The Palette:

The most flexible tool in the Interact software is the palette toolbar. There are five flavors of this toolbar that will help you navigate through your desktop and make the Interactive Stylus much more than just a wireless mouse.

Desktop Palette: From this toolbar, you can open up eBeam Scrapbook or Microsoft PowerPoint. You can also annotate the desktop, take screen captures, or open the onscreen keyboard. If you right-click on the palette, you will be able to use the Spotlight feature. This feature will hide your entire desktop behind a gray cover and allow you one “spot” to which you can see through. You can use this to draw attention to one particular point on your screen that you can move by dragging any part of the grey screen.

Desktop Annotation Palette: Since the Desktop Palette will float over all software applications you can use this to do screen mark-ups over anything on your computer. For example, if you have an Excel chart open that you want to discuss with someone, you can click on the pen tool on the Desktop Palette and the palette will change into Desktop Annotation mode. Your screen will freeze, and you will be able to draw on it with a pen, highlighter, or various lines and shapes just like a football commentator drawing out a play on the TV screen. Once you’ve finished with the annotations, you have two choices – you can either exit the screen annotation without saving the mark-ups with the Mouse icon at six o’clock or you can use the Save icon at seven o’clock. The whole screen plus the annotations will then be saved to a page in eBeam Scrapbook.

Scrapbook Palette: This palette has all the functionality you will need to create interactive and dynamic presentations, including pen, highlighter, text box, screen capture, and zoom:

Pen: Change color and line thickness by clicking the inside of the palette.

Highlighter: Change color and line thickness by clicking the inside of the palette.

Eraser: Choose width by clicking the inside of the palette.

Zoom (magnifying glass): Allows you to zoom from 25% to 5000%.

Text Box (capital T): Choose font size and style by clicking inside the palette, includes bold, italics, underline, and text color.

Screen Capture (camera): Choose from a full screen capture or just a section of the screen. If you choose a full screen capture, the dialogue box will close and Scrapbook will minimize, there will be a quick flash of your desktop, then a snapshot of whatever you had open under Scrapbook will appear on a Scrapbook page. If you choose to “Capture a Selection,” the dialogue box will close, Scrapbook will minimize and your desktop will flash. After it flashes, your cursor will turn into a cross, which will let you make a box around anything you would like to import into the software. Once you’ve made the box, you will see a dialogue with a preview of the capture and you choose how you would like to import it – as is, stretched to fill the screen, etc. Make your selection and click “OK.” Your selection will then appear on a Scrapbook page.

Full Screen Scrapbook Palette: When you are in Scrapbook, you can choose to open Full Screen view and your Scrapbook pages will appear like a PowerPoint slide show. You can access this from the Full Screen icon on the main toolbar or from View > Full Screen View. When you are in Full Screen View, the palette will change so you are able to navigate forward and back and use the pen, highlighter, eraser and screen capture tools.

PowerPoint Palette: This palette opens over top of your full screen slide show. You can use it to navigate back and forth through your slides and add annotations on the fly. There is even a preference that you can save the mark-ups as part of the .ppt file or just erase them when you go to the next slide (right-click on the palette and go to Options… and then the Annotation tab).