Session 1: Week 1/2

This first several lab sessions are concerned simply with introducing general purpose hardware and software tools which will be used in the remainder of the course. Given that you are reading these notes, you have successfully completed the first phase of the exercise!

Stop at this point and read back over what you have written in your logbook. Make sure you have a reasonably complete record of what you have done so far (so that, if necessary, you could redo it without further guidance).

In particular you should have some record of:

• The rules and timetable applying to users of the CAE laboratory.

• The component physical parts of the PCs - their names and functions.

• The procedure for "booting up" a PC. In particular you should have carefully read the notice regarding acceptable use of the School's computer facilities.

• How to format a new diskette from the MS-DOS command level.

• How to check the integrity of a diskette from the MS-DOS command level.

• How to initialise a diskette as a Netscape Configuration diskette from the MS-DOS command level.

• How to start up the MS-Windows environment.

• How to use the MS-Windows online Help facility, including searching and using hypertext links.

• How to start up the MS-Windows introductory tutorial. How to move, minimize, maximize, and otherwise resize windows. How to launch applications.

• How to start Netscape, and use hypermedia links. How does navigating with Netscape differ from using MS-Windows Help?

If your logbook fails to mention any of these things, take time now to make some additional notes.

At this stage you have created and are using a Netscape Configuration Diskette. You should always insert this diskette before starting up a Netscape session. IMPORTANT: Do not remove it again until your Netscape session is over, and the diskette light has gone off. This configuration diskette will hold personal information about your use of Netscape. For example, you can record a "bookmark" file, identifying nodes that you have visited, making it easy to revisit them.

For now, we want to configure Netscape to know your name and email address - so that, if you originate email from within Netscape, you will automatically be identified as the author. Follow these steps, within Netscape:

• Drop down the Options menu.

• Select Preferences.

• Select the Mail and News "tab".

• Fill in the fields labelled Your Name and Your Email. Your email address will be something like astudent@ugmail.eeng.dcu.ie, but instead of astudent you have a username consisting of your first initial followed by your surname, up to a maximum of 8 characters in total. Do not use any spaces or punctuation, and keep it all in lower case.

• Select OK.

Now, find out (using Netscape) as much as you can about the Electronic Mailing List facility operated by the School of Electronic Engineering. In particular, read the information about the SOFTENG1-95 list. Check out the archives.

Finally: compose a short message (one paragraph) which summarises your opinion of this course (Software Engineering 1) so far. Mail this message to "SOFTENG1-95@mjmail.eeng.dcu.ie".

Check the archives again to see that your message has been archived successfully. Note that, due to a defect in Netscape you may have to "clear the caches", before your message will become visible in the index. To do this, drop down the Options menu, and select Preferences again. Select the Cache and Network tab. Click on Clear Memory Cache Now. You will be asked to verify this - click on OK. Similarly, clear the disk cache. Click on OK again to exit the Preferences dialog. The archive index will be automatically reloaded and is now guaranteed to be up to date. If your message is still not showing up, then something has gone wrong.

If your message is now visible - congratulations: you have successfully completed the first lab exercise!