Computer Hardware and Browsers

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Hardware

It is anticipated that you will minimally need the equivalent of a 100 MHz Pentium PC with 32 Mb RAM computer and 14" screen to undertake the course. In all probability, most students will have access to much better computers than this minimum specification. As some of the course material pictures are large it will be helpful if you can configure the display to XVGA resolution (1024 x 768 with 256 colours) or better. In order to optimally enjoy the text and figures it will be necessary to use a Pentium PC equipped with a graphics card with 4 Mb memory and a 17" screen so that the display can be configured to XVGA resolution, or a similarly-equipped Unix workstation (e.g. PC running Linux or a Silicon Graphics).

We anticipate that most students will be using PCs running one flavour of Microsoft's 32-bit Windows operating system (e.g. 95/98/NT/2K/ME/XP). However, most of the course material can be browsed (and interacted with) using PCs running Linux or other UNIX computers or even Macs. However, the Department cannot guarantee an equal level of technical support for students not using PCs running MS Windows (95 or better).

Since the project is most easily done on a PC running MS Windows (95 or better), we insist that students have access (at least in part) to such a PC running MS Windows.

Browser and HTML

This course was originally developed to HTML 3.2 standards (in the years 1995-1997) using Netscape  3  and its HTML 3 extensions on a mixture of MS Windows-based PCs and VMS/Unix workstations.

The HTML in the course pages is currently being updated to HTML 4.01 standards, and for this reason we recommend downloading of the latest production versions of the browsers (when hardware and licensing permit it). In particular, this is because of varying standards with regard to the display of the Greek characters historically found in the "Symbol" font (see below).

Due to the limitations of HTML, some equations may be provided in GIF format, although most are now typeset in native HTML.

Viewing Greek Characters

The HTML pages for this course used to make extensive use of the Symbol font available on PCs, MACs, and X-window workstations. The course pages for 2002/3 onwards are being upgraded to current Web standards, and the old de facto method for displaying Greek characters (e.g. <FONT FACE="SYMBOL">a</FONT> for alpha) is now being phased out. It is therefore important that you can view Greek characters correctly with your browser. If you cannot see the following character below as a large red Greek alpha character (but instead see the text &alpha;), then you will need to take action regarding an upgrade, which will depend on your choice of operating system and/or browser.

Please feel free to contact any of the course tutors with respect to this issue.

Downloading

Image sizes often can be 100kB or more, and images may therefore take some time to download. Care has been taken to make this downloading optional for larger pictures by providing hypertext links to such image pages by reference where possible.

Printing

Printing gives the best results when you print from larger figures where there is a choice between smaller and larger versions, although they may be slower to download. Printing from the PC version of Netscape is better and more flexible than printing from the equivalent workstation product.

Cache Usage

Many people use the cache of their browser to store copies of files locally in order to avoid the slow speed of downloading on the Internet. Please note that this will give problems with those course pages, that are updated often without a change in filename. In particular, this will be applicable to some of the main index pages, e.g. the Notice Board or the main Course Material Index, both of which are popular entry points to access newly-released course material.

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