AMOS Professional has been designed to be the friendliest system available to the Amiga programmer. As soon as it has loaded into your computer, you will be greeted by name before getting down to business! This welcome panel will disappear automatically after a few seconds, or it can be cleared by pressing any key on your keyboard, or by clicking a mouse button.
The Edit Screen
To create and edit computer programs with AMOS Professional, you are given a working
area called the Edit Screen. If AMOS Professional has been loaded successfully, the Edit Screen
will be displayed now.
There is a complete guided tour of the AMOS Professional Editor in the next Chapter, but you will want to see some immediate action. So instead of explaining what everything does, here is a rapid introduction to getting started.
Move the mouse around now, and observe how the mouse pointer follows your movements around the Edit Screen. At the top of the Edit Screen there is a row of control "buttons" that are used to call up various features of the AMOS Professional system. These little panels are triggered by dragging the mouse pointer over one of them, and clicking with the left mouse button. You can do no harm by experimenting with any of the Edit Screen features, but please resist the temptation to do this, and follow this brief introduction.
Identify the control button at the top-centre of the screen, displaying the letter [H]. Move the mouse pointer over it and click the left mouse button. This is the [Help] icon, and it calls up the AMOS Professional instant Help service. Now look at the new display on the screen, and identify the small button to the immediate left of the title "AMOS Professional Help Window", and click on it to return to the original Edit Screen display.
Now press the right mouse button and keep it held down.
When editing, the right mouse button calls up a line of "menu" titles at the top of the Edit Screen. Run the mouse pointer along this line of titles now, and notice how as soon as the pointer touches one of them, a selection of further titles is revealed. Each of these items refers to a different feature of the AMOS Professional system.
With the right mouse button still held down, move the mouse pointer to the right-hand side of the line of main menu headings, and touch the [Help] title. Keeping the right mouse button held down, move the mouse pointer to the [Help Menu] option, so that it is highlighted in reverse video. As soon as you release the right mouse button, this feature is called up on screen.
Please clear the Help Main Menu from the screen by pressing the small button as before.
Now look at your keyboard, and identify the large [Help] key. Press this key now, and the AMOS Professional Help Main Menu is called up once more. Before proceeding, please clear it away again, as described above.