It is a fully functional version of DayMaker except that:
• Only 75 new items can be added to a file.
• The alarms are disabled
• Only basic printing is provided
Since we know that many new users want to dive right in, we’ll start with DayMaker’s four-screen “Lightning Tutorial” below (You can also view these four screens directly in DayMaker’s online help system). The most convenient way to follow along is to print out these pages and refer to them next to your Macintosh. Note: due to limitations of this TeachText document format, some type styles will not print as smoothly as in normal word processor documents.
Now that you’ve had a short introduction, we’ll begin a more detailed look at DayMaker, with additional tutorial material.
We have included three learning tools for exploring this DayMaker:
• The TeachText document you are now reading
• An extensive online help system within DayMaker
• “Balloon help,” also built into DayMaker
• This TeachText file is handy if you’d like to print out a few pages to refer to as you look at DayMaker. It also contains some additional information about using DayMaker’s “tags” at the end.
• The online help system (built into DayMaker) is very useful for referring to on the screen. When you’re running DayMaker, it is always available by choosing the “DayMaker Help…” command under the Apple menu at the far left of your menu bar. You can also activate help by pressing command-? at any time.
• Balloon help is a feature included with many Macintosh programs that lets you point at elements on the screen and see small “balloons” with explanatory text. You must be running System 7 to access balloon help; just pull down the balloon help menu at the right of your menu bar and select “Show Balloons.”
In general, the online help system is the best resource for learning DayMaker - it has more extensive graphics, as well as an interactive table of contents with topic linking that lets you navigate swiftly through different areas as you learn. In any case, you’ll learn DayMaker more quickly if you spend a little time with our help materials. DayMaker has many interesting and powerful features that you might not discover through casual browsing.
Open the DayMaker folder on your hard disk, and double-click on the DayMaker application. This will automatically open the sample file (“DayMaker File”) we have provided. You can use this file to follow along with this tutorial. This file also serves as an excellent starting point for your own personal data file.
There are five different views that show you different collections of your information (the List, To-Do, Month, Week, and Day views). These five views are chosen by clicking on one of the five icons on the icon bar at the upper left side of the current view. The icons are always available, making moving around in DayMaker easy.
• The Month, Week, and Day views show you date-related information, arranged in calendar format.
• The List view shows all types of information in a list format; you control the display by specifying categories, text, priorities, dates, item types, etc.
• The To-Do view shows only to-do items in two lists: “Done” and “Undone”; you can also control the display by specifying categories, priorities, and date ranges.
•••• The “Navigator”
The rectangular area at the top of the calendar views is called the “Navigator,”which is used to “navigate” through data by controlling dates, categories, and priorities.
The Navigator’s month and year boxes are pop-ups for selecting which dates to display. The pop-up with the small shapes lets you choose the priorities that are displayed. And the two rectangular pop-ups with pictures of tags let you choose tags (categories). In the List and To-Do views, the Navigator is slightly different, but functions in much the same way.
•••• The Item Window
In addition to DayMaker’s five main views, there is a very important window which functions like a control panel for individual items. It is called the “Item window.” The Item window lets you easily see and set characteristics of individual pieces of information
(“items”); for example, times, priority settings, categories, and alarms, etc. You can display an item window by double-clicking on any item “handle,” the small circle, square, or triangle that appears next to each item’s text.
One of DayMaker’s most important concepts is the “item.” Items are the individual pieces of information you enter.
The “item” is DayMaker’s basic unit of information. It can be quite short, for example, “Meet John for lunch.” Other items (for example, notes, ideas, etc.) might be several pages long, up to a limit of about 15 pages of text.
•••• Calendar and Note Items
DayMaker has two types of items, items that are assigned a date, and items that are not.
• Items with a date are called “calendar items;” they appear in DayMaker’s Calendar views.
• Items with no date attached are called “note items.” Some examples of note items are ideas or phone notes. Note items don’t appear in the calendar views; they appear only in the List and To-Do views. (Calendar items can also appear in these views)
•••• Creating the first item
Let’s create our first item:
• Click on the Week icon to go to the Week View.
• Click in the day where you want to create the new item.
• Click on the “New” button (under the icon bar at the left of the screen) to open a new, blank Item window.
• Enter a few words of text; e.g., a sample job, like “Pick up computer.” When you’re done, close the Item Window (click in close box or press “Enter”)
You have created your first item. You can add to or edit your items at any time by clicking anywhere in the text and typing.
•••• Item handles
Item handles are the small shapes (triangle, square, circle, checkmark) that appear to the left of each item on the first line.
The shape of the handle identifies the priority of the item, and whether it is “done.” By clicking on the handle, you “select” that item. Once selected, you can move or delete an item. For example, you can drag an item by its handle to move it from one day to another, or delete it by pressing the “delete” key.
By double-clicking on any item handle, you can view that item in an Item window, where you can easily view and edit item characteristics (such as times and categories).
•••• Setting Times
We’ll use the item we created previously for the following steps:
• Double-click on the item’s circular “handle” to open the Item window
First, we’ll set start and finish times for the item. Let’s say you want to pick up the computer at 9:30 am. This will be your start time.
You can set times by clicking on the digits and typing, but you will probably find using the time pop-up faster. To use the pop-up:
• Click in the small square next to “Start:”. You will see a pop-up selector as shown here.
• To set AM and PM, drag the cursor upward to set the desired value. Keep the mouse button down and drag downward to set the hour and minute.
• Drag the cursor to the left into the hour area to set the hour. Highlight the desired hour, “9.” Keep the mouse button down to set the minutes.
• Drag the cursor straight to the right and highlight “30” by placing the cursor over it. Then, release the mouse button.
• You can set a finish time in the same way on the second line.
•••• To-Do Items
Check this checkbox to make the calendar item a “to-do item” (as opposed to an item that doesn’t require action). An item that is not a to-do item has a hollow handle; when you make it a to-do item, it gets a solid handle until it is marked “done,” and then the handle changes to a checkmark. To mark an item as “done,” check the “Done” box (there are several other ways to mark an item done, including clicking and dragging in the To-Do view). The “Auto Forward” setting makes an item automatically reappear on your calendar until it’s marked “done” (also called a “tickler” reminder).
•••• Alarms
This demo version of DayMaker does not include alarm functions, but the full commercial version lets you set an alarm for any calendar item. Alarms sound whether or not you’re using DayMaker at the time of the alarm.
“Tags” are DayMaker’s categories— they’re labels that you attach to an item to describe it. DayMaker reminds you of “real life” tags by showing a small picture of a paper tag on blank tag pop-ups.
Let’s say you’ve entered an idea about music into DayMaker. You could always find your entry again by searching for any text in the item. But what if you wanted to look at all of your music ideas at once without having to search for each individually?
By giving each music idea the tag “Music”, you can easily find all of your music ideas later. Or you could define a tag for all of your appointments at Whizco Corporation, and then display (or print) a calendar showing only Whizco appointments. We won’t cover tags in depth in this short tutorial, but DayMaker’s online help describes how you can easily create your own tags.
•••• Assigning a tag
Let’s assign the tag “Business” to the item we’ve created. In the Item window:
• Click on the pop-up button with the picture of the tag on it.
• Select the “Business” tag.
The word “Business” appears, and that tag is assigned to the item.
You can assign as many tags as you need for each item by following this same procedure in additional pop-up tag buttons. If you create an item in a view where the Navigator is set to display certain tags, the new item will be automatically assigned those tags.
•••• Using the Navigator to control which tags are displayed
To display items with the desired category (tag), make a selection from one of the Navigator’s tag pop-ups. These pop-ups display the same tag pop-up that we have already used to assign tags to items, but here we use it to choose which categories we want to view.
For example, if you select the tag “Business,” you will see items that have been assigned the “Business” tag.
•••• Working with Tags
Defining your own tags is one of the best ways to harness DayMaker’s power. You don’t have to define your own tags (in fact, DayMaker is a nice calendar and list program even without using tags), but having your own tags gives you great organizational power. For example, if you are working on three projects at once, defining a tag for each project will let you view calendars and lists one project at a time - a click on the tag pop-up menu is all it will take to switch between projects!
•••• To edit your tags
• Start by clicking on any tag pop-up.
You will see a list of your current tags, and at the top of the list, you’ll see two other entries, “Edit Tags”, and “No Tags”.
• Select “Edit Tags.”
This will display the “Browser.” We call it the Browser because it lets you easily browse through your tag collection. It is also used to create and delete tags, and to edit tag names. To the left of each tag is a diamond-shaped selection handle, similar to the handles that items have. When you click on a tag name in the Browser, that tag is highlighted.
•••• To create a new tag:
• Click in the blank area at the bottom of the desired column. This will create a new blank tag.
• Type the name of your new tag.
• Press the “Enter” key or click on the checkmark at the upper left of the browser. This confirms your entry.
•••• To change the name of a tag that already exists:
• Click on that tag in the browser. This displays the tag name in the edit box at the top of the browser.
• Edit the name in the edit box, and press the “enter” key or click on the checkmark at the upper left of the browser to confirm your entry. Clicking the “X” cancels your entry.
•••• To delete a tag:
• Click on the tag, and then click on the small garbage can icon at the top left of the browser.
You will see a dialog box asking you to confirm that you want to delete the tag. Since a tag may be assigned to many items, and you may have spent a lot of time making those assignments, you would not want to delete a tag by accident.
See “More about Tags” at the end of this document for more details on working with tags.
The “Sort” command in the Utilities menu displays the basic sort dialog box, which defines a one or two-level sort according to:
• Start date/time
• Finish date/time
• Creation date/time
• Modification date/time
• Priority
• Alphabetical
For example, if you specify descending “Priority” in the “First Sort” pop-up, and ascending “Start Time” in the “Second Sort” pop-up as shown here, DayMaker will order your items starting with high priority, then medium and low; and within each priority the items will appear in order of their start times.
The “Add Sort to Menu…” command lets you put a sort directly in the Sort submenu for easy access. When you select this command you will be prompted for the sort settings and name of your sort. You can also edit this list at any time with the “Edit Sort Menu…” command.
“Info Columns” let you tailor your DayMaker views to fit the way you work; they are simply columns that display additional item information next to each item regarding Times/Dates for Start, Finish, Creation, and Modification, Tags, Priority, Done/Not Done, Alarm, Auto forwards, and Gantt Charts. You choose which attributes you want to see, and in which order you want them to appear, and you can create different Info Columns for all of DayMaker’s different views, putting specific types of information in the places you can best use them. Info Columns can be used in any of DayMaker’s five main views.
Clicking on any column heading will display the Info Column pop-up menu, which lets you choose the attribute displayed in that column. Each Info Column can be be set to display your choice of attribute in this way.
To adjust the size of the Info Columns, grab the “splitter,” the small black bar at the left of the horizontal scroll bar (or anywhere on the border of a column), and drag it. You can adjust the width of each Info Column independently to accommodate different types of columns, or even close the Info Columns completely and then re-open them later.
When you search in the List view, you have additional controls for your search. The tag pop-ups work the same as in the other views– when you select tags in the tag pop-ups, you restrict your view to items that have been assigned all the tags you have selected (up to four). The priority pop-up works the same way as well.
In addition, by clicking on the “Find…” button, you can search using additional criteria. You will see the dialog box shown here:
Enter a text string and click “OK” to find items containing that text string. For example, if you wanted to find items containing the name of your friend Tom Miller, you could type in “Miller,” and find all items containing that name. Pressing command-F will also display the dialog, and if you have selected text before doing so, that text will be entered automatically into the dialog.
If you would like to have even more search options, click on the “More choices” button.
DayMaker lets you control your view of information in many different ways. The simplest example would be deciding which of DayMaker’s five views to use. Of course, there are many other ways to adjust what you’d like to see; such as which priorities and which tags to view, as well as using a particular combination of Info Columns.
DayMaker provides a way to store frequently used setups so you don’t have to configure the same views manually over and over again. You can do this by creating a “Custom view” for the “Views” menu.
When you create a new Custom view, you are in effect taking a snapshot of your current view settings. When you choose a Custom view from the Views menu, you are recalling previously-stored view settings.
A Custom View “records”:
• Which view (Month, Week, etc.)
• The priority setting
• Tags
• The “Info Columns”
• All search criteria (if in the List view)
• The date range displayed (optional)
• The sort (optional)
With the “Views” menu, you can carefully set up a view, even a search, and keep it instantly available for the future by recalling it from the menu. Custom views let you choose rapidly from a number of useful view configurations
The top two entries, “Add View to Menu…” and “Edit View Menu…” let you create, delete, and rename Custom views. Below these entries is the list of Custom views that are already defined. To choose any one of these, just select it. The view immediately changes to match the stored Custom view.
To create a new Custom view of your current setup:
• Select “Add View to Menu…” from the “Views” menu.
• Enter a name for the Custom view and click “OK.”
The “Set Date” option allows you to define your desired date range to “move” with the current date. For example, if you wanted to create a Custom view that would always show you the upcoming week in the Week view (perhaps to see the coming week’s high priority tasks), you can do so with this feature. To set a date, click on the “Set Date…” button after naming your new custom view, and select the desired date in the “Set Date” dialog box. You can also specify a sort to be used with the Custom view.
Until now, we have used only the first level of the tag pop-ups. However, tag pop-ups can have different menu levels, just like standard Macintosh “hierarchical” menus. For example, if you select “Personal,” you will see a submenu appear, with several tags on this next level. In this case, “Personal” is a “parent tag” which has “child-tags” under it that are related sub-categories. You can select the tag “Family” by highlighting it and releasing the mouse.
If you search using a tag that has child-tags, you will find not only items that have been assigned that particular tag, but also items assigned any of the tags that are “children” (or “grandchildren, etc.) of that tag. In the example above, searching for items assigned “personal” would also find items assigned “Errands” or “Family.”
Hierarchical tags work a little differently in the Browser, as well.
When you click on a tag with children in the Browser, that tag is highlighted, and the column to its right shows its children. When a tag has children, an arrow appears to its right; no arrow indicates that there are no children.
Just as you can click on tags in the left-most column to see their children in the center column, you can click on tags in the center column to see their children in the right column. If the tags in the right column have children, you can see them by scrolling to the right with the horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the browser.
If you decide that your tags aren’t organized quite the way you’d like them to be, you can easily move them around in the Browser. For example, you might want to cut down on clutter by gathering some related tags together under a new parent tag.
When you click on a tag handle, you “select” the tag. The handle changes from black to white (if the tag is currently highlighted, the handle changes from white to black). Having selected the tag, you can now move it. Holding the “Shift” key down lets you select several tags at the same time.
When you click on a tag handle, you can drag that tag to a different location in the browser. For instance, you could grab a tag that appears in the left column and drag it to the center column.
To make one tag the child of another
• Drag the child tag on top of the parent tag and release the mouse button. The parent tag will blink to confirm the move, and the child tag will appear as its child.
If you drag a tag to a blank area in any column, the tag is placed in that column.
If you try to move a tag so that it becomes its own child or grandchild, DayMaker will recognize the inconsistency and not allow the move.
