Matt's Frequently Asked Questions
Question
How do you print VOH documents?
Answer
Print?! What ever happened to "Save a tree, use VOH?" (Kidding :)) Printing
from VOH is now much easier because the documents are split into single
pages. Priviously they would overlap pages if they would even load at all (See
below). There is a way, however, to print the test pages very cleanly. When
you select a test, say the first old midterm of 132AH, you are given a page
with a list of links for each page of the test. This links go to a "container"
HTML file that provides the graphic and navigational links. What you're interested
in for printing is just the graphic so what you can do is call the graphic
itself for printing. The text in the table of contents will be the name of
the graphic with .gif attached in the images subdirectory. So, if the text
says:
F91-132AH-1-1 then the file name will be:
images/F91-132AH-1-1.gif
You can enter this URL by selecting open location and typing the full URL:
http://www.chem.ucla.edu/VOH/132AH/images/F91-132AH-1-1.gif
Or you type this in the "Location:" window if it is showing.
Once the graphic is displayed by itself you can select print. After printing,
all you have to do is increment the last number of the filename, which is the
page number of the graphic:
F91-132AH-1-1.gif
F91-132AH-1-2.gif
F91-132AH-1-3.gif
Printing speed and quality have been tested on the Macintosh and we have found
that if you disable all of the options in the print setup menu, (graphics
smoothing, etc.) you'll printing speed will dramatically increase.
Question
I cannot load in the large graphics. They either load as broken
graphic icons, or cause my Netscape to quit.
Answer
This is due to a problem with the way Netscape considers graphic files.
GIF files that are 6-30k in size consume megabytes of system memory and
finally cause the program to fail with a General Protection Fault (GPF) or
cause the graphics to be displayed as a broken image icon. I am working
on reorganizing the way we present the data to send it a page at a time.
This should eliminate this problem.
Update: October 27
All graphics presentations over two pages have been converted to a page at
a time.
Question
The background is dark and makes it hard to read the text.
Update January 1996
Background now solid white. No problems...
Answer
Turn it off. Do this by selecting Options:Preferences:Fonts and Colors.
Under Colors, select Always use Mine. This will force the browser to
use the defined colors and background, instead of allowing to document
to specify them.
The background was created from the black, blue and yellow VOH decal
on the home page. It was "embossed" using xv on an SGI. I find that
the looks of the background vary a little from one platform to another,
but the text appears completely readable.
It is possible that those of you that have difficulty have your monitor
set to too few colors. The background looks very bad if the monitor
is set to 16 colors (4 bit). I recommend 256 (8 bit) or higher color if your
computer will do it.
Another possible problem comes from the colormap getting co-opted by another
application. If you are running any other graphics software such as JPEG
view or Graphic Converter, the colormap can get changed and the background
becomes annoying. This is remedied by simply closing the offending app.
voh@chem.ucla.edu
Last revision: January 30, 1996