Copyright: Dolphin (c) Leeds Metropolitan University 1996


Contents
Dolphin

Dolphin is an on-line teaching aide which serves to introduce you, the user, to the Borland Delphi programming language and development environment.

Dolphin shows you quickly and easily how to:

 create attractive, intuitive graphical user interfaces

 develop, debug and test your own applications

 handle events, error and exceptions

Dolphin gently guides you from the basics of understanding the Delphi environment and the ideals behind object-orientation, to the complexities of Object Linking & Embedding and Dynamic Data Exchange.

Contents:

How to use Dolphin

Logging in

Setting your user profile

Navigating through Dolphin

Keeping notes

Self-check questions

User feedback

Statistics

Further sources of information

Dolphin website:

http://homepages.enterprise.net/rsutcliffe/dolphin


Using Dolphin
How to use Dolphin

Dolphin allows you, the user, to learn at a pace suitable to you and your experience of the subject.

Completion of the user profile settings allows Dolphin to assess your skill level, so that it can warn you if a tutorial is a little more advanced, although to begin with you will be placed at the start of the tutorials, so that you can improve your knowledge of the basic ideals and the background behind Delphi and progress gently; it is left for you to decide whether to continue from this point or progress to a more advanced subject.

Upon conclusion of some topics you can choose to complete a small quiz in order to allow both you and Dolphin to determine if youve understood what youve read.  Once you have answered all of the questions presented Dolphin will then tell you how you scored, as well as displaying topics you may wish to re-read.

Dolphin allows you to check your current skill level at any time by selecting User feedback from the View menu, or alter it by choosing Profile settings… from the Edit menu.


Logging in

If you are new to Dolphin, then the first time you login you will be asked for a User ID.  If you have not already been assigned an ID by your system administrator then entering your surname and initials will usually suffice.  If you have logged in before you can simply select your ID from the User ID list.

Once you have entered your user ID clicking the OK button will take you into the Dolphin tutorials.


Setting your user profile

Your user profile allows Dolphin to assess your current skill level and suggest a route through the tutorials on offer.

On your first login to Dolphin the User profiles settings window will be displayed.  This window contains several statements that associate to a certain skill level.  To set your skill level simply check the options that are relevant to your experience of Windows and programming.

Dont worry if you cant select all of them the first time round, they are meant only as guides for Dolphin to ascertain your current skill level and inform you if a tutorial is more advanced than your user level suggests you are ready for.

Your user level is increased automatically when you correctly complete a self-check quiz, however, you can change your skill settings (or even your user name) at any time you wish by simply selecting Profile settings… from the Edit menu.


Navigating through Dolphin

The tutorial window comprises of three re-sizeable panels.  The main left-hand panel contains a list of all the tutorial chapters and topics.  Double-clicking on a book opens up that chapters tutorials and exercises for you to select at will.

On the right-hand side are two more panels.  The uppermost panel contains an image which refers to the currently selected tutorial, and the lower panel displays the appropriate text. Once you have read a tutorial you can navigate to the next in one of two ways; either select the title from the list using the mouse, or click the Next button on the above toolbar.

Certain tutorials have associated self-check questions for you to attempt in order for you to see how well you are understanding things.  If a quiz is available for the selected tutorial then the Quiz button will become highlighted.

NB. Right-clicking most controls will bring up context-sensitive help via the Whats this? pop-up menu.


Keeping notes

Whilst using Dolphin you may wish to write additional notes or copy the tutorial text in order to help you remember important points.  Dolphin makes this easy by integrating a simple text editor for just this purpose.

To display the note editor select User notebook… from the Edit menu.

The note editor keeps your notes safe, so that every time you login they return exactly as you left them.  However, you can also store your notes, at any time, by clicking on the disk button, which will allow you to send them to disk as an ASCII text file.


Self-check questions

To help you check your understanding of a tutorial topic, Dolphin provides simple quizzes for you to complete.  If a quiz is available for the selected tutorial then the Quiz button will become highlighted.

Answer the questions by clicking the appropriate radio buttons, labelled A, B or C.  Once you have checked all three your score will be displayed, along with the correct answers and relevant topics for you to review.

To return to the tutorials simply click the title you last viewed.


User feedback

Dolphin also provides feedback on how well you are doing.  To display this information, select User feedback from the View menu.

The user feedback panel tells you your current user level (calculated from the profile settings), the last topic you accessed as well as how well you have done in the self-check quizzes.

To return to the tutorials simply click the title you last viewed.


Tutorial statistics
Statistics

As well as personal user feedback, Dolphin can also display general information on tutorial usage and general user levels.

To view these statistics select one of the options from the Statistics sub-menu, accessed via the View menu.

To return to the tutorials simply click the title you last viewed.


Further sources
Further sources of information

The tutorials presented by this application were developed by drawing upon a number of commercial publications and the personal experience of the development team in their understanding of Borland Delphi.

If you wish to examine any topic in further detail, we recommend the sources used in Dolphin. These are:

Foundations Of Delphi Development For Windows 95

Tom Swan

IDG Books Worldwide, 1995

ISBN 1-56884-347-X

Developing With Delphi - Object Oriented Techniques

Edward C. Weber, J. Neal Ford & Christopher R. Weber

Prentice-Hall, 1996

ISBN 0-13-378118-6

Teach Yourself Delphi 2.0

Devra Hall

MIS Press, 1996

ISBN 1-55828-457-5

Borland's Official No-Nonsense Guide to Delphi 2.0

Michelle M. Manning

Borland Press & SAMS Publishing

ISBN 0-67230871-1

Borland Delphi Developer Manual Set

Various Authors

Borland International, 1996

Part # HDA1220WW21771

There are many helpful on-line sources of information on general Windows programming as-well-as several specific to Delphi.  Listed below are some of the more useful websites and newsgroups:

Borland International	http://www.borland.com

Microsoft	http://www.microsoft.com

Delphi Deli	http://intermid.com/delphi

Delphi Super Page UK	http://elwww.lboro.ac.uk/mirrors/dsp

Delphi32.Com	http://www.delphi32.com

Component Source	http://www.componentsource.com

Newsgroups:

alt.lang.delphi

alt.comp.lang.borland-delphi

comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc

comp.lang.pascal.delphi.databases

comp.lang.pascal.delphi.components.writing


About the authors

Dolphin is the result of extensive research and was developed at Leeds Metropolitan University, in the UK, between October 1996 and February 1997.

The development team consisted the following members:

Project management

Nick Bail	Project management

n.bail-iq4h1782@lmu.ac.uk

Rob Clayforth	Quality assurance & project testing

r.clayforth-iq4h1917@lmu.ac.uk

Research

John Beckett	Computer aided learning research & product testing

j.m.beckett-iq4a0274@lmu.ac.uk

Mike Breakspeare	Human-computer interaction research & product testing

m.d.breakspeare-iq4h0615@lmu.ac.uk

Development

Imran Ali	Content authoring & graphics

imran@enterprise.net

http://homepages.enterprise.net/imran

Rick Sutcliffe	Software engineering & content research

rsutcliffe@enterprise.net

http://homepages.enterprise.net/rsutcliffe

You can contact the team directly via their Internet or Web address listed above.


Previous history button

Clicking this button takes you back to the last topic you looked at.


Next topic button

Clicking this button takes you to the next topic or tutorial.


User notes button

Clicking this button displays the user notes window, in which you can enter additional information on the topic youre currently looking at.


Print topic button

Clicking this button allows you to print the topic youre currently looking at.


Self-check quiz button

Clicking this button brings up the associated quiz for the topic youre currently looking at.


Contents panel

This panel shows the tutorial contents.  Double-clicking a book icon exposes that chapters tutorials, to select a topic simply click on any of the displayed titles.


Tutorial image

This panel displays the an image related to the topic you are currently looking at.


On-line help button

Clicking this button brings up the on-line help.


Status bar

The status bar displays prompts & hints to help guide you in your use of Dolphin.


User feedback panel

This panel gives you information on Dolphins assessment of your skill level as well as your last and average test scores.


Self-check questions

The questions presented on this panel allow you to assess how well youre understanding things so far.  Each question has three choices, to make a selection simply click either A, B or C.  Once all the questions have been answered you will be given your score out of three, relevant reference topics and most importantly the correct answers.


Tutorial statistics

This panel displays information on which topics are selected most often, the number of people at each skill level, as well as information on the overall test scores.


Save user notes button

Clicking this button allows you to save your notes to an external text file.


Print user notes button

Clicking this button allows you to print your notes.


Copy user notes button

Clicking this button copies selected note text to the clipboard.


Paste user notes button

Clicking this button pastes text from the clipboard into your notes.


User notes editor

In this panel you can enter notes on the topic youre currently looking at.


User level editor

Check the options that are relevant to your experience.  This allows Dolphin to assess your current skill level and suggest a route through the tutorials on offer.