Tutorial Users Guide

There are two types of frames presentations provided. The first is a simple two frame setup where a navigation bar is provided at the top and the tutorial text is at the bottom. 

The navigation bar has a link to the index, another to this page, and finally a mailing link for you to provide me with comments and bugs (please help me to get this tutorial improved). 

The second frame set has a navigation bar plus three frames. The left frame contains the tutorial text, the left right one contains the VRML world and the right bottom one provides a form where you can enter the field values for the node. When using the right bottom frame there are two buttons provided: Update VRML, which updates the world taking into account the new parameters in the form, and Show Source, which provides the source code for the world presented. When you pressed either of these buttons there is no communication with the server. JavaScript was used to create the contents locally, therefore avoiding waiting for a new VRML world to be loaded from the server. 

The navigation bar at the top has two extra buttons which modifies the frames configuration. 'Hide VRML' provides the user with a single frame to see the tutorial text, useful when there is a lot of text. The 'Hide Tutorial' on the other hand hides the tutorial text providing more space for both the form and the VRML display. 

When the user presses 'Hide VRML' the buttons are changed to: 'Show All', which goes back to the original configuration, and 'Show VRML' which hides the tutorial and shows only the form and VRML frames. 

Similarly when pressing the 'Hide Tutorial' the buttons are changed to: 'Show All', which goes back to the original configuration, and 'Show Tutorial' which displays only the tutorial text. 

Know Problems

In MicroSoft IE, the Source code does not appear properly formatted, in Netscape it works OK. However when you resize the source code window the text loses its format, pressing 'Show Source' again solves this problem (Only for Netscape). Also in Internet Explorer when you try to update the VRML world what appears is the source code and not the VRML as in the Netscape browsers. If you know how to solve this problem please let me know. 

When changing the frames configuration using the navigation bar buttons and pressing reload the browser shows a message saying it can find a file, and it won't display the VRML file again. Pressing 'Update VRML' creates the VRML world again, solving the problem.