Procedures for World Wide Web Collaboration: UVA & CUA

Table of Contents

Your weekly design conferences will take place through the medium of the World Wide Web using either the Netscape or Mosaic applications and the IATH-MOO (text-based virtual reality conference environment). In order to visually communicate your design studies, each team will need to construct weekly Web pages collaboratively; in other words each team member, whether at UVA or CUA will have access to the same Web pages. Team members at each site will need to input their work-in-progress on a weekly basis in order to make it available to the other team members. The MOO will be accessed through a separate window to make aTelnet connection; instructions and help with the MOO and these other functions will also be available through a link from the team Web pages.

Construction of Weekly Posting Pages

1. Scanning of Images

See lecture notes from session with Christie Stephenson, Digital Image Librarian.

2. Naming Conventions

File naming conventions will need to be used in order for the automated Web page construction to work. Use the following conventions in naming you image files:

    plan drawings
    plan__.jpg
    plan__.gif

    perspective drawings
    persp__.jpg
    persp__.gif

    section drawings
    sect__.jpg
    sect__.gif

    elevation drawings
    elev__.jpg
    elev__.gif

    model views
    mod__.jpg
    mod__.gif

You can fill in the blanks after the prefix (plan, etc.) with anything you like, but it should be 3 letters or numbers or less. Be sure to coordinate naming of files between UVA and CUA so as to avoid using the same name twice; you may want to use a prefix V(Virginia)and C(Catholic) and then a number so as to identify the source of the file.

3. File Transfers

After digital image files have been created, they will need to be transmitted to the IATH computer via Fetch (or ftp or Rapidfiler , Windows application from CUA).

From inside Fetch, establish a connection with the IATH computer at:

global.village.virginia.edu
Each team will be a user under the home directory, the user name will be a portion of the team name as follows (note that the user name is case sensitive, use lower case only):

    High Density Trout - User id: high

    Sparta - User id: sparta

    Marmots - User id: marmots

    Trout Central - User id: trout

    Terry's Kids - User id: terry

    3 Against 1 - User id: three

Thus to make a connection to transfer image files you would fill in the following information in Fetch: Host: global.village.virginia.edu User: high (for example) Password: Directory: /home/high/

Once you are in the team's directory you will see the following directories:

charette
week1 (week of Mar.27)
week2 (week of Apr.3)
week3 (week of Apr.10)
week4 (week of Apr.17)
week5 (week of Apr.24)
week6 (week of May 1)
week7

Put the image files that you have created into the directory for the week you are working in and you will be all set; they will automatically be put into a Web page for you.

4. Building the Web Pages

Once you have placed your images into the proper directory you can complete the construction of your Web page through the Web itself.

Go to the IATH home page http://jefferson. village.virginia.edu and find LAR702 - Town Planning in Post-Suburban America. You will then be at the course home page and you will see links to each of the teams at the bottom. Click on your team name and you will go to your teams home page. There will be a button called "Build" which will initate the construction page. Enter your team name, select the week number and then select "Begin".

On this page will be the file names of image files you have submitted highlighted as hyperlinks to the images themselves (if you have also placed gif images into your directory then the thumbnail images will also appear). There will also be blank fill-in boxes to submit captions and descriptions to accompany each image. Fill in those boxes with the appropriate text; you can change or correct the text by simply moving the cursor and backspacing over the text to be changed.

After you have completed your work on the design of the page hit The "Begin" button at the bottom of the page; this will initate the construction of the new Web page for that week. You must press either the "Begin" or "Cancel" button next to it before you leave this construction page; do not simply go "Back" in Netscape or you will leave it incomplete.

Using Netscape in the A-School Computer Lab

We will be relying on the A-School computer lab in order to access the World Wide Web (it can also be accessed from most of the other computer labs on grounds). You may need to customize the software to your own need when you go to use it; here are some guidelines for doing so.

When you go to login to a machine, always reboot (control-alt-delete) or reset the machine. This should avoid problems in connecting to the server.

Enter your user id and password at the prompt, then type "win" at the C: prompt to load Windows.

From Windows open the Netscape folder and double-click on the Netscape icon to start Netscape.

In order to be able to view images in the best manner you will want to configure Netscape to use an external image viewer. To do this, go to the Options menu, select Preferences and then Helper Applications. Find the mime type: "images-jpegs" and pick LView application, then select "launch application".

From within LView pick Options and then set "Fit on Load-Always".

Using the MOO

To access the MOO conferencing environment you will need to establish a separate Telnet connection to the IATH computer using a separate window.

From the Main Window open the UVA LAN Workplace folder and double-click on the Host Presenter application.

Once you are in the MOO, you can "talk" by preceding what you want to say with a double quote. Try typing "help communication" to find out more things you can do.
[proposal] [light table] [image map] [build page] [class page] [help]