VISITview Lesson Builder Overview

7/13/2000

When you first start the VISITview Lesson Builder, you will get a screen much like was is shown below. Each element of the window is defined just below this snapshot.

The Lesson Display is the upper half of the window, while the Browse Images is the lower half.

First, the controls for the Lesson Display:

File menu so you can:

Open an existing lesson to change it
Start up a new lesson (which is the state it starts in)
Save the lesson you've built to a ZIP file
Browse directories for browse images (same as Browse Directories button)
Exit

Edit menu so you can:

move an image from one page or frame to another
copy page or portal frames from one page/portal to another
delete a frame or page
undo the last move/delete/etc. you did

The page label / title is for you to specify the label that appears in VISITview for each page of your lesson. You may enter text here for whatever page is selected. Important: when you type in text, be sure to press the Enter button or your text will not be recorded. Also, do NOT put in a page number -- a page number is automatically prefixed to your label when you save the lesson. Finally, since a comma or quotation mark may not appear in a label, these characters are removed from the text you type.

The lesson images will appear in the five spaces in the top section of window. You select a page or a frame by clicking on it. When you are viewing pages then the first frame of the page appears; when you are viewing frames then the Frames from the selected page (who number appears beside the Label/Title box) are displayed.

The slider to the left of the Show Pages button is used to position your view within the lesson when more than five pages or frames are involved.

Each page, portal or frame is labeled above the image with the page or frame number; below the image is the file name. When you are viewing pages or viewing portals then the number of frames associated with that page or portal is shown in parentheses beside the page or portal number.

Once you select a Page or Portal then you may:

click again on the image to get a full-size display (and click anywhere on the full-size window to close it; note - if you are viewing Pages and you hold the shift key down when you click-to-close, the location of the pointer will be copied to the Initial Pointer Position)
type in a page label or title for that page (or for that portal)
move or delete the page (and all it's frames)
show all the frames for this page by clicking on the View Frames button

Once you select a Frame then you may:

click again on the image to get a full-size display
move or delete the frame
return to Page display by clicking on View Pages button

The Layout Portals button is active when you are viewing pages. When you click it, a separate window is shown that allows you to add or remove, position and resize any of the portals you have defined, for this page. You may use more than one portal on a page, but they may not overlap. You may also use one portal on more than one page.

Note: the number of frames in a page must be equal to the number of frames for all portals used on that page. This is checked when you attempt to save the file, but not before.

The Browse Images section occupies the lower portion of the window.

By clicking on the Browse Directories button, you will get a dialog box, from which you may choose a file to "browse". Once the file is chosen, two things happen:

if the file is a GIF or JPEG image, it will appear in the Browse Image viewport
a list of all potential image files from the directory will appear in the File List box

In order to browse a different image, you may either click on its name in the File List box, or again click on the Browse Directories button. If you click on its name in the List box, a thumbnail will appear, and the filename will be highlighted in the list. You may click on more than one image. If you do that, the Append All button will also become active.

To de-select a file, just click on it's name again. If the image you de-select is the one in the thumbnail, another image will be selected to appear there.

If you want to make the browsed image part of the lesson then either:

click on Append to add the image to the end of the currently lesson (Note: if you are viewing Pages or Portals then the browsed image will be added as the first frame of a new page (or new portal after all previous pages (portals). If you are viewing Frames then the browse image will be added to the end of the frames currently defined for this Page.)

or...

select a target position within the images in the Lesson (by clicking on the image), and then:
click on Insert to insert the image at the selected position (all other images will be moved accordingly)

or...

if you have selected more than one image file, click on the Append All button and all the selected images will be appended to your lesson (either as the first frame of several pages, or as frames within a page -- depending upon the mode you have active at the time you click Append All.

If you want to undo something, use the Edit --> Undo and the lesson will be restored to the state just prior to the last change you made.

If you have any questions, please send email to

Return to VISITview home page.