AED Setup 2

Setting Up Your Active Earth Display

 

Setting up your account.  Part 1.

 

A. Testing Your Display

The easiest way to test your display is simply to run Internet Explorer and press the Home button (provided you set the home page correctly previously) or enter the web address for your assigned AED which was sent to you. It looks like this:   

   
                            http://www.iris.edu/activeearth/index.phtml?code=YOURCODE      (where YOURCODE is your site code)


To see your display in kiosk mode, using the fullscreen, use Start Menu / Run... and enter "iexplore -k" as the command to run.


With any luck you are now able to go to your display and test it.  Use the right arrow (on the screen, not on the keyboard) to arrow through the pages of the display and see if they work. Here is where your plugin installations will be tested. It should be obvious if anything is wrong. (For example large square gaps of missing content, perhaps with messages saying “plugin not installed”.)


To modify the configuration of your display, press the “BACK TO START” button while holding the SPACEBAR on the keyboard.

 

The Back to Start button

 

The top of the screen will change, and you should see two buttons “CONFIG” and “RESTART”. Press CONFIG to enter the configuration screen. 

AED Configuration Bar

 

B. General Settings

 

AED Set up screen

 

  1. Config and Restart buttons.  

    CONFIG loads the configuration screen shown above. You can also use it to reload the page from the database if you have changed your mind about saving your changes and wish to start editing afresh.

    RESTART restarts the AED display. It will NOT prompt you about unsaved changes. (We call this a "soft" restart. A "hard" restart would be exiting full screen mode, and pressing ENTER in the browser's web address field for a completely new load of the entire web page.)

  2. Site Code. 

    This is your site code. It will never change and is what you can refer to your site as when you correspond with IRIS. You selected this code when you applied for the display.

  3. Name.

    Give your site has a name. Normally it is similar to the site code only more meaningful. Users of the display never see this name.

  4. Maintainer's Name. 

    Enter the name of the person most directly responsible for configuring and monitoring the display.

  5. Display Type.

    Choose your display type. It has no effect on the display whatsoever, it is just for tracking purposes.

  6. Phone.

    Enter the phone number of the maintainer.

  7. Enabled Toggle.

    You can turn the display off without turning off the PC or even exiting the AED environment by setting enabled to No and restarting. Users will see a "display temporarily unavailable" message. This might be useful during times when your Internet connection is down.

  8. Email.

    Enter the email address of the maintainer.

  9. User-interactive Toggle. 

    The display can be interactive or non-interactive.

    If interactive then buttons will always be on the screen, and the user will control the display using them. (Otherwise, if not interactive, you will need to supply a banner image -- see below.) Each link will have a timeout in seconds and a timeout action to be taken, where the timeouts start counting from the last button press by the user. **We currently cannot detect user interaction with the content pages below, but have plans to implement this.**

    Finally, interactive screens can be touchable or not. The only effect this setting will have on your display is this: if you are using your own banner image, then the following animation will appear briefly (3 cycles) when the display is RESTARTed.

  10. Non-interactive Toggle. 

    In non-interactive mode the entire 100 pixel high banner area at the top of the display is available for your use. You should create a JPEG image with some sort of identity for your institution or a photo or whatever you wish and put it here because the "Back to start" image would not make sense to a viewer who cannot interact with the screen.

    The image that you create will take the place of the home ("Back to start") button and also act as your entry point to the CONFIG and RESTART buttons.

  11. "Use Generic Banner" Checkbox.  By checking here you are indicating that you wish to use the default set of three buttons as depicted. If unchecked you should create and upload a banner image (next section).

  12. Your Banner Image.  Create a JPEG file on your PC and use the Browse... button to locate and select that file. Next press the SAVE button. If your file is valid and sized correctly it will be uploaded and will take the place of any previously stored banner image. (RESTART to test it).

    Use a black background for best results. Blurring or muting your banner image somewhat is adviseable, otherwise it competes with the display content below it for the viewer's attention. Using light gray instead of white for text helps too.

    For an interactive display you might want to shoot for 400 pixels wide by 100 pixels tall. You can experiment with wider images if you wish. The help text nearby says you can go wider if you are non-interactive, but actually interactive can, too. The maximum width is 1280.

    Currently you must be happy with green spherical arrow buttons accompanying your design, but since the arrows will be in front of your banner image you could have some fun and make an image that highlights or complements the green arrow buttons, for example:

 

 

To continue with setting up your Active Earth Display pages, click next.

NEXT > Setting Up Your Account, Part 2.