Use this option to configure how your copy of VisualNEO Win works. These options only effect your interaction with VisualNEO Win; they do not affect your compiled publications (use App Properties to configure your publication). The Preferences screen is divided into three sections indicated by the icon images on the left: General, Tools and Editor. To view the settings for a section, click the corresponding icon.


General

Under Startup Options, you may specify what actions VisualNEO Win should take each time it is loaded. Choose Open a new blank publication if you want to start each VisualNEO Win session with a fresh publication. Select Open last edited publication to reopen the publication you were working on last time you used VisualNEO Win. Finally, you may choose to have VisualNEO Win Display a file open dialog to start each session by selecting an existing publication from your hard drive.


Enable the Undo on option to activate VisualNEO Win’s undo feature. When active, you can remove the last modification made to a publication by selecting Undo from the Edit menu.


Note: Disabling Undo may improve performance on slower computers.


Enable the Create backup files option to have VisualNEO Win retain a copy of the previous version of your publication whenever you select Save from the File menu. The backup file will have .BAK as its file name extension. While creating backup files will consume extra hard disk space, this may prove invaluable should your publication file become corrupted (by Windows, disk compression, power failure, bad disk sectors, etc.) To access a backup file, use Windows Explorer to change the backup file’s extension from BAK to PUB. Then load the renamed file into VisualNEO Win. This way, at most you’ll only lose the edits you made since you last edited the publication.


Check the Automatically update text and image files modified by other programs option to have VisualNEO Win periodically check to see if any of the elements in your publication have been modified. If you leave this option unchecked, VisualNEO Win will display files as they were when VisualNEO Win loaded the publication (which can speed performance on slower computers). Leaving this option unchecked does not affect compiled publications, as the files always will be updated before compiling.


Tools

This is where you can specify which programs will be used to edit the many types of media files supported by VisualNEO Win. Select your favorite editors for text, images, animated GIF, cartoons, sound, music, video and Flash™ files. VisualNEO Win  automatically will launch the appropriate program when you select a file from the Edit menu’s Create/Edit command. With most file types, you may choose to let Windows automatically locate the appropriate editor, or you may specify a specific application installed on your computer.


Note: It is recommended that you use VisualNEO Win’s built-in word processor/text editor for editing text files. The built-in editor provides many formatting options and has been designed specially for use with VisualNEO Win.


Editor

Use this screen to select which font and colors to use for VisualNEO Win’s Action Editor. Choose an item from the list of Elements, then select a color and attributes for that item. The preview window shows the effect of your selections. Be sure to select compatible colors for each of the elements. Don’t select white text on a white background, for example.


The Editor Font combo box contains a list of compatible fonts available on your computer. Because the editor supports syntax highlighting, the selection is limited to mono-spaced fonts.