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At the start of this academic year, Seebeck Computer Center created e-mail accounts on the bama.ua.edu mail and web server for all new students, including freshmen, transfer, and graduate students. Some of those students have not yet activated their accounts. To activate an account, students should take their valid ACT card to the Helpdesk in A203 Gordon Palmer. These accounts may be used for e-mail, web page space, dialup authentication, and applications on bama.ua.edu. All accounts not activated by May 1 will be deleted and removed from the e-mail directory. Any other faculty, staff or student who wants an account of this type may request one at the Helpdesk by presenting a valid ACT card.
Even though it is only February, it's not too soon to start thinking about income taxes. And if you are one of those who waits until the last minute, then has to run to the IRS office to get some special form you need, remember that the local (Tuscaloosa) IRS office has closed. But now while you are sitting at home worrying over your taxes, you can run right to your home computer to pick up that special form or publication you need. The main IRS web address is http://www.irs.ustreas.gov and from there you can click your way to forms, publications and tax information.
When you get to the forms and publications page, you will find that you have a choice of file types. Your primary choices are PDF, PCL, and Postscript. The files of type PCL (printer control language) and Postscript are print files. To print them, you will need to have a printer that supports that type of file, and you will follow the instructions for printing that come with the file. Note that many 'home' printers, like the Desk Jet printers from HP, use the PCL language. You will only be able to look at these files before you print them if you have appropriate software for looking at print files of the selected type.
Portable Document Format (PDF) is the more useful format IF you have the Adobe Acrobat Reader software necessary for using files of this type. The IRS web site includes a link for obtaining this software. Using Acrobat Reader, you can look at, read, page through, and print the PDF files. For example, if you download a very large publication, and you really only need to see part of it, Acrobat will let you move to the part you need, read it on the screen, or select only the needed pages to print. If you don't have Acrobat Reader, this might be a good time to get it, since it can be a very useful tool for obtaining information from the web.
The State of Alabama also has tax forms on the web. The state forms are only available in PDF format. To find these forms, go to http://www.ador.state.al.us the web site of the Alabama Department of Revenue. The pages on tax forms include information on obtaining, installing and using Adobe Acrobat Reader to read and print the tax forms.
For more information on PDF and Acrobat Reader, visit the Adobe web site at http://www.adobe.com and select the link to Get Acrobat Reader.
Question: I want all the students in my class to have an e-mail account and use e-mail. Can I get some kind of class accounts set up for these students?
Answer: I think you will find that many of your students already have an e-mail account. For those students who do not have an account, they need only take their ACT card to the Helpdesk (A203 Gordon Palmer) and make the request. If they are freshmen we have already set up accounts for them on the e-mail server bama.ua.edu, and they will just have to pick up their account information. For all other students (as well as faculty and staff), we will be happy to set up an account for them on bama.ua.edu. Or course, an account of this type is not just an e-mail account, but can also house your web home page, serve as your authentication account when using the University's dialup service, and give you access to all the other applications on bama.ua.edu.
In the past, we sometimes set up accounts called 'class accounts', which were created specifically for a class and were deleted at the end of the class. In general, there is now no need to set up such an account. Nearly everyone who gets an account for a class wants to keep it after the class is over. Also note, if you think your students may need accounts on UA1VM, you should first check with the Helpdesk to find out what your other options are. UA1VM is in the process of being replaced. Most applications that used to be on UA1VM are now available either in a PC setting or on the server bama.ua.edu. Faculty and staff please note: If you need an account for e-mail or for a web site, you should request that account on bama.ua.edu, and NOT on UA1VM.
NOTE: "Ask SUN" is a regular feature of Seebeck User News. For more information about any question featured here, or to ask about something which might be answered here, send e-mail to Help.Desk@mail.ua.edu
Remember in our first web lesson, we called our file firstweb.htm. We picked firstweb because (at least in that lesson) it was our first web file, and the default extension which MS Word gave it was htm. Htm is usually used as the extension on files that are written in HTML. (Remember from last time, HTML is the command language of web pages.) Most likely you will be creating your web files on a PC, and the file name will include a standard 3-character extension. There are other extensions that indicate different types of files you might find on a web site. For example, gif is a type of graphics file, jpg is another type of graphics file, wav and mid are different types of sound files, and mov is often used for Quicktime movies (audio and/or video). Usually, the program you use to create a file will pick the appropriate extension for the file, and most people just use that extension. While some servers may allow you to store your files using other extensions, the browser that someone is going to use to look at those files might use the extension to help it determine how to read the files, so you might as well use the usual extension.
There is one special file name for which you may need to change the extension. The filename index.html has a special meaning for most web servers. It is usually the first or primary file on a website, the file that is loaded by default if no filename has been specified. Some PC servers may allow you to call the file index.htm, using the 3-character extension, but the bama.ua.edu server wants the file to be called index.html using the 4-character extension as shown (and all lower case). When you upload the file to your bama account using your ftp program, you can specify the name you want it to have as part of the upload process. Be sure to specify the html extension for your index file.
When a browser asks for a specific web site, if the request includes a file name, the server will try to send the file requested. If the request doesn't include a file name, the server will look for a file called index.html. If there is no file called index.html, some servers will just create an index (list) of the files they find and send the list, and some servers will treat it as an error. If you try to create your first web site, and your first page does not load as expected, it may be because you have not correctly named your index.html file.
For example, when you use your browser to request the campus home page http://www.ua.edu you are not specifying a filename, so the index.html file from that site is loaded. When you click on the box labeled About The University, you are requesting the file about.htm. You could load that page directly by requesting the site http://www.ua.edu/about.htm. (Editor's note: The UA home page was redesigned in May 2000, making this section incorrect.)
This is the second in a series of articles on simple web page concepts. The next article will be about server and account names.