At Ease
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At Ease and Apple Guide are compatible. However, there are some common misunderstandings about how Apple Guide works with At Ease.
If At Ease 2.0 is installed and turned on, Apple Guide does not function in System 7.5. The Help menu contains only Balloon Help items, with no mention of Apple Guide. It also contains About Balloon Help instead of About Apple Guide.
However, At Ease and Apple Guide can be used together on the same system. If an application contains a guide file for its help system, this guide is available to all At Ease users who can access that application through At Ease. Used within the application, the guide functions normally.
Within the At Ease panels themselves, no guides are available because none have been written for it yet. Apple hopes to have one ready for a later release of At Ease. The Macintosh Guide, which normally appears in the System 7.5 Finder, does not appear in the At Ease panels, and should not. This guide depends on the Finder to display its red "coach marks", open Control Panels, and so on. Since At Ease users do not normally have access to Control Panels and system settings, it is inappropriate to have the Macintosh Guide available and fully functional in At Ease.
A problem does occur when a system starts up in At Ease, and then a user or administrator goes to the Finder. In this situation, the Macintosh Guide, which normally appears in the Finder, is unavailable. This is a problem in Apple Guide. Apple Guide treats the Finder in a special way and does not load in situations when the Finder is "off". All products that replace the Finder, like At Ease does, experience the same problem. Apple is developing a fix for this problem which should be available at a later date.
The impact on the user is that, if they startup in At Ease, and then go to the Finder, both the Macintosh Guide and application specific guides, are not available. In order to use Macintosh Guide in the Finder, At Ease must be turned off by the administrator and the computer restarted.
This situation has the potential to be viewed as an incompatibility between Apple Guide and At Ease. It is NOT, and we hope that this information helps you understand the problem. This is not a situation where you have to choose between System 7.5 and At Ease. Apple Guide behaves as it should for At Ease users.
At locations where At Ease is used, most of the system's users operate their computers in At Ease, not in the Finder. Hence most end users will have access to application guides. Administrators who do have access to the Finder are generally advanced users that do not use Macintosh Guide very often.
KidDesk
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Edmark's KidDesk software has this same issue with Apple Guide because it is an interface that takes over for the Finder similar to the way At Ease does. Edmark Tech Support is advising customers to obtain System 7.5 Update 1.0 to resolve issue with Kid Desk and problems with Apple Guide.
How To Tell If KidDesk Is Loading With Apple Guide
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KidDesk creates an alias of itself in the Startup Items folder. Starting with the System 7.5 Extensions Manager set "System 7.5 Only" will not disable KidDesk. The alias must be removed to prevent its launch at startup. KidDesk 1.0 by Edmark prevents Apple Guide from displaying "Macintosh Guide" and "Shortcuts" when pulling down the "Apple Guide" menu. It reverts to displaying "About Balloon Help" and "Show Balloons" and "Finder Shortcuts" instead of any Apple Guide files loaded. These are the same menu options displayed as if Apple Guide did not load at startup.
This article provides some information about a non-Apple product. Apple Computer, Inc. is not responsible for its content. Please contact the vendor, Edmark, for additional information.
The Tech Info Library article titled "Locating Vendor Information" can help you search for a particular vendor's address and phone number.
Article Change History:
14 Aug 1995 - Reviewed for technical accuracy.
15 May 1995 - Changed title.
31 Mar 1995 - Added more information about KidDesk.
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