Submit Background Information

General Information

Just this one time, I’m going to ask for a bit of extra information because this is the first assignment you’ll be submitting. Note that in order to prevent random people out there in cyberspace from submitting garbage data to the server, your name, student number, and e-mail address will be compared with the information in my list of registered students, and if you’re not on that list, the server will not accept your attempted submission.

Web Browser

Do not rely on Internet Explorer (IE), alone, as the sole Web browser you have available to use. You must also have Firefox, SeaMonkey, Opera, Safari, Netscape, or some other Web browser installed and properly configured. That way, if something is not working right in one browser, you can switch over and try a different browser.
As an example, the first quarter I taught this course online, several students who were using IE reported that as they were submitting assignments, when they got to the “Preview” window, the “Submit” button that was supposed to be there wasn’t. That was baffling-enough to me that I asked one of the other faculty members who teaches some of our computer courses to have a look at the problem. She tried accessing the same assignment-submission Web page and entering the same data into that Web page from two different computers, both of which had the same version of Windows and the same version of IE installed. On one PC, the submit button showed up just fine, and on the other one, it just wasn’t there. Even she was totally clueless as to what IE was doing and why. To complicate things further, it appears to be an even more random problem than that: even though the JavaScript code on all the assignment-submission Web pages is the same, I’ve had students tell me that IE randomly does/does not show submit buttons on the various pages – some are there, some just aren’t.
Thus, you cannot afford to rely on IE, alone, as your sole Web browser. I know that’s what many people are used to because it comes with Windows, but it has too many quirky problems to be the only browser you have available. IE is OK for casual Web surfing where you don’t have to be able to access everything you run across, but for something like an online course, since all browsers have their own quirky problems (Firefox, SeaMonkey, and Netscape aren’t perfect, either), you need to have a couple different browsers available.

Child Windows (aka Pop-Ups)

In order to successfully submit your assignments, you will need to configure any anti-pop-up software you have installed to accept all “pop-ups” from <http://biology.clc.uc.edu>. to see if your browser is able to open a test window. If this is working properly, you should see a small window briefly open, then immediately close, again.

 Test It 

According to Kevin from Clermont’s IS Department, if you are using Internet Explorer (IE) and are using the default anti-pop-up software packaged as part of IE, then under “Tools”, then “Settings” there should be a tab to allow you to configure the IE anti-pop-up software. According to Paul, a former biology student who is also a computer support person for a local company, if you are using Netscape ver. 8.1, one additional configuration setting may be needed. He wrote to me in an e-mail:
“I use Netscape’s newest browser: 8.1 and your items would not display, even after turning off pop-up blocking. There is a setting reachable from the Netscape Security Dashboard on the same page as pop-up blocking which tells the browser to use the IE (Internet Explorer) engine instead of the Netscape/Firefox engine. Once I tried that, the site would behave properly.”

Plug-Ins

Various of the course-related Web pages have embedded in them or are QuickTime movies (.mov), Adobe Acrobat files (.pdf), or RealPlayer files (.rpm), as well as MIDI files (.mid). These are all fairly standard file types commonly found on the Web, and in order to view course-related and any other Web pages which contain/are files of these types, you should have the QuickTime, RealPlayer, and Acrobat plug-ins installed and properly configured. If your browser’s interpretation of the JavaScript code is working properly, you should be given a list of what plug-ins (helper apps) are set up to handle each of these file types. Note: this only applies to the browser you are using right now and not to any other Web browser(s) you may have installed on your computer. You may wish to open this page in your other browser(s) and click this “Test It” button to make sure you have the proper plug-ins installed there, too.

 Test It 

Known browser quirk: in one of the older versions of Netscape that I used to test this Web page, when I clicked on the “Test It” button, that version of Netscape crashed. However, if I comment out a bunch of the JavaScript code, then gradually add it back in with reloads in between, this works just fine, so I cannot pinpoint why it’s crashing. I have found that, if I fill out some of the other information on this page, then on the menu bar at the top of the browser window, click “Help” then “About Plugins,” let that page load, then click the “Back” button to return to this page, then this test works just fine. (A slightly newer version of Netscape that I also tested worked just fine.).

Any Other Comments?

Preview/Submit Your Data

Please click the “Send It” button to proofread and submit your data. I have had some students in the past who had problems with their Web browser (usually IE) not showing “submit” buttons or not correctly passing submitted information to the server, and other students who didn’t have any e-mail software on their PCs that was configured to handle “mailto” links. Thus, on this and subsequent assignment-submission Web pages, when you click this “Send It” link, two things will happen.

  1. First, a child window will open that will allow you to proofread your submission and send it to our Web server when you click on the actual “Submit” button that is at the bottom of that smaller window. As your information is submitted, you will be given THREE (3) different opportunities to verify the data that are being submitted to/saved on our Web server. It is your responsibility to carefully and thoroughly read through each of those three copies of your data and verify that everything you thought was there is, indeed, there.
    1. First, as the JavaScript running in your own browser on your own computer creates the “Preview” window, if your browser is correctly handling the code, it should gather copies of everything you typed into the various boxes and display that information in the “Preview” window. It is your responsibility to carefully and thoroughly read through what is displayed there and make sure that your browser is finding everything you typed and not leaving something out. From there, before you click the “Submit” button, you need to save a backup copy of the information in that window so that you have a copy of your work.
    2. Secondly, when you click the “Submit” button (at the bottom of the smaller “preview” window), a copy of the information you saw in that “preview” window should be submitted to the server. The server will respond, telling you what it has received, so if you don’t get a message back from the server saying it has received your data, then it hasn’t received your data! Conversely, do not double-click the “Submit” button or click it more than once because each time you click the button, your browser will send data to the server, and if the server receives and tries to process two (or more) nearly-simultaneous copies of your data while it is also trying to serve other Web pages to other users, it can get confused. Assuming the server does receive what you’ve sent, before it does anything else with those data, it will immediately display a copy of everything it has just received. It is your responsibility to carefully and thoroughly read through what is displayed there and make sure that the server received everything that your browser should have sent.
    3. Thirdly, while you won’t see this happening because it happens very quickly, the server will then check to see if you are a registered student, and if so, will then gather up all the information that was sent to it, and instantaneously write/append that information to a file (the name of which will be based on your e-mail username and what assignment you are submitting). If the server is unable to match your name, etc., with the class list, it will tell you so and will warn you that the data you have submitted were NOT saved to a file. If the server is able to match your name, etc., it will write your data to a file then, immediately turn right around and open/read that file. It will, then, on the same Web page, just below the display of the data that was sent to it, display a copy of what it found in the file it just opened/read. Once again, it is your responsibility to carefully and thoroughly read through what is displayed there and make sure that what got written to the file includes everything you were trying to send to it.
    Remember, Web browsers can do strange things -- save copies, and proofread what you send – don’t just assume it got there without checking to make sure.
  2. Secondly, your browser will attempt to open whatever e-mail software you have configured to handle “mailto” links and paste your submission into the body of a new message. This will allow you to proofread your submission before sending it to me via e-mail. Also, before you send the message, SAVE IT so that you have a copy of your work.
    As a reminder, please bear in mind that I do not open any e-mail attachments. There are too many computer viruses going around, plus from home, I typically dial into the UC modem pool, which means that large files take too long to download. If you do need to send me something via e-mail, please copy the necessary text and paste it directly into the body of a message. Please do not sent me Word .doc files – I will not open them. Please do not attach “background” graphics to e-mail messages – besides increasing the size of the file, and therefore the time I have to wait around for things to download, they’ll crash my e-mail software when I try to read the message.

 Send It  Reset 


Copyright © 2006 by J. Stein Carter. All rights reserved.
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