To navigate through this course, you simply click one of the active
"buttons" on your current web page to go to another web page. Examples
of such buttons are given below. (In early drafts, many "buttons"
will be just hypertext links, usually indicated by your browser
with underlining and/or a different color.)
Microsoft Windows Taskbar
The Microsoft Windows Taskbar is the toolbar normally located at the
very bottom of your screen, containing the Start button in the
lower left corner of your screen. (Other operating systems will have
some analogous way to access programs, but I will not try to discuss
them.) Near the middle of this Taskbar are buttons for every window
of every application that you have opened (including a button for the window
you are currently reading). By clicking the various buttons on this
Taskbar you can toggle among any of your previously opened windows.
You can easily leave the current window, perform some other task in some
other window, and then return to this same window when you have finished
with the other task. If you have two or more browser windows open at the
same time, you can easily toggle back and forth between them by clicking
the appropriate buttons on the Taskbar.
Browser Buttons
The following buttons, commonly found near the top of your browser window,
may be useful in this course:
- BACK - allows you to go back to the previously viewed page.
- FORWARD - allows you to go forward again through the sequence
of recently visited pages, after you have backed up.
- RELOAD or REFRESH - allows you to update the screen (in
case changes have occurred since your computer most recently checked it).
- STOP - allows you to stop loading the page (in case it takes too
long, or you realize it's the wrong page for what you wanted).
- HOME - allows you to leave the present page and return to the page
that opens when you start your browser.
Internal Navigation
Most of the links in this course's pages branch to other pages inside
the course. Most pages will have buttons (or links) for the following
functions, which we expect will be useful:
- RETURN PATH - At the top and bottom of this Navigation page
are the two buttons E-M Home Page/Introduction which specify the return path back
down the current branch of the tree. These buttons allow you to return
back to the previous Introduction page, or all the way back to the
Electromagnetic Field Theory home page, without having to back up
successively through all the other pages you have viewed.
- NEXT - At the top of this page (below the return path buttons, to
the left of the page title) and repeated at the bottom of this page
(boxed in above the return path buttons) is a button labeled Next. Normally this is the location of a list
of buttons that link the current page with the other pages you may want
to see next. The page-top list is an abbreviated version of the links
while the bottom list includes more descriptive information. If your
current page contains no NEXT buttons, you know that this page is at
the end of a branch of the tree. For example, if you click the
Next button on this page you will go to such
a page.
- IMBEDDED BUTTONS - Buttons imbedded within the text allow you
to obtain background information, explore concrete examples, see visual
illustrations, read discussion questions, practice solving problems,
and/or take sample quizzes in order to obtain a better understanding of
the subject. Some NEXT-type buttons are also imbedded
in the text so you can branch immediately to those topics when they are
first encountered rather than having to wait until later to view them
or else having to scroll to the top or bottom of the page.
External Navigation
Some of the links in this course branch to pages outside the course.
In principle, these branches open the door to the whole Internet as a
source of information for the course. In practice, they allow efficient
enrichment of the course by branching directly to certain specialized
information sources found on the Internet. At first, there will probably
be few of these.
A new window should always open when this course branches to an
external site. Since the original window remains unchanged, you can
easily return to the course at any time simply by closing the new window.
In fact, you can toggle back and forth between the external site and the
course itself simply by clicking the appropriate buttons on the Microsoft
Windows Taskbar at the bottom of your screen. This allows you to perform
tasks at the external site while following a set of instructions specified
in the course. In this case, you may want to reduce both windows (by clicking
the Restore button near the upper right corner of the appropriate window),
size them (by dragging a corner of the window), and place them side by
side on your screen (by dragging the title bar at the top of the window).
Then you can toggle back and forth between windows by simply clicking the
appropriate window. And you can return to the dedicated, full-screen
version of the course by closing the external window or by maximizing the
course window (by clicking the Maximize button near the upper right corner
of the window).
| Next - Next page of Navigation
information. |
E-M Home Page/Introduction/
This page adapted with permission from the similar page
constructed by Dr. Lionel D. Hewett for his course
Modern
Physics 1.