COMP1710: Laboratory 1

Use of the labs, MacOSX, email, Xanga, and Art

1. Objectives

The purpose of this lab is to introduce you to the basic tools you will be using during this semester. There is nothing complex here, and some of you may already know most of the procedures. The goal of this lab is that by the end, everybody should be able to attend other labs and use the tools, and email.

You will make sure that you have a working computer account and that you are able to use some of the basic utilities of the ANU Student Computing Environment. Specifically, you will

• login and logout using your computer account in the ANU Student Computing Environment,
• exercise some basic features of the MacOSX user interface, and some more advanced ones,
• use the Firefox browser to read WWW resources (including COMP1710 materials): to browse the web,
• use a webmail interface (https://anumail.anu.edu.au), to read and send e-mail from your ANU account, with an attachment,
• sign up on Xanga (pronounced zanga) weblog,
• produce some are using a tool we provide

You should bring along the Student Computing Environment: User Guide (http://students.anu.edu.au/StudentITGuide/). In general, the lab exercises give only brief indications of how you should carry out the various tasks. The main emphasis of a laboratory session is that you work out how to do the task, either by yourself using the online help system or in collaboration with your tutor/demonstrator or your fellow students. When you find out how to do something, you could annotate your copy of the Student Computing Environment: User Guide for future reference, or put it into your Xanga site (more on this below).

At the end of this lab, you will send an email both to yourself and to tom@cs.anu.edu.au, with a file attached. This is to make sure you can do this in the future for any assignment submission.

2. Tasks

Note: you should reserve at least half an hour to check the task 2.2 (configuring your mail tool and sending an attachment), especially if you are not sure about that task. You will always be able to get back to the other tasks once you have checked that you are able to send a message to yourself and to receive it.

2.1 Your computer account

See Chapters 2 and 3 of the Student Computing Environment: User Guide. A computer account is generated for you in the ANU Student Computing Environment from enrolment information. The account has an associated username and password. If, for example, your student number is 0491919 then your username is u0491919. Your password is initially set to your Personal Access Code (pac) issued with your student card. If you wish to change your password, go to InfoPlace (located on the 3rd level of the Chifley Library) for help.

A laboratory machine that is available for use will present you with a login screen. Type in your username, followed by the Enter key, then your password, again followed by the Enter key. When you are finished in the lab you must terminate your session by logging-out (see Section 2.6). This closes down your session so that the next user cannot access your account, and leaves the laboratory machine in the appropriate state for the next user.On the login Screen enter your university ID (starting with a u) and your password (provided to you during your enrolment)

2.2 Computing Environment

If your login process succeeds you are presented with a graphical user interface called the Aqua user interface under MacOSX. It utilizes a mouse to point, via a cursor, to windows and icons. You may be familiar with the analogous interfaces such as Windows 98/NT/XP , Linux or previous versions of MacOS (for Apple computers).

2.2.1 Log-out / Log-in

The first thing you should do is to log out (close your session) and log in again. It is important for you to remember to always log out of your account when you leave the lab (or any other public access space). Your account identifies you in E-mails for instance. Clue: look at the Apple menu.

2.2.2 Familiarize yourself with the interface

Look at the different menus (they are always at the top of the screen for any Mac application). You have already explored the Apple menu.
The main applications are directly accessible from the dock (usually at the bottom of the screen). There are other applications accessible from any Finder window, by clicking on the 'Application' directory, on the left side of the window (the 'sidebar'). To get back to the finder at any time, either:

• click on its icon in the dock
• click on the Desktop (the background of the screen)
• type the F10 key (try F9 and F11 too, after opening a couple of applications)
• press simultaneously the Apple (or Command) and tab keys. Keep the Apple key pressed while pressing an releasing the Tab key.

Note that the MacOS GUI is built to be used with a one button mouse or with any number of buttons on a mouse. Use the right button of the mouse or (Ctrl-Click if you have only a one button mouse) to work with contextual menus (menus that contain a tool list that varies according to where you are clicking).

Look for 'Help': Press the help menu, not the tutor!

Open a web browser. You have a choice between Firefox (preferred for this course in the labs), Safari, Explorer (please avoid this last one for now).

Have a look at the apple web site that describes MacOSX: http://www.apple.com/macosx/

Have a look at the ANU Student IT Guide about ANU specific MacOSX related information: http://students.anu.edu.au/StudentITGuide/6mac.asp

Have a look at the InfoCommon Web site for more on the student public labs: http://infocommons.anu.edu.au/pages/Home

Apple + L is the usual way to access the web page address (URL) field in most Mac browsers

Have a look at the COMP1710 web site: normally, entering escience/nm into the address field should be enough within the ANU, otherwise try http://escience.anu.edu.au/nm shortcut and find out the complete URL of the course.

2.2 Organisation of your data

• Double click on the uUnivID icon to open your personal space: things located in that space will be accessible only by you from any ANY public computer at ANU.
• Inside that space, create a directory that you will call COMP1710 (look at the 'File' menu, and memorize the shortcut).
• Within that COMP1710 directory, create a file using any tool (text editor, word etc)
  NOTE: Chose a Correct name for the directory.
  On the Mac, you could use any name, as long as it does not contain a ':' character and it is not too long.
  Nevertheless, your aim within this course is to produce stuff that should be uploadable on any web server. In that context, it is always better to restrict oneself more. For now, just check that:
  • You are using only only lowercase letters, or digits, '-' or '_'
  • You don't use any spaces
  • You end file names with a suffix e.g. '.txt', '.doc'
• log out, and back in to see if the directory and the file show up again.

2.3 Use of a mail tool

Use a webmail interface (https://anumail.anu.edu.au), or Mail or Eudora

Make sure that, when you send an email, there is some sort of ID in the From: or Reply: field that will identify you with both your name surname and uID. If you use anumail, you have nothing to do. If you decided to forward your ANU mail towards another service (See Online Account Management System (OLAMS) for more about configuring your ANU mail), there is a way somewhere on that service to say what email recipients will see from you when you are sending them an email.

Send a mail to yourself to check that everything is working well.

2.4 Xanga

Please read and follow the instructions in Tom's page about Xanga. During the course we will use Xanga for a few things, more on this later.

• Go to your profile page on Xanga
• Save the source code of that page (e.g.: Menu View/Page Source under Firefox. Then use the File menu Save as, into your COMP1710 directory
  (N.B.: here the name's suffix will be .html or .htm)
• Your Xanga URL shows in the navigation toolbar of your browser when you are in your profile page. It should look something like this: http://profile.xanga.com/...

Send another mail to yourself, with the just created file attached to it. Receive it. Save the attached file (not in the same directory where you put it before). Open the file in a browser and check that the content of the newly created file is the same as the original.

2.5 MondrianDrawer

Please read and follow the instructions in Tom's page about MondrianDrawer.

3. Summary:

• Send an E-mail to tom@cs.anu.edu.au
  • The Subject: of the E-mail should be COMP1710 Lab 1
  • The E-mail should be From your official ANU address (uxxxxxxx@anu.edu.au or FirstName.Surname@anu.edu.au)
  • The E-mail should say something like
    Hi Tom, my Xanga URL is ...,

    I agree that regular copies of my public Xanga page will be made occasionally by the Dept during the course, and generally the Sunday night copy will be counted as my submission for that week (if a submission via Xanga is due).

    Regards,
    YourName YourSurname
  • You must attach the file you saved of your profile in 2.4.
• I suggest you get your tutor to check the E-mail for you so the settings are right

Reflect on your first lab session in COMP1710

• type some observations in during the lab
• your observations on your learning should include the lab

4. Conclusion

To manage your digital experience the way you want, you can look at some software that you can use on other platforms, as well as on the Mac.

5. Work ahead

If you have reached this point and you want to keep going productively, I have 2 suggestions.

1. Look closely at the code in the profile page you just sent me.

   In future labs, we will use techniques from the lectures, such as web links, CSS, forms etc. So you could modify the xanga skin to a different look temporarily and save a copy of that, and compare the contents of the profile pages, and try to understand how some of the differences affect the look of the page.

   You could also:
   

   • Open any web page in a web browser.
   • Save the source code of that page (e.g.: Menu View/Page Source under Firefox.
   • Modify/delete some stuff in between the <body> and </body> tag.
   • Save the modifications. Open the saved file in your web browser.
   
   
2. Browse the web to find some other program which assists you in drawing art. Did you find anything? If so describe it in your Xanga page. If not, do you have any idea why not (e.g. based on the kinds of things you did find)?