ERES Navigation

Revised: August 9, 1999

In principle, navigation in ERES is not any different from navigating the Web in general. Text that appears in blue and underlined (depending on the options set for the web browser [=Netscape] locally, another color than blue may be used and/or the underline may be missing) serves as a link to other documents. Example: Sociology department. If you click on this "link", the "home page" for the sociology department will appear on your screen.

Finding the course page

Since you are reading this document, you must have found your way to the ERES course page for your class. It is linked to the very first entry on your course page. However, in case somebody just gave you a printed version of this document, let's quickly review how you get to ERES and your course page within ERES:

Find the Hunter College home page. If you are in a computer lab at Hunter, this page comes up automatically after you start Netscape. Click on "Services for Students" (in the lower left corner), then on the next page click on "Course Web Pages". This brings up the ERES home page. (This is subject to change.)
Alternatively, you may enter the "URL" for ERES directly into the box labeled "location" (in Netscape): http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/eres
On the ERES home page ("main document index") click on 'view courses by department name', then click on the department, e.g. sociology. On the "Sociology courses" page, find your course and click on the text. This brings up your course page. -- There are different ways to find your course, experiment and use the way that works best for you.

Checking course documents

Each document is described by a short title. Unless your instructor goofed, it should be be fairly obvious what the document is all about. Some entries may have a (closed) folder icon on the left. By clicking on the folder icon, you can open the folder and all documents contained in the folder are displayed. This way it is possible to keep the course page tidy even if the number of documents get fairly large.
Note, that there is a second column specifying the format of the document. For the most part and especially for starters, you can ignore this. However, the information is useful -- especially when you are connecting from off-campus. So, let's briefly review.

Formats

HTML -- This is the genuine web format. In general, these documents are nicely formatted and you will have no trouble viewing these with any browser (Netscape, MS Internet Explorer, etc.) no matter where you are connecting from and how exactly your browser is set up.
text -- These documents will look pretty drab, no bolding, no italics, no change of fonts, etc., but again you will no trouble viewing them.
WP or MS Word -- Nice looking again, but you may have trouble viewing these (especially when connecting from off-campus). In the Hunter ACS labs, Netscape is set up such that WP is automatically started when an WP document is encountered. At home, you would have to have access to WP for one, and secondly you must configure your Netscape program such that it starts WP automatically. If not, you still have the option of saving the document on your local machine and view it later at a place WP where is installed.
WWW -- This indicates that the document is not physically stored on the maxweber server at Hunter (at least not in the subdirectory designated for your course). These documents can be close by (some place else on maxweber or on another server at Hunter) or far, far away in Fiji or the Bahamas. Well, more likely in places like California or Washington, DC. Anyway, these are documents were you may encounter a delay because they may have to be sent from afar and may get stuck in Internet traffic. And there are often delays on the Internet due to congestions and/or servers temporarily out of service.
other -- There are some more and you may see them on more advanced course pages. Basically, extra software is needed to view those documents directly, but you can always save those files to diskette. Some instructors may choose to distribute data files this way, files that are used as input for statistical analysis (SPSS) or spreadsheet (Quattro Pro) programs.

Windows

Netscape can have several windows open at the same time. In other words, you can visit more than one site at a time. When you click on a course document, a second windows is opened (which fills the full screen, so you don't see immediately that your course page is still there). To go back to your course page, do NOT use the "BACK" button -- as you normally would. Rather, close this second window, e.g., by clicking on "close" in the "file" pull-down menu. If you don't, you may experience some trouble later. Read on, to find out why.

Alternatively, we can keep both windows open and simply switch to the other Netscape window. How? There are two ways:

Open the "window" pull-down menu and select the window that you want. The window you currently have on top of your screen has a check mark. This may not work in some Hunter labs because (against my advice) some lab managers prefer to install crippled versions of Netscape.
Hold down the ALT key and press the TAB key (repeatedly). Each pressing of the TAB key will bring up an icon showing the other windows (applications) open at the time. Release the keys when you see the icon with Netscape and your course page. This will work in all labs.

This applies to Win3.x. In Win95, you see an icon for each open Netscape window on the taskbar (at the bottom of your screen). You click on the Window you want. But the ALT/TAB key method works as well, but -- in contrast to the earlier version -- you see all open application at one glance.

If you decide to keep two Netscape windows open, be aware of the following: Clicking on another course document from the course page will open this document into your second window which is currently hidden and which stays hidden. So, it appear as if nothing is happening. In order to view this document you must manually switch to this second window as described above!

Sounds long and complicated? It really is not so bad. I just tried to be very explicit. Note that there is a link on top of your course page (just below the heading "Documents") which reads 'important viewing info...'. That basically tells the same story -- only much shorter.