Chicken Scratchings: HELP!!!

So you want to submit a report for your research, but are confused about what to do? Do not worry! Submitting a report is really easy. This page will take you through the steps necessary to submit a report, and give you some information about how to approach problems you might have encountered along the way.

You need to use Netscape 2.0 in order to get your pictures to post. Neither Netscape 1.1 nor any of the other browsers like NCSA Mosaic support the file-upload feature that allows you to post images. If you do not have any images that you want to upload, then your browser type should not matter.

The submission page is divided up into several entry fields. These fields include the following entry options:

Reporter
Egg Day
My Discoveries
Include Frame #
Frame Caption
Preview

You can either continue reading straight through this help page (which is a good idea, especially if this is your first time), or you can jump right to one entry field by clicking on the links in the above list.

To get back to your submission page, use the Back button on your browser.

Reporter

You are the reporter! Just type your full name in here. Because your name is used in the creation of your institutions portfolio, it is a good idea to remain consistent by using the same name every time. This field is required.

Be careful that you do not submit more than one page under your name per day! If you want to submit more than one page per day under your name, then add a number to your name. For example, let's say Clint Potter wants to post two pages for one day. He would then use the name "Clint Potter 1" for the first page, and "Clint Potter 2" for the second. Do not use pound signs ("#") in your file names as they will not work! Pound signs are interpreted as special characters by HTML, the formatting language for these pages.

Report Day

Hold down the mouse button on top of the words "Choose a Day", and a menu will pop up. Choose the day the for which you are writing your report. This field is required.

My Discoveries

Type your report here. You do not need to hit return at the end of each line; the text will wrap automatically for you. If you typed your report in another application, you can cut and paste your text into this page, but be warned that your formatting will be lost. In general the only formatting that you can do (if you do not know HTML) is to put blank lines in the text. A blank line in the text will result in a blank line in your report. This field is required.

If you want to include HTML formatting directives (hyperlinks to other pages, pointers to image files that you cannot upload, etc.), you can put them in the report and they will work. However, it is a good idea to preview your page before submitting, just to be sure that it looks good.

Include Frame #

The way images are handled has now been changed! If you know the frame number of the image you want to include in your paper, you just type that number into the field and our computers will automatically track everything for you! You are still limited to three frames per page, but we could easily change that if the demand arises.

Please note that you need to specify a day! Since the reports no longer correspond to the days you are actually doing your observations, you need to specify a day for each of the images.

If you have problems remembering what the frame numbers were, then you should preview your files first by clicking the preview button at the bottom of the page. This way you will know if you have the images right. (Note: Certain versions of Netscape have a problem in that they do not always recognize when it should get another copy of a page from our server. Even if you force a reload, it sometimes takes the version you were looking at before. Sometimes you might need to clear the disk cache.)

Frame Caption

With each image, you also have the option of including a caption. Captions can be used to explain something not found in the report text, or as labels. Do not put too much into a caption - a sentence or two will do. This field is not required.

Preview

The preview button allows you to preview a page before you actually write it to our system. This is especially useful if you want to make sure your images are displayed properly in the page. From the preview page you can always use your browser's Back button to go back and make changes (hit the submit button again - do not use Forward as your changes will not have been made). The preview page also gives you the option of submitting the preview, if you like what you see.