directory Type a file Add application Edit application Move the high-lighted bar over "Type a file", and press <return>. What you see now is a window asking you what file you want to type. You told Magic Menus do do that when you entered "File to Type" in the "Prompt 1" field! The space in which you have to enter your response is determined by the "Response Length" (you entered a 12). Enter the file name: AUTOEXEC.BAT in the window and press <return>. If that file is present in your current directory, DOS will display it on the screen. If not, DOS will display the message "File not found". Well, that's the jist of defining applications. There's a WHOLE lot more that you can do in defining the applications. I can't begin to discuss them all here. Turn to the chapter on "Applications" for discussion and examples! 2.4 Other Menus In the meantime, let's continue our tutorial on Magic Menus. You may notice that the "Applications" menu can only hold ten entries. Don't worry... you can easily expand that to meet your needs. Move the high-lighted bar on the main menu to the "other Menus" option and pull the window down. This menu looks a lot like the "Applications" menu, except that one choice is already defined (the "Main menu"). Select "Add menu setup" and the "Menu Entry Window" should open up. Now, follow these steps: Chapter 2: A Quick Start Tutorial 5 1) Your cursor should be at the "Menu Prompt" field. type New menu and press <return>. 2) For the "Hot Key", type N and <return>. 3) You should now be at the the line that reads "Menu Name:". Enter My New Menu and press <return>. 4) Skip the "Password Level" and go to the "Description" field. Type: This is a New Menu that I have Defined. and press <return> again. 5) Press <F10> now, and Magic Menus will save your setup. Press <ESC> now to exit the entry window. Congratulations! You've defined a new menu! You should see it listed on the screen. Move the high-lighted bar over the "New menu" option and press <return>. The menu name in the lower-right corner of the screen should now read "My New Menu". Now, use the left arrow key to move the menu to "Appli- cations". What do you see? You should see that there are no applications defined. Where did they go? No where! They are still there, but if you want to use them, you must go back to the "other Menus" menu and select "Main menu"! You see, you can define up to ten menus, and each menu can have up to ten applications, for a total of 100. Again, this is just a brief tutoral to get you acquainted. Now let's go to some of the other features of Magic Menus. 2.5 Pop-Ups Go to the "Pop-ups" menu on the main screen (you should have a good handle on the pull-down menu system by now). Pull the menu down. Chapter 2: A Quick Start Tutorial 6 Notice that the first five choices here have "<alt-key>" references? That is, you can pick these items by press their <alt-key> as well as from the menu. In fact, you can pop these windows up almost ANYWHERE inside of Magic Menus! You will find these to be a tremendous conven- ience! Try one out. Press <alt-C> (that's the <ALT> key and the letter "C" at the same time). A calculator should appear. (If you use CheckMate-GL, you should recognize this calculator!). Press <ESC> and you are back where you started. Now press <alt-L>. This is the "File Listing Window". What you see first is a prompt for a file spec. Just press <return> for now, and the window will open. It displays a simple listing of files on the disk. You can move the high-lighted bar around the listing with the arrow keys. Magic Menus can make great use of this window and the ability to select a file. Refer to later chapters in the User's Guide for more information. For now, just remember that this handy window is present, and press <ESC> to return to the "Pop-ups" menu. Let's give the "Window to DOS" a try. Press <alt-W>. What you see is a window that allows you to enter commands just as if you were at the DOS prompt! Try it... type dir and press <return>. Once again, a directory of the disk will appear. (We've found a lot of ways to get a directory of the files, haven't we? Remember that we're just using the DIR command as an example. You can type any available DOS command or application in the "Window to DOS"). Press any character key to return to Magic Menus. Notice that the command you entered ("dir") is still shown on the screen? This is because Magic Menus saves the last ten commands that you issue in this window. Press the up arrow key and see what happens. Magic Menus pulls the last command you entered into the command line. You can re- issue the command quickly, and you may even edit it first! But let's keep going now. Press <ESC> to pop back to the menu. The last two "Pop-ups" require that we enter some information before they will be of any use. Select "1: add a directory choice" from the menu. The "Directory Entry Window" appears. Now follow the steps: 1) Your cursor should be at the "Menu Prompt" field. type Magic Menus' Data and press <return>. Chapter 2: A Quick Start Tutorial 7 2) For the "Directory", type C:\MAGIC\DATA and <return>. 3) Press <F10> now, and Magic Menus will save your setup. Press <ESC> now to exit the entry window. What have we done? Press <alt-D> and you will see... You should now be looking at the "Select Directory Window". Do you see the choice you just added? Put the high-lighted bar over it and press <return>. You may not think that anything has happened, but you have actually changed the active directory! Look at the "Current Path" (located in the lower right of the screen). It should read: C:\MAGIC\DATA Now, isn't that easier than typing "CHDIR C:\MAGIC\DATA" at the DOS prompt? Press <ESC> to go back to the "Pop-ups" menu now, and let's finish up. The last pop-up is meant to help you control your printer. Select "3: add printer string" to make an entry. In this window, you can define codes to change your printer's mode (such as putting it in near letter quality, italics, etc). Since there are literally hundreds of different printers available, we can't supply these control strings for you. You can find them in your printer's manual. Magic Menus uses a common way of entering the control strings. The method is discussed in detail in the "Pop-ups" chapter of the User's Guide. For now we'll just go through a quick example and leave the details to the User's Guide. Follow the steps! 1) Your cursor should be at the "Menu Prompt" field. type Just a Test and press <return>. 2) For the "Printer String", type \72\101\108\108\111\33\13\10 and <return>. 3) Press <F10> now, and Magic Menus will save your setup. Press <ESC> now to exit the entry window. Press <alt-P> to invoke the "Printer Control Window". Make sure that your printer is on, on-line, Chapter 2: A Quick Start Tutorial 8 and has some paper. Select your new entry by putting the bar over it and pressing <return>, and you should get the message! (In reality you will use this window to send un-printable CONTROL strings to your printer. We just used this example here to demonstrate the principle, since we have no way of knowing what type of printer that you have). One final thing. Try pressing <alt-C> now. Now press <alt-W>. Now <alt-D>. See? You can pop windows up on top of one another (up to several layers deep). Remember, you DON'T have to be in the "Pop-ups" menu to invoke these windows. You can call them up almost anywhere inside of Magic Menus! To end your initial tour of Magic Menus, keep pressing the <ESC> key until you get the question: Exit Magic Menus? Answer yes, and you're back to DOS. We've just barely scratched the surface of Magic Menus' many abilities, so don't forget to ponder over the User's Guide. This tutorial should help get you started, however. The help screens also offer a lot of explanation as you look at some of the stuff we didn't cover here (such as "Boot options" and "Options"). Enjoy! Chapter 2: A Quick Start Tutorial 9