VISITview controls

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VISITview comes up with a Big Red Pointer being shown on the screen. You move this pointer by positioning your mouse pointer to a different location in the window and clicking it. When you do this, a message is sent to the VISITview server which then tells the software for all the students to move the Big Red Pointer. Therefore, you will see a slight time delay in actually repositioning the pointer after you click your mouse button.

Here's a summary of all the keystrokes and mouse-related buttons:

Mouse click left button - move the Big Red Pointer to that position for everyone
Mouse drag with left button depressed - draw a line on the screen; when you release the button, the line will be drawn on everyone's screen
Mouse drag with left button depressed and holding CTRL key will draw a rectangle on the screen
Mouse drag with left button depressed and holding SHIFT key will "roam" around in a portal; when you release the button, the Pointer will be moved to that position on eveyone's screen. This is no effect other than pointer repositioning if portals are not being used
ALT+Z - zoom the window by one factor so as to leave the Big Red Pointer is the same location on the screen (may be done repeatedly)
ALT+R - unzoom the window

Below the image/viewing window, you'll find that the VISITview controls are arranged in three groups. From right to left, the first group (common to both students and master) is used to control what frame is being viewed on this page of the lesson, and how it is being shown.

Please note that these controls affect everyone in the session! In the example shown, note that the word "Fade" is diminished in intensity. This means that for the page of the lesson being viewed, fading is not available.

The second set of controls is used for annotation (free-hand line drawing). You may select a color and a width (although the width is only for you, in case you want to make thin lines which may otherwise be obscuring some feature you want to look at in the underlying image).

In order to draw, drag the mouse (that is, move the mouse pointer while holding the left button down). As you drag the mouse around, a line will be drawn in the color of your choice. As soon as you release the mouse button, the line is transmitted to all others. You will notice that when you let go of the mouse button, the line you've been drawing is erased briefly -- this is the time it takes to send the message to the server and have it resent back to you (and everyone else). You may also draw a rectangle by simultaneously dragging the mouse while pressing both the shift and Ctrl keys at the same time.

The final set of controls are available only to the master session. They control, literally, what page you're on in the lesson. In place of this set of controls, the students will see the label of the current page.

The top choice menu allows you to randomly select a page to show. Note: after you select a page to show from the list presented, you must click on the Selected button in order to activate the loading of the associated images on the students' workstations. The Next and Prev buttons allow you to just step ahead or go back to the adjacent pages in the lesson.

The Stat button will give you an indication of the status of the last load command sent to all the students. In the Applet Status Line (at the bottom of the screen), a message will appear that looks something like this:

Status of load: OK -- OK OK -- OK -- OK

This indicates that of the 8 people connected for this session (including yourself), 3 have not yet finished loading the page you just went to. You should view this especially when using the remote mode, where some or all of the students are getting their images (pages) over the Internet.

The bottom choice box is for enhancements. If you've included the "enhance" tag in the HTML and supplied a text file with the enhancements in it, their names will appear here. You may select any enhancement from the choice list -- as soon as you do, the enhancement will be applied to the image(s) on this page.

Return to VISITview home page.