How to use video-books

1. To open a particular page of this book, select a topic in the "Table of Contents" (figure 1), or roll the "page-ball" to the required page number (figure 1/2). Also you can turn the pages with [Left] and [Right] keyboard cursor keys.

*In case page title in the TOC is truncated or not descriptive enough, hold your cursor over it for a second and see page text preview (screenshot).

2. For controlling the embedded movies, you use the "play" (figure 2), "pause" and "rewind" buttons on the playback control panel. Alternatively, you may toggle play / stop commands with the [Spacebar] on your keyboard.

3. You navigate a movie clip, by clicking on its progress bar (figure 3). The balloon hint over your cursors shows target time. To fast forward / backward the movies use [Up] and [Down] keyboard cursor keys. For slow for- / back- warding (sometimes even a fraction of second matters much) hold down [Shift] key.

The digits under the bar refer to related text paragraphs. For example, by clicking "5" you jump exactly to the beginning of movie fragment illustrating text paragraph §5 (figure 3/2; screenshot).

Most underlined words in the page text are linked to related movie frames. By clicking such a word you instantly access a helpful illustration / fragment (screenshot).

*Some of the text links may lead you to a different page. After seeing the related content, click "History Backward" button (figure 6) to resume the interrupted reading.

NB As you can see, most common tasks may be easily accomplished with 5 keyboard keys - [Left] and [Right] arrows turn pages, [Up] and [Down] navigate movies, [Space] bar plays / stops movies.

4. By default, the movie clips occupy the right half of the screen (screenshot). In this mode you can read the text and see the animation at once. To see the movie at full size (screenshot) click the "expand" button (figure 4). To show the text, click this button again. Alternatively, you may toggle movie size with keyboard [TAB] key.

5. Normally, a movie clip reveals a certain topic and stops at the end. Some of the lessons though are broken up into 2 or 3 digestible pieces (e.g., "Painting (1)" and "Painting (2)"). To make the individual clips play as a single movie click the "chained mode" button (figure 5). To return to the normal (not chained) playback mode click this button again.

6. To go backward / forward in your history (as you do it in Web browsers) click the "Back" (figure 6; shortcut [Shift+Left]) or "Forward" (shortcut [Shift+Right]) arrow button (figure 6). Or open the "History" panel and choose a topic from the "recent pages" list (figure 6/2; screenshot).

7. To search for a particular word in the e-book text and movie subtitles, click the "magnifying glass" button in the left panel. Press "Find" button one or more times until you encounter the searched fragment of the page text or of the subtitles. Then click the highlighted text (figure 7) or "Go to page..." button (screenshot) to jump to the found page or movie fragment.

NB While search panel is active most keyboard shortcuts are unavailable.

8. To bookmark the current page or movie frame, open the "bookmarks" panel and click "Add bookmark" button (figure 8; screenshot) or just press keyboard [Insert] key. You may store up to 19 bookmarks. To open a bookmarked page / movie fragment click its button. To delete an unnecessary bookmark just click its "x" button (figure 8/2).

9. To adjust the sound volume click a "lath" next to the "speaker" pictogram (figure 9). To temporarily mute the book, click the "loud speaker" itself. To allow sounds, click it again.

10. To customize articles appearance, display "Adjust font" panel and adjust font style or size (figure 10; screenshot).

11. To print materials from this e-book, open the "Options" dialog and choose a printing option. "Page Text" only prints text of the current page. "Text & Movie" (screenshot) prints the page text and current movie frame (requires "landscape" orientation in your printer settings). To print out the entire e-book, click "All Pages". Alternatively, you may open "asap1.txt" file from our sample folder with any text processor, and use custom font and printing options.

Keyboard Shortcuts:

[F1] - Help
[TAB] - expand / contract movie
[Left] - previous page (number)
[Right] - next page (number)
[Backspace] - previous history page (back)
[Shift+Left] - previous history page (back)
[Shift+Right] - next history page (forward)
[Up] - fast forward movie
[Down] - fast backward movie
[Shift+Up] - slow forward movie
[Shift+Down] - slow backward movie
[Home] -go to the first movie frame
[End] - go to the last movie frame
[Spacebar] - play / pause movie
[Enter] - play movie
[Esc] - pause movie
[Insert] - create bookmark
[+] - increase font size
[-] - decrease font size