Author Topic: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter (Read 93744 times)

mouser · « **on:** June 02, 2005, 04:33 AM »

i wonder if there are any hotkey tools that display a fullscreen semi-transparent overlay of hotkey assignments when you press windows key.
might be kind of cool..
ie you're an app, you press winkey and up comes full screen overlay with big text showing each available hotkey and describing what it does.

might be kind of fun to make such a freeware hotkey tool.

mouser · « **Reply #1 on:** June 02, 2005, 04:49 AM »

an alternative way to view my suggestion:
what if we took the hotkey tools out of my proposed program.

what about just a program called:
"Pop-up Cheat Sheet"

you'd give it a hotkey (yes, the irony is delicious).

and when you activated it, it would check the current active program/window, and display a (big-text fullscreen?) overlay showing shortcuts and hotkeys relevant for that program (and system in general?).

if this sounds like a fun idea, AND IT DOESNT ALREADY EXIST, might be a fun dc program.
we could even make it so it would be easy for people to post and share cheatsheets.

so that someone who is an ultraedit user could for example make an ultraedit cheat sheet and post it, and users could just download it and add it to their collection.

what do you think?

nudone · « **Reply #2 on:** June 02, 2005, 05:37 AM »

i think that potentially is one of the greatest ideas for a util ever.

if you make it so that the cheat sheets are easy to make by anyone then i can see it growing into a program that everyone with a computer could use.

i have a few html type cheat sheet poster things for sticking on my wall and a few that you just lay on your table - i don't use them as it's too much messing about - but to have something there that works with the program you are using would be almost essential.

to me, it seems like one of those ideas that are so obvious now you've said it that it should be included with all software anyway - just like the help files.

if you can make it so that it has adjustable transparency and is just as easy to hide as it is to start up then i think it will make more sense than using just another standard window that has the cheat sheet information in it.

there are certainly a good few cheat sheets i'd like to write straight away for such a thing. i think you should do it before someone else makes it and takes over the world with it.

(could you include a quick key or button that would swap to another page of the cheat sheet so that you could have multipage cheat sheets?)

mouser · « **Reply #3 on:** June 02, 2005, 06:31 AM »

nudone, i think we are thinking on the exact same wavelength.

1) should be super easy to make new cheat sheets that look good.
2) should be super easy to share cheat sheets, with a nice repository where you can find them (maybe on-click download of new cheat sheets).
3) attention paid to making it look nice on screen, ie big nicelooking text (option for graphics and fancy stuff if desired).
4) should pop up and dissapear quickly so as to interfere minimally (i was thinking something like its visible full screen while you hold winkey down alone (or maybe press once for show, again for hide), but we could talk about other options, like being able to pin it open, dock it to side of screen, resize window, etc.).

multiple pages of cheat sheets makes sense to me, as does the ability to select cheat sheets on demand (ie even if it auto brings up the cheat sheet for current app, might be nice to be able to select to view different sheet pages on demand).

im thinking that the smartest approach to this is to use html for the formatting, with a nice little mini html editor.
this would probably yield the best combination of flexibility in formatting cheat sheets, with text font size changing abilities, tables, and graphics, and would have added benefits of being able to view the pages on the web. if we are able to use css style sheets it might offer a nice way to have different display themes.

should be easy to view your cheat sheet set and disable/enable different sheets (for example there might be 10 dif. ultraedit cheat sheets and you might want to disable the ones you dont like).

should be easy to customize a cheat sheet you downloaded to modify hotkeys that you have customized.

maybe we can set it up so that you can define different regions of the display window; ie main window would show cheat sheet for current app, but you might want a left sidebar or a top or bottom panel showing your custom system-wide hotkeys.

nudone · « **Reply #4 on:** June 02, 2005, 07:01 AM »

that is a brilliant set of features straight away - html layout with CSS ability and user costomisable edits to the cheat sheet: ingenious.

only one thing i'd comment on is the holding the 'winkey' down feature - wouldn't that keep bringing up the windows 'start' menu also?

it all sounds fantastic, mouser, i can't wait to see the first version - and start creating cheat sheets.

mouser · « **Reply #5 on:** June 02, 2005, 07:09 AM »

yeah, winkey may not be the way to go.. we'd want to make it user configurable i guess.

having people willing to make cheat sheets would be essential to making this a useful utility, so we will want to make it as easy as possible for people to create new ones.

if anyone knows similar apps already in existence please let me know asap, both so that we can avoid recreating a freeware if it already exists, and also to learn from any existing tools.

if not, i guess i'll start on this right away. seems like it could be really fun to see if a little community of cheat sheet sharers developed.
proposed name of util: Cheat Sheeter

dtrud0h · « **Reply #6 on:** June 02, 2005, 08:35 AM »

Optionaly you could have one cheatsheet that stored the location of each individual programs .ini file and read the hotkey combinations from it then lets say someone added, or changed a hotkey for the program, your program would be updated automatically. Another feature that would be nice is if it was docked to the side of the screen, or bottom, or top, is to have a tabbed interface. I use firefox like tenseiken and can't hardly operate a program without tabs and middle clicking the mouse anymore.

mouser · « **Reply #7 on:** June 02, 2005, 08:40 AM »

reading ini files is probably not practical since every program uses its own format for storing such things.
tabs i'm open to - could you elaborate a little how you might want to use them?

i'm very open to user interface suggestions, so keep 'em coming - i'll try to have a test version up by next week that people can give feedback on and make concrete suggestions.

docking and full screen will definitely be options.

Scott · « **Reply #8 on:** June 02, 2005, 09:12 AM »

I floated the idea of a cheat-sheet to the author of one of the hotkey utils a looong time ago. Basically got ignored.

dtrud0h · « **Reply #9 on:** June 02, 2005, 09:32 AM »

The reason I mentioned the .ini file, or whatever the case the modifications made per program are going to be stored........ neveremind, I get it. See last line in post about notifying companys about software mentioned here

You could use tabs for easy overview of multiple windows to allow editing of hotkeys to avoid multiple different combinations for the same action(easier to see), cut and paste for creating new cheatsheets, or use them to draw focus to the selected app, kind of like an all purpose hotkey/taskbar (click on tab marked program x small tab of hotkeys drops down-->window gains focus)

mouser · « **Reply #10 on:** June 02, 2005, 10:00 AM »

i think we're going to have to get a test version of this up and running with the view that after people try it we may have to do some real revision to the user interface - its a util that will depend heavily on having a convenient gui and i don't yet have a great feeling for the best way to do it yet. but i will try to put together my best attempt and we can go from there.

btw, i didnt mean to hijack this hotkey thread - i'm still very interested in hearing more suggestions for hotkey utilities, so let's keep the original thread intention alive, and i'll split off the cheat sheet stuff into a separate thread in a bit.

Dragonrider · « **Reply #11 on:** June 02, 2005, 10:20 AM »

I think this is a great idea!

Here are my suggestions for this utility.

* As for holding the winkey down to keep the cheatsheet up, I agree it is a bad idea. Once the hotkey is
pressed the cheatsheet should stay on-screen until the ESC key is pressed. This is a standard method
used throughout the windows GUI.

* While reading this thread I too thought that .ini files would be a good way to keep the hotkey info.. But on
further reflection I agree with mouser & feel it would not be flexible enough. Besides, "Cheat Sheeter" (CS)
doesn't need to know what the hotkeys of an application are, nor what they stand for. It just needs to
display them.

* A tabbed interface at 1st sounds like the way to go, but what happens when we get 50 or 100 cheat sheets?
A tab for each of them is implausible at best. A drop-down list would be a better way to go. It can be
dynamically updated & yet take up minimal space on the desktop/window that CS brings up. It can also be
dynamically resorted so that CS can put what it thinks is the correct cheat sheet as the default entry & the
next most likely entry as the 1st item in the list & so on.

* Having the application oriented cheat sheet come up when the hotkey is pressed based on the active window
title is a fine idea. But I have seen programs that don't leave their name in the title. So some sort of heuristic
would be needed to try and figure out what the program is. If CS can't figure out what the program is, it could
use a default cheat sheet of general windoze hotkeys.

* Speaking of general windoze hotkeys. These could be accessed from a button on the CS window if needed.

* The capability of transparency for the display is a fabulous one. But it would also need to be a click through
interface or at least an interface that would allow the user to use the listed hotkeys in the program while the
CS window is being displayed. As I wrote the previous sentence it struck me that the ESC key concept isn't
going to work. But a button or 2nd hotkey could be used to dismiss the CS window. But the 2nd hotkey idea
could possibly conflict with a hotkey in the application. So a button that is clickable on the CS window would
be the best idea.

* I don't think that the ability to edit the cheat sheets should be available. This can be done separately if the
user has the knowledge and capability to do it. It just complicates our program, and there are a myriad of
HTML editors that have been developed for years and can obviously do a better job than we can given the
short time-frame I believe is being thought of here.

From my musings above, my summary of what the interface should look like are:
* A hotkey invoked window that displays an application's cheat sheet in a user definable transparency level.
* On the window would be 3 buttons and a drop down list. The buttons are 1) Show general windows hotkeys,
2) Hide "Cheat Sheeter" window, and 3) a configuration button. And the drop-down list of all available cheat
sheets that can be displayed by picking on an item in the list.
* The drop-down list would be sorted by a best to least matched hueristic matching on the title of the active
window. The default item would be what CS would think is the best fit to the application.
* The CS window could be user configurable to be an auto hiding bar similar to the task bar, or totally hidable
by just being a popup window.
* Configuration of the program would be done by a menu item accessed from right clicking on an icon in the
system tray or clicking on the button on the interface.
* The configuration dialog box would allow the user to change:
* the directory where the user is storing the HTML cheat sheets.
* the ability to hide to a task bar or a popup window.
* the ability to enable/disable a cheat sheet.
* the ability to define what the title for an application is for a particular cheat sheet.
* a button to allow saving of the configuration into the registry or a "cheatsheet.ini" file ( some of us don't like
programs that need to be installed or mess with the registry).
* a button that enables/disables the ability for CS to auto startup when windoze is booted up.
* a slider that would define the percentage of transparency the CS window will have when displayed.

* The format of the cheat sheets should be in HTML which would allow text formatting & graphics (including
animation if desired). The only downside to this would be that we would have to in essence build a browser
to do the job of displaying the cheat sheets.

Regards
Dragonrider

mouser · « **Reply #12 on:** June 02, 2005, 10:43 AM »

great comments dragonrider.

yes i think the winkey idea may just die; having a single global hotkey to toggle the window is probably best. so hit it once to show, and again to hide. hotkey will be user-configurable of course.

i will also add the ability to dock it to the side of the screen and do that old autohide thing, so you can move mouse up to top of screen to cause it to drop into view and automatically get out of the way. could be fun.. we'll have to see.

i agree, simply having a tab for each cheat sheet is not going to work when there might be 100 of them or more. a drop down list might be more appropriate, or a menu bar with categories might be best, again we'll have to experiment and see..

detecting current application will be flexible, and will be able to look for patterns in window titlebars or owner exe's. i think we should be able to do a good job of it.

i agree it should be easy to switch to system wide info, etc.
maybe tabs might be useful in switching between "open" cheat sheets? so that you could have a couple of your favorite ones "open" but on inactive tabs? alternatively, what i was originally thinking was that you might have multiple panels, one for current application help and one for system wide cheats/hints. but maybe the idea of being able to choose a set of cheat sheets using a tab (or drop down) would be better.

transparency im going to have to play with; i'm in the camp that typically finds it not particularly useful and is confused by it - you're suggestion of having it visible by not the focus of keyboard input (so that you could still send hotkeys to the current program sounds intriguing but difficult). this might be better suited for if we set the cheat sheet panel to dock to the side of the screen while working in the other app.. we'll have to experiment.

i think using html is the best bet in terms of flexibility. as you say, writing an html editor is way outside the scope of this project, but there is a built in html editor activex with windows that i could use for minor tweaking. i do agree though that the primary focus of this tool will be to display cheat sheets for programs, where the cheat sheets have been written by OTHER PEOPLE, who are more comfortable editing html.
ie we won't expect everyone with ultraedit to write their own cheat sheet, but rather that one or two people will write one, and users can pick which one they like best.

but advanced users who customize their hotkeys will want to be able to make minor modifications to reflect their custom hotkeys, so a minor editing feature for such things would be highly desired. or at minimum a button to launch an external html editor.

one of the downsides to the flexibility of html is that it will inevitably make it harder for end users to edit the cheat sheets, as compared to if every cheat sheet was a simple text list of hotkey , feature pairs.

maybe we can write a little wizard like helper to get the best of both worlds later.

we will also want to establish some guidelines for suggested appearance of cheat sheets and a css style guide so that there is some consistency between most cheat sheets (though writers could ignore this if they wanted).

lets remember that we are talking about cheat sheet not just hotkey lists; a cheat sheet could contain other things besides hotkey tables, such as mini guides to doing certain things, etc. so it might be nice to be able to be able to design like a "cheat sheet set" for an application; essentially a group of pages that the user could view. but now it sounds like we are talking about full fledged help files.. have to be careful to keep it simple, after all the object is to provide a quick easy to read screen of info to help remind user what they need to know, not replace a full fledged help file.

mouser · « **Reply #13 on:** June 02, 2005, 11:36 AM »

i've decided to use a menu bar instead of dropdown or tabs.. let's see how it goes - it will let us have a menu for Favorites, Recent, Application, All, so that it will be easy to organize cheat sheets and select them in different ways.

Dragonrider · « **Reply #14 on:** June 02, 2005, 12:21 PM »

True, This application started out as a displayer of hotkeys. But I agree that it would be very useful to have other info. available for a program that might not be in a help file. There are many times that I am seeking a way to do something in a program & the help file or manual doesn't explain how to do it. I then experiment, eventually figuring out how to do it (either the features buried & I find it, or I work out a kludge). I then would really like to have a way to keep notes on how I did it for the next time. A lot of times I also think that other people might like to know what I figured out.

To this end, why not have 2 tabs on a cheat sheets window. 1 for the hotkeys, & the other for other info.. This info. could be user and/or DC supplied & kept in a text file or .rtf file. The folder structure for the program & existance of files in subfolders would allow for dynamic loading of these files. The names of the files would be the same, just in different folders with different file extensions. Such as:

CheatSheeter
|--> CheatSheets
| |--> Internet Explorer.html
| |--> LotusNotes.html
| |--> MS Word.html
| |--> Netscape.html
| |--> ...
|
|--> FAQs
|--> Internet Explorer.rtf
|--> LotusNotes.rtf
|--> MS Word.rtf
|--> Netscape.rtf
|--> ...

By separating the cheatsheets & FAQs into separate folders, it keeps users from getting confused as to which
file to edit to add their information to. And it allows the program to quickly determine whether or not it needs to display a 2nd tab for the applications FAQ.

RTF files for the FAQs might be better since users could use wordpad or another word processor that they
are already using that outputs to RTF files. It would also allow users to easily include pictures, tables,
columns, etc. into their FAQs.

The 1 downside to using RTF files is that we would have to be able to display both HTML & RTF files. Which of course ups the complexity of the program. We could use RTF files for the cheat sheets as well for the same reasons.

i've decided to use a menu bar instead of dropdown or tabs.. let's see how it goes - it will let us have a menu for Favorites, Recent, Application, All, so that it will be easy to organize cheat sheets and select them in different ways.

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I'm not trying to force a drop-down list, & I do like the idea of having major categories like Favorites, recents, and all. But I think that menus would still be restrictive when it comes to a large # of cheat sheets. At some point the menu that contains each of the cheat sheets would become too cumbersome unless you are able to scroll the menus. A Drop-down list(s) that would stay within a certain amount of screen space, can be essentially infinite in length & can scroll, are more flexible. There could be more than 1 drop-down box. Each category could have its own. Or a 2nd drop-down box could select the category & as soon as that is selected, the other drop-down list would dynamically change to comply with what's in the category list.

BTW: I've been thinking about which would be better, hiding bar or popup window. I think they should both be
included. This is because I've just started using PanelHider which allows you to have application windows reside
in auto hiding bars on the side(s), top, & bottom of the screen. There can be multiple layers of these at each place. But it would be very hard to distinguish between these apps. & another program doing the same thing.
In this instance, being able to specify that CS's GUI is popup instead of hiding bar is a very good thing.

I also thought of some utilities that make the corners of the screen into hotspots. These hotspots activate whatever you tell it to when the mouse moves into its area. This would be a way for us to popup CS without the need for either a hotkey or clicking onto the system tray icon. Could this mousing/hotspot capability be implemented in CS?

Regards
Dragonrider

mouser · « **Reply #15 on:** June 02, 2005, 01:00 PM »

i think we are on same wavelength.

the details of how to organize cheat sheets is going to be a little more complicated than your dir structure, but essentially the concept is the same.
the program will autodiscover cheat sheets based on finding them in its Sheets directory; there will be no need to do a separate install/uninstall procedure.

i also thought that the idea of being able to quickly add personal notes would be useful, and i will add that; just have to figure out the best way to show that information.

let me explain why a menu would be better than a drop down.

not only can menus scroll if there are too many, but menus can be nested.

so let me give you an example of what im thinking; its sort of similar to the mac's top menubar.

it would be like this

| FILE | ALL SHEETS | FAVORITE SHEETS | RECENT SHEETS | PHOTOSHOP SHEETS |

so you see, from the menu you can quickly access a hierarchical menu of your favorite cheet sheets, of recently viewed cheat sheats, OR
the set of cheat sheets associated with currently running app (photoshop).

note that im allowing for the possibility of multiple sheets for an app.

so from the photoshop menu you might see a drop down menu like:
Hotkeys
Common Functions
My Notes

the first two would bring up html pages written by a someone else
the last one, My Notes, would be available for every utility and would bring up a simple rtf-like page you could edit and customize.

on the All Sheets menu, there would be an item for Photoshop Somewhere, with again a submenu for Hotkeys, Common Funcitons, My Notes

seems to me this would be a really nice flexible solution, and opens up the possibility of having many sheets for each app.

there are some tricky things that have to be worked out, but i think the general approach is sound.

there is no doubt that i will offer multiple ways to show/hide the info panel,
pop up window, full screen overlay, docked bar (with or without auto-hiding), double click tray.

i dont see any reason why i couldnt add an auto-activate on moving mouse to some corner of screen - the code is not complicated to do this.

i can already think of some other really cool things to add.

for example, i said for the app menu you could have multiple sheets, and then a My Notes page.

might also be nice to have a customizable page of urls related to the app don't you think? linking to 3rd party sites, etc.
seems to be something that would very well be suited for a cheat sheet type of app.

i can see that one substantial part of this project will not be coding per se, but in writing up guidelines for sheet authors, and making some example cheat sheet sets that show a good layout and format, so that we dont end up with each cheat sheet being completely looking different. i hope i will get some help on that stuff from you guys.

ok, this project is definitely green lighted, and i am working on it now. it will be the next donationcoder.com app.

keep the ideas coming.

nudone · « **Reply #16 on:** June 02, 2005, 01:36 PM »

i'm more than happy to work and collaborate on any cheat sheets related to photoshop and probably a few other adobe products - possibly other things like cubase, soundforge and maybe a few macromedia things but i think there will be someone better qualified for that.

this might not be what people have had in mind but if you look at the visibone www.visibone.com stuff they manage to get a hell of a lot of information onto a page - what are your thoughts on that kind of approach?

personally, i would be trying to make the sheets as easy to understand as possibly - this pretty much means using graphics, whether that just means using little icons or large diagrams i'm all for it if it makes things almost immediate to identify and understand.

of course this would have to be optional - not all programs would need explaining with diagrams and icons and not all people would want to include them when composing a cheat sheet.

maybe we could design the sheets to come in two forms - one with nice graphics were suitable and another similar sheet with the graphics removed but essential the same text (maybe even a bit more text).

i'm just inclined to think that a cheat sheet that was absolutely full of tips, quick keys and other text without any graphics will be hard to glance through - it's not going to be much fun if you've got to hunt for 5 minutes to find the reference to the shortcut key you are after (or whatever cheat you were after).

mouser · « **Reply #17 on:** June 02, 2005, 02:03 PM »

one of the nice things about our approach is that you will be able to install as many or as few sheets for a given app as you want;
i will make sure it remembers that last one you used.

so its fine if 10 dif people make 10 dif cheat sheet sets, and users can install/enable the ones they find the most useful.
i think that will be one of the nicest features.

one of the thing that governs what sheets people will want is how they plan to use the cheat sheeter panel.
ie will be it full screen, in which case it could hold a lot of info, or will it be docked to top or side of window and be small.
i see this as a possible real dilemna.. in that its hard to know how to design a page if you dont know the size of the window the user is going to have open.. im not sure exactly how to solve this.

one thing i was thinking is, we dont necesarily have to support ONLY html.
for example i can see making cheat sheets that are just big images.
or plain text files.

ill try to at least think about providing infrastructure for this when designing the system.
but it still doesnt answer the size of window problem.
this falls into the category of what i was talking about before, namely, standards and styles.
we will have to get together and agree on some suggested standards.
i can see the possibility of having 2 or 3 different styles of cheat sheets depending on how users work; one for people who like full screen cheat sheets, and one for people who like really small pop up window cheat sheets.

Dragonrider · « **Reply #18 on:** June 02, 2005, 02:19 PM »

OK, I'm convinced that menus are just as flexible as drop-down lists.

Will we be incorporating the capability for users to make their own cheat sheets that would go into the cheat sheets folder & the menu'ing system would be able to bring it up the next time CS was invoked?

I have some docs that have the hotkeys for MS Office. I would gladly make the cheat sheets for those apps.

I would also make the cheat sheet / notes sheet for WinVi.

Maybe a cheat sheet for AutoIt v3 might be nice as well. The cheat sheets don't have to be hotkeys/notes. They could be sheets describing a language as well.

BTW: Will user configuration of color and font be available for those of us who might need it?

Regards
Dragonrider

mouser · « **Reply #19 on:** June 02, 2005, 02:54 PM »

i will try to make it as configurable as possible.
of course you will be able to make your own cheat sheets easily, and yet cs will auto detect them and make them available.

as for font/color, this is one of those things thats going to be either easier or harder due to using html.
if we use style sheets in the cheat sheet htmls, then we should be able to provide different stylesheets that very much alter the appearance of cheat sheets, effecting font color, size, style, etc.

mouser · « **Reply #20 on:** June 03, 2005, 04:13 PM »

just an update: i've working on it.. i think it's looking quite nice, aesthetically speaking.

mouser · « **Reply #21 on:** June 03, 2005, 10:18 PM »

if there are any css experts out there..
this project could benefit from trying to figure out a set of styles and method of presenting information, such that
we could have the same html page of information, with dif style sheets that were suited for
a tall narrow sidebar docked to side of screen
vs.
a wide but short bar docked to top of screen
vs.
full screen

in other words, im interested in a way that the same info could be rendered using dif css styles, to make the same info look good in those different modes, so that we could use the same html info pages in dif modes of viewing.

does that make sense?

mouser · « **Reply #22 on:** June 05, 2005, 01:50 AM »

just playing with various interface ideas..

Dragonrider · « **Reply #23 on:** June 05, 2005, 11:02 AM »

Mouser:
I've been thinking (yeah I know that's dangerous).

The more I see us all wanting CS to do, & after seeing your picture, it dawned on me that maybe you don't want to have a whole interface & go with only a toolbar instead.

What I mean is having a toolbar that has menu buttons but nothing else. When the page / tutorial is invoked you would invoke the file with the appropriate application. This would make the program simpler to code, & give the user more versatility in what can be viewed.

You gave the example in the ScreenCast review that the way to show stuff was gravitating towards screen movies. CS should be able to view these as well as show HTML pages of hotkeys, and maybe even MS help files. Invoking the associated app. on a specified file gives CS this capability without you coding it directly into CS. It also allows you to make the toolbar as small as possible & even maybe stick it into the titlebar of the active window (excepting dialog boxes & windows like that). Thus keeping it in plain view all the time, not using up any extra screen space, not conflicting with other toolbar apps., & still expanding CS's capabilities by an order of magnitude.

Just my $.02 cents

Regards
Dragonrider

mouser · « **Reply #24 on:** June 05, 2005, 11:52 AM »

i was going to at first reply in this way:

my intention is that you will be able to make cheat sheeter a very thin bar docked to side of screen or rolled up, or minimized on tray and it will open up into full window when you ask it to show you something.

so i already agree with 90% of what you are suggesting.

however your focus on the idea of it launching OTHER APPS, like movie player, mshelp file, etc. has some real merit to it, and would suggest a slightly different approach to the program than what i have been planning. and i think your approach might have merit...

there are some advantages to having the main window part of the toolbar application, in taht you could dock the whole thing to edge of desktop, and various things, so i think i am going to find a way to leave that in place; i think its also quite possible that for many people, they will want just one little window, not 2 things floating around.

but i can definitely see the appeal of having a tiny thin bar at top of screen which opens child windows on demand that would show movies, help files, html pages, etc. and so i will add support for this.

i thinkits just a matter of saying this:
the main program can run as a tiny thin toolbar.

the program will have a built in custom web browser which it can use to render html cheat sheets, and which it can control specially.

this html browser can be displayable EITHER as docked into the tool bar and shown on request, OR undocked as a separate little window.
additionally, the program will know how to launch other documents if the cheat sheet set wants to show movies/helpfiles/pdfs, etc, which are not embedded onto an html page.

in summary, cs will be runnable as a toolbar; it will beable to launch external windows exactly as you say to display arbitrary info.
it will also have a special built in html web browser which it will have extra special control over which will let me do some special things; you can use this special browser either as something docked into the toolbar, or as an external mini window, OR in fact you could choose to not use the built in browser panel at all and tell cs to use a separate external browser (though i supsect that will have some disadvantages such as cs not having good control over where that window appears on screen etc.)

i think this is going to be a really fun community project.. i am thinking that there are going to be tons of suggestions for features to add, etc., and i look forward to working with you guys to make it a fun and unique kind of app.