SECRETARY'S REPORT & MINUTES OF MEETING February 11, 1998

Minutes and Comments by Kevan Sheridan, Secretary, Tampa PC Users Group

The pre-meeting Turbo Tax demonstration was canceled. Introductions and announcements began at 6:10 pm. Merle announced the closure of the BBS, and William gave a quick demo of the club web pages. The Corel demonstration began at 6:35 and lasted until 8:00. Following a short break the meeting concluded with the door prize drawing. The amount brought in from ticket sales was $112.00.

The Tampa PC Users Group BBS opened for business during August of 1986, and there have been quite a few changes since then. One of the biggest changes to bulletin board system usage has been the growth of the Internet, and with this growth a big decline in BBS activity has made it impractical to continue. The local fidonet feed for message echoes will stop on Feb 20. The final day of BBS operation is scheduled to be March 1, 1998.

The Corel demonstration was presented by Sussane Gramann, Product Specialist for Corel Corporation, and John Torres, Corel Corp./Mindshare representative for the Tampa bay area. The first program presented by Sussane was WebMaster Suite, a complete solution for web site creation. The suite contains Web.Designer, Web.SiteManager, Web.Photo Paint, Web.Draw, Web.Move, Web.World, Web.Data, O'Reilly's Website v1.1, Netscape Navigator 3.0, 7500 internet ready clipart images, and free 30-day web site hosting service. Minimum system requirements: PC 486 DX/66 or higher, Windows 95 or Windows NT 3.51 or higher, 2X CD-ROM drive, 16 MB RAM, VGA monitor, mouse or tablet.

Web Designer can handle up to five pages simultaneously and has 222 templates. Web pages can be setup in just minutes. Web site management allows management of local sites, remote sites, and even sub sites. It automatically updates links, detects and reports broken links and orphan files. Photo Paint 7 technology lets you quickly create or edit wonderful images with quite a few fancy options thrown in. With 3D VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) you can design 3D images and even use animation! Image file formats used include both GIF and J-Peg. If you have stored information to display, tables with up to 100 by 100 elements allow you to publish your database information quickly and easily. Finally, of course, you can use Netscape Navigator to view your pages as they would appear on the web.

Just to show us what could be done with Web.World, Sussane took us through a "walking" tour of a virtual building that had been created by someone at Corel. This building was complete with wall paintings, windows looking out, and it even had a fire "burning" in the fireplace. Oh, and don't forget to include sounds in your pages.

Corel Draw 8 was the next program on the agenda. With over 100 new features in this version of Corel Draw the system requirements may be evident. Minimum requirements: Pentium 90 (133 recommended), Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0, CD-ROM, 32 MB RAM, 80 MB hard disk space, SVGA, and a mouse or tablet.

This version uses a different user interface. The Property Bar is now context-sensitive, and there are now roll-up dialog boxes, and something called Dockers. It also handles multiple objects better than before using, for example, a 'digger' action to quickly move through multiple images or objects. ALT-SHIFT-PAGEUP and a right mouse will let you copy properties. If you want to duplicate images, try smart duplicate and place copies wherever your mouse goes. Most tools are now interactive to let you see changes as you type them in. Distortion, Zipper, Extrude, Drop Shadow, Envelope, and Smart Duplicate are just some of these. The 3D effects also look quite impressive in both results and speed. Throw in light source control, color gradient control, transparency, and import text tools and you can have sentences wrapping around in spirals.

Sussane Gramann can be reached at (613) 728-0826 Ext. 1637 or E-mail: sussaneg@corel.ca

John Torres can be reached at (813) 620-8094 or E-mail: torresjd@aol.com

The door prize followed a short break. Ford Bond won a copy of Web Master Suite. William LaMartin won a sweatshirt. Finally, Connie Kincaid won a copy of Corel Draw 8.

Next Month look for a demonstration of surge protectors. u