Examples of Technical Assistance
Summer 2003 Semester

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Subject Solution Re: questions  Previous Thread   Next Thread    Close  Reply Reply Privately Quote Download Message no. 183[Branch from no. 173] Posted by Robin Mabry Hubbard (ryh352) on Sat Jun 28, 2003 18:44 In message 173 on Fri Jun 27, 2003 17:46, Jxxxx Bxxxx (xxx342) writes: Is there anything I can do to speed up the opening of a PowerPoint presentation? I hadn't noticed your PPT being particularly slow when I did the peer review so I did not check them out again when I responded to your questions yesterday. After reading Mxxxxxx's post, I did check them out. Yes, they are slow because they are posted in their native PowerPoint format rather then HTML files. What happens is the Browser has to call or engage in a conversation with your Operating System (Windows or MAC). "What do you want me to do with this file?" The Operating System checks to see if it has software to handle it or returns an error If it has the software, it downloads and either displays the file using the software or by plugging it into the browser It is the file handling that is causing the delay not the size of the PPT. SOLUTION: "SAVE AS" Web Page and upload the file and associated directory (folder contents). See Results Robin Cheers! Previous Message Next Message  Previous Thread   Next Thread    Close

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Message no. 86[Branch from no. 81]
Posted by Robin Mabry Hubbard (ryh352) on Thu Jun 19, 2003 16:42
Subject 2 ways: Open New Windows Re: Web Design - Please Help

2 Methods to Open New Windows within a HTML tag

1. "target" attribute
2. "scripting"

It's

 target="_blank"  

meaning UNDERSCORE or underline; not hyphen if you want to open up a completely new window.  Your tag would look like:
 

<A HREF="http://www.my.yahoo.com" target="_blank"> My Yahoo! </A>

click to see results My Yahoo!

If you want to open up a new window in the corner of the screen like our discussion messages, then your HTML tag looks like this:
 
 

<A href="#" onClick="MyWindow=window.open('http://www.myyahoo.com','MyWindow', 'status=yes,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,width=300,height=500') ;return false;"> My Yahoo! </A>

click to see results by New Page that will open up the "My Yahoo in a Corner Box" demonstration. Unfortunately, WebCT nor does Blackboard permit students to use script language directly within the virtual classroom for security reasons and instructors are permitted to use scripting in a "round about way" with WebCT, though.

 

Simple Variable Changes are in Blue 

My Yahoo!=	Link Name
http://www.myyahoo.com =	Link URL
300 =	Width of New Window in pixels (about 10 pixels to an inch)
500 =	Height of New Window in pixels
Punctuation is essential;  No quotation between the parenthesis; No Spaces or No Line Breaks between onClick and false;" although they are displayed so on the screen

 

Regards, Robin

Message no. 91[Branch from no. 88]
Posted by Robin Mabry Hubbard (ryh352) on Fri Jun 20, 2003 01:49
Subject Re: saving files

. . . how are you all saving your files? ... Or do you ftp each       individually?

I only upload (ftp) files that change or are new.
Since I using Dreamweaver web authoring tool, it has a sychronization feature that will just upload (ftp) new or changed files.

Do you  have a main file [directory?] named portfolio, with each of these  files within it?

I use subdirectories particularly for items that will not change such as images (gif's and jpg's) and for artifacts.
It also good idea to have a backup (archive) directory for items that will be edited  frequently such as your reflections.
 
 

Robin

Message no. 111[Branch from no. 93]
Posted by Robin Mabry Hubbard (ryh352) on Fri Jun 20, 2003 19:26
Subject Deep Breaths Re: saving files

Thanks Robin!  You are always so thorough in your replies.
 Thank you!
It's the teacher in me.

...  I have a feeling I'm taking  the hard route on several things!
You probably aren't.
I think you are just trying to produce a quality product  you can feel proud of and you are  just feeling stressed by the time constraints of producing this capstone project.
 

(I think there is this fallacy about "online calendar time" and "face to face calendar time" as being equivalent. They aren't necessarily.  Therefore compressing this class down to  4 weeks was pushing it because the instructor is not making up the time with extra "face to face hours".  In the  regular semester, the clas runs 12 weeks versus a 16 week semester therefore one would expect the same ratio or  6 weeks during  the summer. [shrug])
 

It is the old education problem of if there was better integration of the curriculum . . .
In this case the metaphor I use in my reflection is  we are expected to "design the house, construct house, furnish and decorate house and sell it"  all in the same semester. Depending on the student's expertise with the various tasks involved there is very little time to plan, experiment, think, revise, consider other options and alternatives whether it is the website planning itself or specific content areas.

In Q360/Q370, Web Development, if the curriculum was better integration, we should have planned and developed a simple portfolio site so more time is spent on reflection and ISTE standards integration in the portfolio development class.
My 2 cents. If you were closer, I'd run over and help you with the technical issues. :-)

Robin

I clicked through a few of the SISLT pages to refresh my memory. There are no copyright notices on any of the ones I looked at. Every semester, I have at least one class where we discuss copyrights, trademarks and "fair use" issues and guidelines.
Treat the graphic like any other citation or quote and give them credit. Do not link to the graphic but copy it to your site.
Given that SISLT faculty will be looking at your portfolio, are there not other graphics you can substitute to show creativity or is there something special about theirs?

Message no. 159[Branch from no. 155]
Posted by Robin Mabry Hubbard (ryh352) on Tue Jun 24, 2003 18:46
Subject Re: Help! I have scrolling issues

... Reduce the width of your content's "table." Please see my reply to Jxxxx in Discussion #3 "Inspiration 6, 7 ..." for instructions and a visual example.

Robin

Subject Inspiration6; 7.5 ... Re: fini' Re: Robin's Portfolio  Previous Thread   Next Thread    Close  Reply Reply Privately Quote Download Message no. 157[Branch from no. 156] Posted by Robin Mabry Hubbard (ryh352) on Tue Jun 24, 2003 17:29 question #1: scroll bars . . . but I noticed it both on mine at home and the one at school. Mxxxx is having the same problem, I noticed from the discussion board, but I don't know how to fix it Having more details helps a great deal such as the word "enter".  It means I need to force the Welcome message (which is in a TABLE) to appear  on less of the available sceen space to account for smaller montiors so you will not have to scroll  further to the right.  On my screen it looks as if there is 1/3 of a blank space on the Right so the "Enter" is almost centered. As for fixing it, I'm not sure if you mean for your website or for accessing my website. This is a website specific problem but if you need to fix yours, this how I fixed it on mine. I did two things.  I was already  using  table design  ("picture frame effect" which is simple design technique to manage parts of your page). Therefore I changed the inner, content table, to a smaller width.  The second change I made was to add a line at the bottome of the page, "Please click the 'Welcome' icon to enter for those who do not see the text, "enter," or realize an icon with a border is hypertext link. 1.1 I changed the Content or "Inner Table" width to "75%" so smaller monitors should not have to scroll to the right. Content or "Inner Table"   1.2 Reduced Content Window Width. (This is one reason subsequent pages have the menu on the right.  The other is research says that is the most user friendly place for Website Menus to be.  We read left to right.  Check out the websites of many newspapers and magazines.  Where are the "insets" for related stories etc.)   Content or "Inner Table"   2. Add "click icon"   Welcome enter ---- click question #2 Now, would you take a look at mine?  I know you will give me a "painfully" honest opinion! :) I hope helpfully constructive rather then painfully honest.  I will be delighted to. question #3:  I am still having some trouble with the inspiration file and Hyperstudio files opening.  I think maybe that is because I checked them out on my school computer and they wouldn't open.  Is that because it doesn't have Hyperstudio on it? Software files are like languages; if you don't have a program that speaks the native language or can tranlate ("import") another software program's files then the file cannot be open.  If you do not have a program installed that speaks "Hyperstudio" then no you cannot open it unless you have the equivalent of Star Trek (tm) like "universal translator" program such as Quickview Plus. It has Inspiration 6, but I used 7.5 at home to create it.  In that case, should we make some kind of note so that the viewers don't have to mess with trying to open files? Like languages, different versions of software of different dialects and I suppose software vendors assume by now that users know a higher version software often cannot be read (translated)by a lower version sibling.   Usually there is an option to save the newer file type into the older file type.   On the FILE menu instead of SAVE, one would say, SAVE AS and use the pull down menu and select Inspiration 6. However for editing purposes do not switch back and forth between I6 and I7.5 otherwise, eventually you will end up with a corrupted file. Stick to one version for editing.  You can always use SAVE AS to view and save in the lower-version type. If there is no such option it could still be the problem.Think how difficult it is to understand our British-English speaking "cousins." Or is there another reason they aren't opening? These are the most likely culprit.  What I do is save my files in a cross-platform compatible file types which Inspiration and I believe Hyperstudio will also allow you to do as most software application will for transportability and editing accross different locations.   Application File Format to Save In Possible File Extension Text Plain Text (Ascii or DOS) .txt Basic Word Processing Rich Formatted Files .rft Advanced Word Processing (tables, etc) MS Word95/6.0 or WordPerfect .doc  .wpd Graphics  Pictures or Graphics Documents .gif Graphics High Quality Pictures, Visuals or Photographs .jpg Web Documents HTML  .htm .html Spreadsheets Comma Delimited File or Worksheet .csv Audio Wave .wav Database DBase, Comma Delimited or Tab Delimited .dbs .csv .txt Example: One of my artifacts is an Inspiration 6 file. This is how I have it setup so people can either look at the actual Inspiration file or cross-platform version as a webdocument using the EXPORT command from Inspiration.     75 years Sociology  of  Knowledge Theory Concept Map  Web Document View of my  60" x 48"  Concept Map wide poster  http://www.rrchubbard.org/portfolio/2003/research/documents/425concept_map.htm For detailed view, Inspiration Format Files:   Concept Map and Outlines      requires  Inspiration Software - download 30-day free demo trial to view  Although I prefer NETSCAPE myself,  Inspiration Files (__.ins) must be downloaded with IE to maintain their intergrity      Links  verified July 4, 2002 These things all start to blur after awhile and something that is completely obvious, I'm probably missing! This is why peer-review is such a neat collaberative process.  After you have looked at or been troubleshooting the same problem for awhile ... it does become a blue.  I hope these examples help. Robin   Previous Message Next Message  Previous Thread   Next Thread    Close

Mxxxxxx,

I took a look at your source code.
The first thing I did was create a "picture frame" Master table to hold your original content .
 

1. Here is how your original site looked.
 

Graphic
	Content	Content
	Content	Content
	Footer

2.  I created a Picture Frame Table (width = 100%%) roughly 800-1000 pixels wide on most monitors
 

3.  I copied your entire site coding into the "picture frame"
and assuming you coded everything as relative to the user's monitor width; it will force the internal content windows to fit instead what happen is you had some ABSOLUTE VALUES and the "picture frame" had to stretch by almost 1/3 to accommodate them thus causing the SCROLLING to the right.
 
 

Graphic Content Content Content Content Footer

4.  How do you fix?
I looked for "px" using FIND  and have highlighted in RED  below   the three  obvious problems I found.
 

150px
50px;

     

no wrap

Either the font has to be smaller or you have to break the menu into two lines because as if you have to work within that 800-1000 pixels  maximum across the screen if you do not want your users to have to SCROLL right.

Essentially, my suggestion is (and I did quite quickly). Delete the troublesome ABSOLUTE VALUES.
Create a new 4 rows x 3 column Table and merge cells as require (span tags)
Copy content into new cells.
Tweak.
Delete old tables.
Results
. . . deliberately slightly different from your original since it is an example of how to fix the scroll to right
 

Source code deleted from this artifact documentation

Where were you when I was taking my web design class?!? :-)

If I was in your class, the instructor and I were having a serious (behind the scenes) semester long, intense philosophical debate about "peer to peer" help. The instructor discouraged peer help despite all the research supportting it as teaching strategy. The instructor seem not to grasp the concept that the assignment can still be the student's own work, while students collaborate, while students receive in depth help and do this simultaneously and still remain the student's work.

These are not mutually exclusive event and "peer to peer help" is pedagogically sound. Higher education faculty is unique in the ability to ignore research when it comes to teaching. This is one of my favorite quotes.

Robin :-)