 |
| Home | Reviews | Sales | Updates | Worksheets | Interactives | Support | Contact |
Animals UK and Plants UK FAQsIf we find any issues with Animals UK or Plants UK we will try to post a solution here. Please see also our updates page. Updates are free to purchasers. You will find your program's version by click on Help menu/Help about. We welcome any feedback from users as we would like to make our software run flawlessly on as many computers as possible.
1 The Title Bars of help display"Help Author On" rather than "Animals UK"This problem will only be encountered if the Microsoft Help Workshop HCW.EXE has been installed. (It may be installed with MS Office or with some development tools). Use "Find" or "Search" on the Windows Start Button. Choose "Files or folders". Locate HCW.EXE. Click to open. Choose "File > Help Author" and remove the check mark. 2 Can I run or deploy Animals UK/Plants UK over a network?Animals UK/Plants UK are not network aware and are currently only designed to run on the machines they are installed on, although they can be installed across a network by simply copying setup.exe from the CD to each machine and running it. 3 Can I run Animals UK/Plants UK on machines below the stated spec.?Animals UK/Plants UK are not guaranteed to run on lower spec machines but will generally do so with no more than the obvious drawbacks: less power means the program runs slower and less memory means you can have fewer plates open. You should close any unecessary Species Plates to avoid out of memory errors. If running with a 640x480 display you will need to close the system tray to prevent the bottom of forms being obscured. Interactives in versions except 1.xx of Animals UK may not operate fully if the version of Internet Explorer on your machine is earlier than 5.0. The latest version of Internet Explorer is available free of charge from Microsoft's website and is often on cover DVDs/CDs of computer magazines. (PC Answers usually has it) 4 Can I run the pre-Vista copies of the programs on Windows Vista.? (Animals UK version 2.x/Plants UK version 1.x)Animals UK/Plants UK stated to run only on Windows 98, 2000 or XP have been tested to run on Vista with only minor problems:
5 When you start the program a Windows dialog states that the required URL is not available offline.The program uses web browsers and this may happen if a previous dial up connection to the Internet has not been closed properly. Simply select connect and then cancel on the next dialog box. 6 No sound option available for interactive exercises. (Early versions of Animals UK)Sound may have been disabled if Windows Media Player version 6.0 or better was not detected on installation. Sound is a very minor part of the exercises, providing suitable noises to mark right or wrong answers and not having it detracts very little from the value of the exercises. If you would still prefer to have it, check the points below. If you believe your version of Media Player is 6 or better but has not been correctly detected by Animals UK, or you subsequently install a suitable version of Media Player, then allow sound to be enabled as follows: Open the text format setup file Options.set in your AnimalsUK directory in Notepad. If you
accepted the defaults on setup, this will be Animals UK in the Program Files directory. At the
end of the file change: And resave. If you then have problems with the Investigations freezing, reverse the above. Note that the above is a safe procedure. If you make a mistake (even if you delete all the lines) Animals UK will still run, albeit with default options. Your next use of save options on the Options menu a will recreate a file in the proper format. To check your version of Media Player, run it, select Help from the menu and then Help About. Note that if you cannot find version information on Help About it will be an early version. You may download Media Player updates free of charge from Microsoft's and some other websites. There is an option to do this from the help menu of Media Player on later versions. It is also frequently available on PC magazine cover CDs alone or as part of Internet Explorer. 7 Sound option on interactive exercises is not wanted. (Early versions of Animals UK)Schools may prefer to disable sound so pupils cannot turn it on from the menu. Simply reverse the procedure in the previous section by changing sound to X (or any word but sound!). 8 Cannot run more than one copy of Animals UK/Plants UKRunning more than one copy on a machine has been disabled as there is no obvious purpose and because in versions 1.xx of Animals UK the assistant of both copies (or all copies if more than two) would appear on the top copy. If you attempt to do so a message box will appear. If you really need to run more than another copy, simply make a copy of AnimalsUK.exe, rename the AnimalsUK part (e.g. to AnimalsUK2.exe) and double click on that. In version 1.xx of Animals UK you should turn off the Assistant (Menu, Options, hide assistant) to avoid confusion. 9 Some details of a plate are obscured by the Windows system trayWith an 800x600 display or better, this should only happen if you use a tray of double height or more. The system tray (at bottom of the screen) may be resized by dragging down the top. Options may also be changed by right click to prevent it appearing over the top of programs. 10 An error dialog is shownIf a message box is shown containing the words "See help file under trouble shooting", this denotes an anticipated problem due to a file that has gone missing from or become corrupted in the Animals UK directory. The problem will normally be rectified by reinstalling Animals UK. In the case of a corrupt file it may be necessary to uninstall the program first. Note that, as far as possible, the program has been made to continue running if you cancel the message box. 11 A few species appear to be presented in wrong size order after groupingGrouping has some significant limitations when a species can match two or more buttons. If, for example, a butterfly flies in April and August, it is not really possible to sort it sensibly compared to one only flying in June. This is explained in more detail in the help file. In cases where species match only one button, the majority, grouping is a useful function. 12 The information (book) button by identification buttons does not show that topicThe book button should open the information file at the specific point that deals with the topic. On old versions of Windows 98/Explorer it may open the file at the top. You may use the right hand scroll bar to locate the appropriate heading. The latest version of Internet Explorer is available free of charge from Microsoft's website and is often on cover DVDs/CDs of computer magazines. (PC Answers usually has it) 13 Attempting to print the Key or Question interactives page gives a script error. (Animals UK version 2.xx/Plants UK 1.xx)You can still print by right clicking on the page and using the print option presented. Printing or page setup from the interactive buttons uses Mead Corporation's ScriptX add-in and if you have Vista or a later version of XP or have otherwise installed a later version of Internet Explorer you wil need an update, available from our updates page. Vista users with pre-Vista versions of the programs, see also question 4. 14 The Questions interactive print page does not show field labels. (Plants UK version 1.xx)This can happen after the scroll button is used. Visit our updates page for a free update to latest spec. 15 Problems of appearance when using uncommon screen resolutions.(Plant UK/Animals UK)The species plates are designed for a width/height ratio of 1.33, eg 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, although appearance should be quite acceptable with any reasonably similar screen ratio. With more unusual ratios some distortion may be apparent. The interactives and information pages in Plants UK and Animals UK from version 2 generally resize to any ratio but visit our updates page for minor improvements in this. 16 Cannot see print button when "print plate" is chosen. (Plants UK version 1)This is a bug in the executable. When the print dialog is opened on the species plate and the print plate option is selected, the print button is hidden. If you select print setup and then cancel, the print button will be revealed. 17 Interactives do not run outside of Animals/Plants UK in browsers apart from Internet Explorer.We only state they will run in Internet Explorer. This is mainly because the script facility in Firefox and other browsers adheres more rigidly to standards and does not implement the many useful features that Microsoft has added. | |||
 |
 |
||