Views & Reviews |
Lotus SmartSuite 97 has delivered on an entire suite of programs that use the Windows 95 features and are truly integrated with each other, 1-2-3 being the last of these programs. SmartSuite it is a suite of programs with word processing (WordPro), datab ase (Approach), spreadsheet (1-2-3), graphics presentation (Freelance), organizer/calendar/address book (Organizer), and movie creator/player (ScreenCam) along with SmartCenter which helps integrate all the programs for ease of use.
The SmartCenter tool bar stays on the screen all the time by default, but you can configure how it looks, acts and where to place it. This SmartCenter tool bar allows you to do a lot more tasks than just use the different programs in SmartSuite. For example, you can keep an address/phone list ready for instant reference or you can have instant access to a dictionary or thesaurus that allows you to type in a word and get a definition or similar words right away. The Internet section gives you a wide variety of options to choose from for connecting to the net. Internet integration means features in all the programs of the suite allow easy publishing of your work to your website right from within any of the programs. Besides the ability to publi sh work, there is built-in access to news, weather, stock quotes, and many other links to useful sites directly from the SmartCenter tool bar.
SmartSuite’s SmartMaster templates are very helpful when beginning a new document or spreadsheet in any of the different programs. They help a new user get started using any of the programs much faster and easier by offering templates for many of the com mon types of work projects that people do with the products.
Approach allows you to create a new database with help from the templates or from dialog boxes which help guide you through the entire procedure. Once the database is set up and data is entered, creating reports to show the summary results from the data in the d atabase couldn’t be easier with the report templates and help dialogs. Not only is this very easy to do, the results look great, too.
Wherever you are in any of these programs, there are InfoBoxes which can be popped up with a right mouse button click that are context sensitive. These InfoBoxes allow the user to easily make changes to the appearance of the data. Now with this box up on the screen, you use the various tabs to make the different formatting dialog boxes active onscreen.
1-2-3 has added the most new features, since it is the program that had not been updated in a couple of years or so. This new generation of the spreadsheet program includes Team features, outlining capabilities, HTML publishing, full OLE support, the AutoTotal feature that detects the word Total and automatically sums, the InfoBox for one-stop formatting, and other common Lotus user interface tools. LotusScript, the object-oriented programming language which is BASIC compatible, works with 1-2-3 as well as with the other programs that had been updated to use it in the last version of SmartSuite.
Organizer is like a time management/calendar/address/phone book program and is even better and easier to use. The calendar is more graphically manipulated and there is now support for TAPI dialing, animation, sounds, and symbols. The notepad section now allows ri ch text formatting and container capabilities that let you link and embed OLE objects. There was already the ability to do group updating and scheduling.
ScreenCam is a unique and handy program which allows the user to create screen shows which display all the contents of your screen (while recording them) and the cursor movements you make, along with sound and sub-titles (added later if desired) to help enhance t he final production. This is a great way to create a tutorial.
Freelance Graphics, the presentation program, is even easier and more useful with the addition of a greater selection of tool bars and tabbed windows, allowing the user to jump from the current page to the page sorter view or to the outline view.
Lotus has included several types of onscreen help, especially to those with CD. Aside from the normal help files, there are tours which give a short introduction to the program, demos which provide step-by-step examples, assistants to guide you through s ome of the more complex tasks, bubble help with the SmartIcons, Ask the Expert and Guide Me which asks you questions related to what you are doing that guide you to the right help topics. For more info go to http://www.lotus.com.
Betty Brooks is a HAL-PC member, former Lotus SIG Chair and former Sysop of our award winning user group forum on AOL.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.
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Last modified: 1997:09:30