http://www.microsoft.com/TechNet/tnnews/tnbrowse.htm (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)

Updated: March 12,1996 TechNet Logo Go To TechNet Home Page

New Browser Enhances TechNet CD Performance

By Maurine Bryan

In this Issue: An Exciting New Look

We are pleased to announce an upgrade to the TechNet CD interface. Newly minted from Microsoft's Production and Technology Group, the interface was developed using a more powerful browser and Multimedia Viewer 2. It allows you to view a more integrated interface, with the main window divided into two panes for the Table of Contents and a Topic display, as well as an optional Annotation pane. You can open, close, and maximize a pane to suit your needs.

There were a number of goals we wanted to achieve with this release, including a look that more closely resembled other Microsoft products. We incorporated suggestions for improvement gathered from our customers in our first year of shipping TechNet. With the new interface, you have quicker ways to perform the most common tasks previously performed only in the Main menu.

Two graphical toolbars have been added; one at the top of the Contents pane for general operations such as configuring the main window, changing the point size of online text, and searching the CD, and one at the bottom of the Topic pane for printing, copying, or annotating the displayed topic. To help you become familiar with the toolbars, ToolTips appear as a reminder of what each button does. You can also turn them off in Tools/Options whenever you want.

Below is an overview of TechNet's new capabilities. It might be helpful for you to try out the new features of the interface as you read this article. For a visual guide, use the TechNet liner notes available inside the CD jewel case. For more information, use online Help.

Searches Become Finds

Searching for information begins by clicking the binocular button and opening the new Find window. Subset of Contents replaces the search ranges used in previous releases of TechNet. Now you can define a specific subset of the Table of Contents and then use the subset either to browse the CD in the Contents pane or to search for a specific text string in the Find window. The Contents menu contains a list of predefined contents subsets. You can create your own user-defined contents subsets by using either the Contents menu or the Define Subset button in the Find window.

The Find Results window appears when you run a search (notice that you can now cancel a search in progress). You can go to any topic found and the Find Results window remains to select other topics found. After selecting a topic, you can close Find Results if you no longer want it.

You can organize your Find Results list in any way you choose: sort the findings by Score, Book, or Topic columns. The Find Results list, your location within it, and all the dialog settings are remembered from one TechNet session to the next. In fact, the list is remembered even when you shut down. The Find Results list can be displayed again with a single keystroke or a click of a button.

To narrow a search, click the Find Again button in the Find Results window. The Find window reappears. Click the Last Topics Found button and choose the Topic Area to Search: either Title and Text or Text Only.

Printing a Pane?

One of the biggest requests we have had from our subscribers is to improve the printing capabilities. The Print command on the File menu brings up the Print dialog box, allowing you to select an entire book in the Contents pane to print all at once. Or, choose to print the Contents listed in the Contents pane, print the Current Topic, or print an annotation associated with the topic.

Simply by clicking the Print button on the lower toolbar, you can print the topic currently available in the Topic pane. You'll find other improvements, including headers and footers that appear on each printout and graphics scaled to fit the page.

"It's the Economy..."

President Clinton was right, at least as far as his assessment can be applied to TechNet. TechNet economizes a user's time and energy. Further proof of this theory is the ability to copy topic text or a graphic directly to the Clipboard. Just click and drag to highlight the information you want to copy, then click the Copy button. If you want to copy all topic text to the Clipboard, make sure no highlights are defined, and click the Copy button.

More timesavers can be found in the Tools/Options dialog box. No longer must you manually synchronize the Table of Contents to reflect the article you are browsing through. Just click Automatic Sync to Topic in Contents Pane. And there are options to jump directly to the first search hit in a topic, display highlights in a topic, and save History lists of topics you have viewed in previous TechNet sessions. Navigating through topics can be done via the lower toolbar, with a button to Go Back to a topic viewed earlier, and buttons for the Previous and Next topics that appear in the Table of Contents.

The Power is Yours

Of course, we hope the new interface is so intuitive that you won't need much help. TechNet's interface is fully customizable, so that it can work the way you do. As always, continue to look for improvements in the future--we aren't done yet!

This article originally appeared on the August 1994 TechNet CD.

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