Meteorology 301 - Lab 11

Introduction

GOAL:
1. Learn about and use internal links in your portfolio.
2. Place another annotated example of your work in your portfolio.

Instructions

1.Login to your Project Vincent account. Then, go to your personal WWW directory. For most of you, simply enter
vincent> cd WWW
at the Vincent prompt after logging in.

2. Edit your portfolio file, using emacs or your editor of choice.

You will also want to look at your portfolio using your Web browser. In Netscape, this means going to the "File" menu and choosing "Open Location..." When a new window pops up, enter in it
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~LOGNAME/portfolios-template.html
where LOGNAME is your login name. By using the "Back" and "Forward" buttons, you can have your browser switch between this lab and your portfolio page.

Any time you want to see the effect of your changes in the editor, you need to

1. Save the updated portfolio file, for example by entering "C-x C-s" within emacs.
2. Push the "Reload" button on your browser when it is showing your portfolio page.

3. We will now use your portfolio page to learn about links.

Links are how a Web browser can leap to another Web location, either in the current page or another page. Within your portfolio page, there are two types of links:

1. Link from one file or Web page to another.

   Move to the bottom of your portfolio page in the editor. You will see some lines like this:
   

   Go to [a href="http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/index.html"] ISU
   Atmospheric Sciences Homepage[/a]
   

   (As before, I have used "[" and "]" in place of "<" and ">" to prevent the Web software from interpreting the lines above as HTML tags.)

   Let's look at the structure of this:

   • First, there is a tag that starts with "<" and the notation "a href=". This opens a tag that will reference another Web page.

   • Then a Web file is identified. In this case, it is the file index.html, located in the main web directory on the machine identified by "meteor.iastate.edu"

   • Next are some words "ISU Atmospheric Sciences" that describe (briefly) what is at the linked Web page. In your Web window, these words are underlined. Clicking on the underlined words activates the link, connectiing you to the file after "a href=".

   • Finally, the set of lines ends with the html tag "[/a]". This is a closing tag, completing the portion of the Web page containing the link.

2. Link from one location to another within a Web page.

   Move in the editor back to the top of your portfolio file. About 20 or so lines from the top, you will see

   [a href="#global"] Physics and dynamics of the global atmosphere[/a]
   

   This line has the same structure as before, but now the link is not to a file, but to a location within this Web page called "#global". This location is nine lines down in the file, where we see a location name identified:

   [a name="global"]
   

   Clicking on the words "Physics and dynamics of the global atmosphere" will activate the link and send the Web browser to this location.

3. You created a link back in Lab 2 when you made a connection from your personal home page to your portfolio page. You have also created links when placing figures into your portfolio page, using the "[img src=...]" html tag.

4. Links serve several purposes. Two of them are
   • Connecting to new information in a new Web page
   • Cross-referencing information within a Web page

4.Make a cross-referencing link within your portfolio

You have already placed an example of your work in your portfolio under "Computer programming and modeling". However, this example also demonstrates understanding and skills in two other areas:

1. Physics and dynamics of the global atmosphere
2. Effective oral and written communication

• First, name the location to which we will link. Within your editor, move to the start of your text annotating the Q vs. Ts figure and create a location name by typing [a name="Q_Ts"]. Remember to substitute "<" and ">" for "[" and "]".

• Then make a cross-referencing link to this location from the "Physics and ..." section of your portfolio. Move to the end of the "--examples--" line under "Physics and ..." and push the "return" button to create a new line. On this line enter,
  Studied the behavior of [a href="#Q_Ts"] global energy-balance climate models.[/a][p]
  

• Note the "[p]" I added at the end of the line. This html tag tells the browser to create a new paragraph after this line. The effect on the Web page is to separate the text before the "[p]" from that after with a blank line.

5.Make another cross-referencing link in your portfolio.

Now that you have seen how to do it, create a cross-reference link to the same location (Q_Ts) under "examples" in "Effective oral and written communication". You should write a sentence with a link in it that is appropriate for this section of the portfolio (i.e., one that tells the reader they will be directed to an example of your writing).

Don't forget to close the link with the "[/a]" tag!

6.Refine your examples listings.

It will be easier to read your portfolio if your examples are numbered. We do this using html tags that identify an ordered list. There are three tags we must use:

1. [ol] - marks the start of the list
2. [li] - identifies the start of a list item
3. [/ol] - marks the end of the list

(Each of the lines here has been tagged as a list item and so appears in your browser as part of a list, with items numbered 1, 2, 3.)

• Go to the end of the "examples" line under "Physics and ...".
• Push the keyboard "return" button to open a new line.
• On it type [ol], again remembering to substitute for "[" and "]".
• Then move to the start of the line with your link and enter [li] to identify it as a list item.
• Finally, open a new line above the line with "Return...to top of portfolio.", and enter [/ol] to end the ordered list.

7.Make a new portfolio example.

This is your choice, but you must choose something. Some possibilities are one of the figures you created in a previous lab. You may need to redo part of the lab in order to save the figure as a .gif file rather than a .ps file. Place the figure in the appropriate category and annotate it. Also mark the annotation or the figure (whichever you list first) with the "list item" tag ([li]) to make it part of an ordered list.

You are free, however, to choose other possibilities, such as the text of a speech you may have given in speech class, or the text of one of your Meteorology 101 papers.

8.What I want.

You do not need to hand in anything to me. I will look at your web pages to verify that you have completed all steps.

This is the last lab. You should have it completed by the end of the last day of classes.

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