This program has been tested to work in Netscape 3.04. It may work with the new Internet Explorer with the service pack installed (I don't have it to test it), however it failed to work in 3.0 of IE.
Welcome to Larry's Keys. With this program, you can assign sounds and graphics and text to the keys on the keyboard.
It allows a parent or teacher to make up displays that are associated with the keys on the keyboard. For example, you can teach the alphabet and counting. When each number is pressed, you can display that amount of an item. Or when a letter is pressed, you can have a word starting with that letter spoken and even a picture of the item displayed. You can even setup a series of midi songs to the keys and make your own jukebox, or set up wavs for a sound effects machine. There are so many possibilities.
Here is an example, so you can see what can be done. The example has the letters set up to teach the alphabet. If you did not open up this documentation file (keysdoc.htm) by Open in Browser (Ctrl-O) or double clicked the file in Windows Explorer, you'll likely get sound errors in the program. This appears to be a bug in Netscape.
Place all your wav, au, midi, gif, and jpg files along with Larry's Keys
files:
keys.htm, keys1.htm, keys2.htm, keyslib.js, and keys.js into
one directory. You can create a separate directory for each of your key sets.
I have placed the required files in the directory
runtime. The keys.js in that directory is blank.
You can just copy all those files into your own directory and edit keys.js
with your own key settings.
Open the file keys.js in your text editor, such as Notepad or Wordpad.
To setup the keys, you follow this format:
key("keyValue","text","image","sound")
For example:
key("a","Apple","apple.gif","apple.wav")
This would display the word 'Apple', a picture and play a sound when the key 'a' is pressed.
If you do not want to have text, sound, or a picture, leave that field blank. For example to only display a picture.
key("a","","apple.gif","")
When entering a value that has a " or ' or \ you need to place a \ in
front of them.
Examples are:
\" \' \\ .
For example to have the text, He said "Hi there.":
key("h","He said \"Hi there.\"","","hi.wav")
You repeat this for all the keys you want to use. Only keys which have a character on them can be used. The spacebar, enter key, arrows, function keys, alt, ctrl, shift, home, end, esc, etc. cannot be used. All the letters, numbers, punctuation marks, math symbols, etc. can be used. It is not case sensitive, so "A" is the same as "a".
When you want to view the program, you should not open the file by typing the directory into the location area in Netscape and then clicking on the keys.htm file; this causes sound problems. Open up keys.htm from the Open in Browser option Ctrl-O. Otherwise you can double click the file in Windows Explorer.
When the program is running, pressing a key that is defined in the keys.js file will display the information for that key. When you want to quit, press the Quit button. That button is needed to stop the program from setting the focus on the drop down list. That list contains all the key associations. You can also select the key by selecting it from the list. If you want to restart, the Quit button turns into a Restart button for you to start up the program again.
keys.htm defines the size of the frames. It is set at 50 pixels for the top frame. If you need to make it bigger or smaller, you can change it. Edit the line that reads:
<FRAMESET ROWS="50,*">
Change 50 to whatever value you like.
I made this a free program. If you find this program useful, I'd appreciate
a picture postcard.
Please send it to:
Lawrence Goetz
3263 Bedford Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11210
USA
If you have questions or comments about Larry's Keys, you can e-mail me.
Visit my home page for children's programs, Java applets and other programs.
I have lots of free programs here.
Thank you,
Lawrence Goetz