Tips for Novices ... continued

Common errors.
Often, a beginner who is trying to find a particular letter will drive the display forwards fast while hunting for the letter. The rule of the road for Dasher users is just like that for car-drivers: don't drive forwards until you have identified where you want to go! So, after you have found the first letter of your sentence, and zoomed towards it, please SLOW DOWN and don't proceed any further into this first letter's square until you have figured out where you should be steering towards. Your next letter *is* there, immediately inside the first square you have entered. The letters are ordered alphabetically. If you can't see your letter, figure out where it must be on the basis of the letters you can see. Then point to the right place and enter the second letter's square.

What do the colours mean?
In the English-language desktop version 3 of Dasher,

• white squares contain the space characters (always placed at the bottom of the alphabet);
• a special yellow box contains the upper case characters [A-Z];
• a red box contains numerals [0-9] (if the full alphabet is enabled);
• a green box contains punctuation characters (with the characters most similar to the space character [.,;:-] placed at the bottom, next to the white space character.
• the other colours are included simply to discriminate the squares from each other.

Summary:
Don't click. Don't drag. And don't speed.

How to start dasher (version 3)

Set the dasher application running; when the dasher window comes up, either click the left mouse button or press the space bar to set it going. [One of these two will work.] Repeat this action (click or space), when you are finished, to stop dasher from dashing. Your computer's mouse controls Dasher. Adjust the speed slider to fix the maximum speed Dasher will zoom at. A speed of 1 is good for a beginner; increasing to 2 after 5 minutes' practice, and to 4 when you are expert.

How to start dasher (version 2) on pocket PC

Install, run (wait a few seconds for it to load up the training file), then touch the screen with the stylus to make dasher move.

Users of the pocketPC version of Dasher should read these additional tips.

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