Knowledge Base Utility designed to showcase some more advanced techniques.

In this application, available for download free of charge from our Web site, we show a number of sophisticated user interface techniques in a simple adaptation of the AREV knowledgebase application.

Revelation Software have very kindly granted permission for us to distribute their Technical Bulletins, MFS Programming Manuals and Subroutine Book along with this application so we'd recommend downloading it. If you already have a SYSKNOWLEDGE table attached with RevMedia FKB this will also become available to you in the application as you can see below.

There are a few things to point out about the above screen that might not immediately be apparent. Note the use of a bitmap as the screen background - screens don't have to be grey! Note also the Windows 95 style buttons - a small detail but if you're trying to survive in a 32 bit world with a 16 bit tool kit every little helps!

Note also the folder tabs. Because the suggested way of creating folder tabs creates tabs which don't look like Windows 95 tabs, Sprezzatura have implemented their own tabbing structure. Finally note that buttons which are not yet useable are not yet enabled. Again a small point - but if you're trying to sell shrink wrapped product your customers will be quick to notice these things.

Double-clicking on one of the "volumes" in the listbox on the left expands it to show the documents contained therein. The problem is, the listbox isn't wide enough to display the entire article title, so we've added tool tip help to the listbox - here you can see it showing "Caching in on the Frames Array".

Double-clicking on the article displays the full text of the article in the text box on the right.

The problem is, the article is wider than the listbox. In an ideal world we'd be able to grab the slider bar separating the listbox and the edit box and just make the edit box bigger. But this is OpenInsight and that sort of stuff isn't possible, right?

Wrong! Using Sprezzatura's in-depth knowledge of the Windows API we're able to subclass the control separating the two controls so that when the cursor hovers over it we get... a bi-directional arrow cursor.

Now it's just a case of clicking and dragging the control to the width we want.

When we want to search, we just click on the "Find" tab and type in the word we're looking for.

When we stop typing the system sees that we have and retrieves all matching index values automatically.

Double-click on the article of choice and it appears in the editbox.

Of course we still need to get at the extra details relating to the article - and look! The "Properties" button is now enabled. Clicking this gives us the screen below.

Finally one of the most complicated bits of technical wizardry - a classic case of "Sprezzatura" - making the difficult seem effortless. Choose "Help About"

and up comes the about dialog box. Click on system info...

... and  up comes the MS System Info dialog. This is an example of calling a 32 bit DLL from within a 16 bit DLL using a technique known as "thunking". Mastering this technique permits the developer to get at any 32 bit DLL they might have need of.