The New Inform on the Web

[Note: The new Inform isn't new anymore; in fact it's been retired, except for the troubleshooting sections. But you can still search the ACCC Web pages just like you used to search Inform. Use the Search box at the bottom of the yellow column on the left of the ACCC home page. - Ed.]

Got a question about computers, networks, electronic mail, the Internet? From the beginner's "How do I do this email thing?" to the expert's "How do I use Eudora's leave mail on server option?", answers are available now through the Computer Center's new, improved Inform on the Web!

This new Inform was developed specifically for the World Wide Web. Our most important goal in its design was to make it as easy as possible for you to find what you're looking for. The new Inform has:

• a range of search options, including full-text searching
• several different views for returned menus, including labeling items by operating system and document style and an option to display the entire menu for a major topic at once
• the main menu and a basic search on every screen

They aren't just documents anymore.

As for finding what you're looking for...

To begin with, the user interface and search facilities are both easier to use and much more flexible. We've added full-text searching, so if the word you're looking for is there, Inform should find it. And searching is easier to do now -- there's a form for a basic search on every Inform screen, and there's also an Advanced Search form. While you can search for any word, there is still a small set of assigned keywords and command names; they're listed in the Advanced Search form.

The menus in the new Inform are shorter and better organized, are never too deep, and cannot be circular. (And that's guaranteed; the program used to generate them croaks if it finds a menu too deep.)

There's another important change in the menus: the items in a new Inform menu -- its children -- can be any combination of menus and leaves. So, as you can see in figure 2, the ADN's page on Web publishing and NCSA's URL primer, which are both documents, are included in the "Publishing on the World Wide Web" menu along with "HTML, the markup language for WWW publishing", which is an Inform menu on HTML. And there are a lot more menus in the new system -- about 200 menus versus about 100 in the old one.

As for the documents, we've added a few and taken a few more out, but the grand total is still about the same -- about 1100 documents. We've labeled each document with a document style -- introductory, users guide, reference, and so on -- and with the operating systems to which it applies, and we've provided options that allow you to make use of these labels. The menus have document styles and operating systems, too; they inherit them from their children.

And finally, once you find what you're looking for, you can bookmark it and be assured that you'll get back to the same place when you revisit your bookmark. The Inform URLs can get pretty long, but the same URL will always get you back to the same place.

Return to Contents

Figure 2: A New Inform Menu This is what you'll see if you select 6. Internet and WWW from the Major Topics, then select publishing on the WWW, general info and how to at UIC. Except for the Display Options screen (figure 4), all Inform screens look pretty much the same.

One of the features of the new Inform is a better organized menu system. The twelve major topics (on the left) are on all Inform screens. With three exceptions, the major topics really are topics, with as little overlap as we could manage. This should make it easier to find what you're looking for. (The exceptions are the first two topics, which are organized by operating system, and the last, which is exactly what its title says -- miscellaneous.)

A typical Inform screen is shown in figure 2. The blue column on the left and the items in it are on every Inform screen (except for the Display Options screen). At the top are links to Help (a help file), Options (the Inform Display Options form), and Search (the Advanced Search form). Under these are the facilities for a basic search: an input box and the Find search button. At the bottom is a link to the ADN Home Page. The numbered links in between are to Inform's major topics. These items -- the major topics, the Find search, and links to help, options, and the Advanced Search form -- are included on all Inform screens, so you can use them at any time to restart your exploration.

(The Advanced Search form isn't available through text-based browsers like Charlotte and lynx because it's next to impossible to use it with them. But Web browsing is a desktop thing, not a mainframe thing, anyway.)

Return to Contents

The Inform Major Topics

Except for the last, the rest of the Inform major topics are topic-oriented: Database and Spreadsheets, Electronic Mail, Statistics, and so on. The last, Advanced Topics and Miscellaneous, has everything else, including file transfer, using tapes, and X Windows.

Return to Contents

The search is a full-text search, displaying the titles of all documents or menus that:

• include the search word in the first 1K of their text or
• are specifically labeled with the word you're searching word as keyword.

If the search returns more than the maximum number of items that are displayed at one time (the default is 50) the title of the returned list of match will include a link to the Next nn.

Return to Contents

Figure 3: Advanced Search Form

After you've made selections from one or more of the blue boxes on the right, click on Do Search to submit it. If you look at the bottom of the Search Results screen from an advanced search, you'll find a rather cryptic message that tells you exactly what you searched for; for example, the search specified in figure 3 would be:

Search String: (ILOCAL1<CONTAINS>ALLDOC) AND (email) AND KEYWORDS<CONTAINS>"ABOUT MACS")

See Using the Inform Advanced Search Form for more information.

Return to Contents

To change the Inform display options, click on the Options link in the upper left to open the Inform Display Options screen (figure 4).
 

Figure 4: The Inform Display Options Screen

Select the options you want to use, then click the set options button to set the options and return to the Inform screen. Don't use your browser's back button -- that would unselect your selections.

Return to Contents

OS and Style Labels

Operating Systems: The operating systems that Inform knows about are: CMS, DOS /Win /Win95, Macintosh, UNIX, Miscellaneous, and All OSs.

Document Styles: Each document is labeled with one or more of these document styles:

Intro --

Introductory material or tutorials.

Ref --

Reference material, generally not intended to be read straight through or all at once. It may or may not be advanced material.

Guide --

Users' Guide, material that is usually more advanced or detailed than a general overview.

FAQ --

Frequently Asked Questions, questions and answers that are usually short and to the point.

Displaying Document Style or OS Tables: Inform can display either document styles or operating systems with its expanded menus. If you've used Only show documents that pertain to: to select a specific OS, you can select the "Show Document Style Table" Menu Format option to display the document style(s) that apply to each item in an Inform expanded menu. If you're using the default "All Operating Systems", you can select "Show Operating System Table" to display the OSs that each item applies to. In either case, you: (1) make an appropriate OS selection, (2) click the button beside Menu Format, (3) click the box beside either "Show Document Table" or "Show Operating System Table", and (4) click on set options.

Return to Contents

Menu Expansion Options

Inline Expansions: By default, the new Inform treats menu expansions like the old Inform did -- when you click on the title of a menu, that menu is expanded and replaces the previous menu on the screen. But if you select Allow InLine Menu Expansions under Menu Format, the menus you select are expanded in place and duplicate items are removed. After you select this option, you click
on the  to expand a submenu and on the  to contract it back.

Outlines: Outline Format changes the way the Major Topics are displayed. Select Outline Format, click on set options, then click on a major topic; figure 5 is an example. Instead of descending through the menus one layer at a time, you will see the entire hierarchy of any major topic at once. Unlike inline expansions, duplicates are not removed in outlines.
 

Figure 5: The Inform Word Processing, Text Editors, and Printing major topic in Outline Format

Comments are welcome; send them to:
Judith Grobe Sachs, judygs@uic.edu