This document is approximately 9 sides of A4.

Operating system
Where the module documents are
Basic navigation within a document
Basic navigation between documents
Structure
Frames
Adjusting the browser window size
Reading on screen
Position of screen
Portrait vs landscape
Font size
Colours
Font
Searching
Footnotes
Taking notes
Copyright and copying
Printing
Communications
Updates

These notes assume that you are working with a recent version of Windows, and Internet Explorer. If you are using older software, some of the features will be slightly different, and some things may not work at all. At the time of writing, all the clusters in the University are running this software.

The University’s Information Systems Service (ISS) has a regularly updated list of cluster locations and opening times. If you find yourself regularly having to queue for a workstation, try a different cluster or a less popular time of day.

Where the module documents are

The documents are stored in the School of Philosophy server, to which only I and a few others have access. What you are working with is a copy which is stored temporarily on your computer. There are two important consequences of this:

1. Whatever mistakes you make while using the materials, you cannot do any damage to the originals. If you start again, you’ll find they are still there.
2. Your machine will keep a temporary copy of all the documents you have visited each session, and will use them rather than downloading another copy. This means that, if the network goes down, you can carry on working until you want to open a document you haven’t yet visited during that session. If you find the frequency of network crashes a problem, you can always insure yourself against this nuisance by quickly running through all the links you are likely to need during the session, and then working through them in detail.

You can move around the text only if the frame or window is activated. You activate it by moving the mouse pointer into the window, and clicking the left button once (unless it is already activated, you will see a slight change to the appearance of its border). The mouse pointer normally appears as an arrow; but it is like a large capital I when it is over text, a pointing hand when it is over a link, and a double arrow when it is on a movable border.

There are 3 main ways of moving around a text document:

1. If the document is longer than the amount showing on the screen, there will be a vertical scroll bar on the right. Clicking on the downward triangle at the bottom will scroll the document downwards, and clicking on the upward triangle at the top will scroll it back again. If you click on the rectangle below the upper triangle and keep your finger on the button, you can move to any proportion of the way through the document (e.g. moving it half way down will take you to the middle of the document). Occasionally a document will be wider than the screen, and you can use the scroll bar at the bottom in the same way.
2. You can also scroll down, or up, or to the right or left, using the 4 arrows on the right of the keyboard. It only starts moving the screen when the cursor reaches the bottom.
3. The disadvantage of both these methods is that it can be difficult to keep track of where you are while reading a text. It’s usually better to treat the screen more like a page of a book. Read to the end of what you can see at the bottom of the screen, and then press the Pg Dn key on the right of the keyboard (‘Pg Dn’ is short for ‘Page Down’, but it really means ‘Screen Down’). The last line of the previous screen now becomes the first line of the next screen — rather like turning over a page, except for the repeated line. You can go back again a page at a time by using Pg Up.

You can also go straight back to the beginning of the document by pressing Control and Home simultaneously, and straight to the end by pressing Control and End simultaneously.

Some documents (such as this one) have internal links. A link is a piece of text which is underlined, and usually in blue. When you put the mouse pointer over it, the arrow changes to a pointing hand. Clicking on it will take you to the point in the document to which it is linked. For example, clicking on an item in the index at the beginning of this document will take you to that item. You can get back to where you were before by clicking on the Back button near the top left of the Explorer toolbar. If for any reason the toolbar is hidden, you can either click on View, Go to, and then Back, or press Alt and the left arrow simultaneously. Forward, or Alt and the right arrow reverse the previous Back.

Links you have recently visited will have a duller colour. This is a useful means for checking whether or not you have covered all the documents specified for a particular unit.

Each unit of each module requires you to read a number of different documents. Clicking on a link will remove the current document from your screen, and replace it with the next one. As far as is practicable, I have supplied links which take you on to the next document, or back to where you were before, as appropriate. Generally, if you are not very adventurous, you can follow a prescribed route through the material for each unit without any danger of getting lost.

However, there are many documents which you could have arrived at from anywhere, and it is impracticable to supply return links to cover every eventuality. (If I organised a conference on the history of modern philosophy at a venue in Leeds which was difficult to find, the AA might kindly put up a lot of road signs on the main routes in, but they wouldn’t be able to put up signs telling motorists how to get back home again.)

Being lost means that you want to get back to where you were on a particular unit of a particular module, but you don’t know how. There are two ways back:

1. Keep hitting Back on the Explorer toolbar until you arrive at where you remember you were. It simply retraces every link you followed in reverse order.
2. Go home and start again. At the end of every document there is a link which will take you back, either to the Module Homepage, or to the Site Homepage. From the Site Homepage, you can get back to the Module Homepage by clicking on Structure, and then on the relevant module.

Note on the expression ‘go to’. You will often find links beginning with the expression ‘go to.’ Sometimes it is an instruction, meaning that this is the next thing you have to read in order to cover the syllabus of the module. On other occasions it means merely that if you want to go to a particular document, you can do so by clicking on the link. It should always be obvious which is meant.

The History of Modern Philosophy Site has a Site Homepage, which acts as the main door (so to speak), and from which you can access everything in the site. The Site Homepage leads into a document called ‘Structure’, which acts as the main index to the site. Not everything is yet available, and items in plain text are merely placemarkers for future use.

‘Structure’ in turn leads you to further indexes of three distinct types of document:

As a general rule, module documents end with links back to the document you are likely to have come from, and also to the Homepage for that module. Other documents end with a link back to an index, and to the Site Homepage.

In order to make navigation easier, I have sometimes given you a copy of part of a longer text document to work with on a particular module unit. Whenever I have done this, there will be link into the main document at the beginning and the end, so that you can explore the context if you wish.

If you want to go to the Site or Module Homepage, don’t click on Home on the Explorer toolbar, This will take you right out of the site to the University of Leeds Homepage.

The browser window should be divided into three frames: a black vertical column on the left, which is called the Navigation Bar; a purple horizontal strip along the top, which is called the Upper Frame; and the main area, which is called the Bottom Frame.

If only the main area is showing, this means, either that you are using a primitive browser which doesn’t support frames, or that you didn’t enter by the correct door. In the latter case, you can correct the situation by clicking on ‘activate it now’ on the Homepage.

The Navigation Bar contains links to other parts of the Site which you might want to access without having to find them from the various indexes. There are special Navigation Bars for each Module, which will be activated if you entered the Site from that Homepage. Otherwise, click on the link to activate it.

The Upper Frame is intended for reading a text in conjunction with a commentary. Texts automatically appear in the Upper Frame, and commentaries in the Bottom Frame (though only some of the texts have been supplied with running commentaries so far). In order to read the text, you will need to expand the frame by dragging its bottom border down with the mouse. You can adjust the size at any time. Remember that in order to scroll up or down in a frame, you have to make sure it is activated, by clicking anywhere in it with the mouse.

When you first open Internet Explorer, it may occupy the whole screen, or only part of it. It’s sometimes useful to have it full-size (‘maximised’), but it is usually better to have it part-size, for reasons I shall come to shortly.

To change from one to the other, you use the middle of the three buttons in the top right corner. (The one on the left with a minus sign ‘minimises’ the window to an icon at the bottom of the screen, and you can restore it by clicking on the icon. The one on the right with the × closes Explorer altogether). If the middle button has two overlapping squares on it, it means that Explorer is maximised; if it has a single square, it means that it is not maximised, even if it happens to fill the whole screen (in Microsoft jargon, this is called a 'normal' window). You just click on the button to change from one state to the other.

When the window is not maximised, you can adjust its position and shape with the mouse. To adjust its position, click on the blue bar at the top, drag it to where you want, and release the mouse button. To adjust its shape, click on any of the borders when the cursor changes to a double arrow, and drag it to where you want. If you click on a corner, you can move two sides simultaneously.

Note 1. If you adjust the size of the window while it contains documents with frames, it may affect the border between the upper and bottom frame. Just move it back again with the mouse. It may also distort the appearance of the documents. If so, click on Refresh on the Explorer toolbar, and it should come back OK.

Note 2. Narrowing the frame doesn’t affect the width of the Navigation Bar (though you can drag it out of the way if you want to), but it does affect the width of the other two frames. In virtually all my documents, the line length will be adjusted, so that the whole document becomes longer as well as thinner. In a few cases it will narrow your view of the document rather than the document itself, so that you have to scroll to the right to see the right-hand side. If so, it would be more convenient to maximise the window temporarily (reducing it again will bring it back to the size and position you last set).

Most of us are used to reading books rather than computer screens, and it takes some practice to read from screen. Once you get used to it, you should come to prefer reading, writing, and filing documents with a computer rather than pieces of paper. However, it is an acquired skill, and you need to know how to take advantage of the control you have over digital material, which you don’t have over a book.

In the bad old days (only a few years ago!) people got headaches because screens flickered. They don’t any more. Still worse, the text used to be in white on a dark background, which is much less legible than black on white. The main problem which still persists is that the definition of the characters is too crude, except on fantastically expensive monitors. It’s like the difference between a cheap dot-matrix printer, and a high-resolution laser printer. Just as dot-matrix printers have disappeared, I’m sure the monitor you’re working on now will be obsolete in a few years’ time.

Much can be done to make it easier to read texts on screen, using features which work only on the more recent browsers. I shall re-design the materials as soon as I can. In the meantime, there are many things you yourself can do to customise the materials to your needs.

It’s much less tiring to read if your head is higher than the screen — ideally your angle of vision would be about 45° below the horizontal. It’s regrettable that most of the monitors in the computer clusters are on top of the boxes, which makes them too high for comfort.

The terms ‘portrait’ and ‘landscape’ are derived from paintings. Portraits are normally higher than they are wide, and landscapes wider than they are high. Books and other documents almost invariably have a portrait format, whereas a computer screen is landscape.

Most people prefer reading texts in portrait format, not merely because they are used to it, but because the lines are shorter. Once lines get beyond a certain length, it’s difficult to find the beginning of the next line, and this interferes with your reading. Research has shown that most printed books (and even more so, hand-outs on A4) have line lengths which are far too long for easy reading.

There are many factors governing the ideal line length (size of typeface, distance between lines, etc.), but you will probably find documents easiest to read if the length of the line is about half the width of the screen. Adjusting the width of the window to bring this about will also have the effect of making the document portrait rather than landscape. Make sure that the top of the window is at the top of the screen, and that the bottom of the window is at the bottom.

Unfortunately, the Explorer toolbars are at the top and the bottom, which reduces the portrait effect. Unlike some other applications, they can’t be moved to the side. However, they can be reduced. You can reduce their height by clicking on View, Toolbars, Standard buttons, which will remove the icons. You can also remove toolbars temporarily by unchecking them in View, Toolbars.

You may find the font size too small for easy reading. If so, click on View, text size, larger, and it will be enlarged. If your mouse has a wheel, you can produce the same effect by pressing Control, and moving the wheel forward or back. The downside is, of course, that less of the text will be on the screen at any given time. Some browsers, such as Netscape, let you choose any default font size you want.

Some people find the standard contrast between background and text too glaring. Most of my documents have a more muted contrast; but they may not be to your satisfaction. You can override my settings by going to Tools, Internet options, General, Colors, and playing around with different combinations of text and background until your are happy (when you are happy, press OK rather than Cancel). Remember that if you choose certain colours such as bright blue, hyperlinks may no longer stand out.

The easiest font to read on-screen is Georgia. To make it your default font, go to Tools, Internet options, General, Fonts; scroll up to Georgia, click on it, and then click on OK.

One of the major advantages of electronic texts over hard copy is that you can search for any word, or phrase, or combination of characters. Go to the beginning of the document, and click on Edit, and then Find in Frame, and a dialogue box will appear. Type in the word you want to find, and click on Find Next. The first occurrence of the word will then appear highlighted on the screen (it’s just possible that it might be hidden by the dialogue box: if so, move it aside by clicking in the blue bar at the top of the box, and dragging it aside). If you then click Find Next again, you will be taken to the second occurrence, and so on.

You sometimes have to be quite crafty in order to avoid finding too much or too little. For example, ‘man’ will pick up ‘management’, ‘immanent’, and so on. If you type in a space before ‘man’, it will pick up all words beginning with ‘man. . .’ If you type in ‘man’ with a space before and after, it will only pick up the word ‘man’, but it will miss any occurrence followed by punctuation. It’s sometimes useful to click on Match Case, so that the search becomes case-sensitive. Thus, if you type in ‘God’, it won’t pick up ‘gods’, or any other word containing the letters g, o, d (e.g. ‘ungodly’, or the bird called a ‘godwit’).

Searches work best with rarer words, or longer phrases (provided you get them exactly right).

Some of the texts are supplied with footnotes. In a few cases, if you click on a link to a footnote (e.g. [n.10]), the text is temporarily replaced by a document with all the footnotes to the text. The one you want will be at the top of the screen. Clicking on ‘return to text’ will take you back to the text, but the place where you left it will now be in the first or second line of the screen. I have nearly finished replacing this system with a better one, in which the footnotes appear in a small, adjustable window on top of the text. Once you have read the footnote, you have to close the window by clicking on the × in the top right-hand corner, otherwise the next footnote won’t work.

When you are in the footnotes document, you can browse through it or search for words in it in the same way as the main text document.

You are expected to digest the course materials as you read, so that you have completed the course by the end of the teaching period. Don’t leave the hard work till just before the exam! Your objective should be to build up a file of your own notes on the primary texts and my explanatory documents, just as you would take notes of a series of lectures. Among the advantages of having the course materials on the network are that you don’t miss anything while you are writing a note; that you can work at your own speed; and that the materials will always be there. The disadvantage is that you may be tempted to postpone the hard work of digesting them, because you are not under pressure to capture a lecturer’s meaning before it disappears into thin air. Don’t!

Notes are much easier to study, organise, and revise from if they are word-processed. Given that you are sitting at a computer, it’s absurd not to take advantage of its facilities. What you need to do is to set up the screen so that you can easily switch from reading to writing, preferably with both visible simultaneously.

First, move and reduce the size of the browser window so that it occupies the left-hand half of the screen. Then reduce it to an icon at the bottom of the screen by clicking on the left-hand button (with the —) in the top right-hand corner. This should reveal the worktop with icons for the various programs available on the network. Double-click on Word, which should then appear on your screen. Then move and reduce the size of the Word window so that it occupies the right-hand half of the screen. Finally, restore Explorer by clicking on its icon at the bottom of the screen, and you should have both running side-by-side.

If you find that the windows are too narrow for ease of working, you can resize or reposition one or both of them so that they overlap. The active window is the one on top, and you can switch between applications simply by clicking anywhere on what you can see of the inactive window.

Remember to give your Word document a name, and save it to your directory on the network. Save it regularly so that you don’t lose your work if the network crashes. If you have your own computer at home, you can copy the document with your notes to a floppy disk, and take it away with you.

One problem with using Word is that the lines will be longer than the window, unless you drastically increase the left and right margins. You can avoid this by using NotePad instead (.../Windows/Notepad.exe). Alternatively, you can use WordPad (Start, Programs, Accessories, WordPad), but first ensure that it is set to wrap the lines (View, Options, Word, Wrap to window). If you miss the formatting available in Word, you can import your text files into a Word document later.

It is a serious infringement of copyright to make a digital copy of any of the documents in the site (although you have been given the right to print out one copy of anything you like for your personal use only). On the other hand, you hold the copyright to anything which is your original creation. This includes your notes for the module, and any essays or exam answers you write (except in so far as they are plagiarised!). So although the University owns the physical pieces of paper on which you submit your essays (and doesn’t have to give them back to you), you own the copyright, and we cannot copy them or publish them without your permission.

Notwithstanding the above, there is a legal concept of ‘fair dealing’. This means that you can copy brief passages (whether digitally or otherwise), if the purpose is to analyse or criticise them, as in a book review, for example.

In fact there is a close parallel between copyright law and the University regulations on plagiarism. If you lift too much from other people’s work (in this case, my translations of the primary texts, and my explanatory notes), you are liable to the charge of plagiarism, especially if you do so without acknowledgment. So the golden rule is: only copy passages if you are intending to quote them for analysis or comment, and make a note of the precise source.

In order to copy a passage, select it using the mouse. Then click on Edit, Copy. Click the mouse pointer in your Word document at the place where you want it to be, and then click Edit, Paste.

One annoying feature is that the passage will have the same line lengths as on screen, and you may need to tidy it up by inserting word spaces and removing hard breaks. It’s less trouble if you have the browser window maximised before copying.

Remember that I shall be giving you hard copy of all the compulsory primary texts, and that you should digest the explanatory materials on screen by turning them into your own notes. All you should need to print out is these notes (for revision purposes), along with any notes you are asked to bring to seminars, and written work you submit.

Unless you have serious problems getting access to a workstation at convenient times, I do not recommend printing more than the bare minimum of pages. It could cost you a lot of money, and you lose the benefit of the hyperlinks.

When registrations have settled down, I shall set up an email list, so that emails can be sent to individual students, or to the whole group.

Remember to check your email regularly, and to delete read messages so that your mailbox doesn’t become full up. If you want to keep a message, save it to your directory on the network, or to a floppy disk.

You can always send me an email by clicking on GMRmail on the Navigation Bar.

Apart from verbal announcements at seminars, I shall normally send messages to the whole group by putting an announcement on the electronic noticeboard, which you can access from the Module Homepage (and which also has the date of the latest message).

In due course, I shall set up a Discussion Room, in which you can post queries or comments, and reply to those of others.

The Site is under development, and I shall post a record of any additions or changes, with the date. The list can be accessed from the Module Homepage. This list is very useful, just in case you happen to have printed out a document which is subsequently changed.

Revised, 29th September 2003.

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