Marken online demos

CSGnet Archive CSG2001
1

{From Samuel Saunders 14 November 2001: 21:45 MST]

I have been using Rick Marken's Java demos with my PCT oriented General
Psychology class this semester. They have been a valuable resource, and are
very effective. Unfortunately, there are problems with some of the demos
with some combinations of browser and OS. Most of the students have used
the college labs, with Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer. In some cases,
students missed a class, had to leave early, or for some other reason needed
to use computers at home. Some students found that they had not understood
the demos as well as they thought, and needed to run them again in the
process of writing their analyses of each demo. In short, there were
several times when demos worked in one place and not in another. I
contacted Rick, and he is willing for me to try to track down these
problems. My students and I will be compiling a problem list for the
combinations of OS and browser that we have available. We would appreciate
data from anyone out on the net to add to our data base. The first step
will be to compile a problem list, which will be made available to potential
users. The next step will be to use the information to try to eliminate the
problems.

Any input will be appreciated.

Samuel

···

--
Samuel Spence Saunders, Ph.D. | If man chooses oblivion, he can go right
                                > on leaving his fate to political leaders.
ssaunders@olc.edu | If he chooses Utopia, he must initiate an
                                > enormous educational campaign-immediately
                                > R. Buckminster Fuller

2

[From Rick Marken (2001.11.15.0915)]

Samuel Saunders (14 November 2001: 21:45 MST) --

I have been using Rick Marken's Java demos with my PCT oriented General
Psychology class this semester. ...In short, there were several times when
demos worked in one place and not in another. I contacted Rick, and he is
willing for me to try to track down these problems. My students and I will
be compiling a problem list for the combinations of OS and browser that
we have available. We would appreciate data from anyone out on the net to
add to our data base.

Any input will be appreciated.

I want to thank you again for doing this, Samuel. Let me be the first to give
you some input.

I did a quick test on my Mac(s) -- G4 Cube and Powerbook , both running OS
9.0.4 -- and on my Laptop PC -- Dell Latitude Running Windows 2000. The result
appears to be this:

All demos work (to some extent; see below) on all machines in both Netscape and
Explorer. However, the demos interfere with each other in Netscape (on all
machines) but don't interfere with each other in Explorer (on all machines) .
By interfere I mean this: after you complete one demo in Netscape and go to run
another, the other will run but it acts flaky. It's as though Java fails to
stop some process from the previous demo. Anyway, the result is if you run,
say, the "Nature of Control" demo and then go to the "S-R vs Control" demo, the
mouse is not read properly in the latter. This only happens in Netscape; not in
Explorer. So it results from the way Java is implemented in the browser. You
can eliminate the interference problem in Netscape by quitting the browser
after completing a demo and then restarting the browser and going to the next
demo. Pretty clunky solution. Thus, for classroom purposes, I would suggest
always using Explorer. The only "catch" with Explorer is that it sometimes
turns the cursor into a circular "wait" icon, instead of an arrow. The best
thing for me to do would be to make the cursor disappear but I've found no way
to do that in Java. So if the kids run the demos in Explorer you should warn
them that the cursor may appear as a "wait" icon.

One of the demos ("Hierarchical Behavior of Perception") doesn't work well in
any browser if it's run on a fairly fast machine (almost any machine is now
faster than the one I wrote it on). This demo depends on timing and the Java
code is supposed to display the figures in the demo for a fixed number of
milliseconds (the number determined by the code statement). But, in fact, the
time of display obviously depends on processor speed. The result is that the
"fast" display speed is way too fast. On my machines you can do the "medium"
and "slow" display speeds but then the msec labels on the resulting graphs are
wrong.

I will put the source code for all the demos up on the net (at the demos site)
ASAP so that anyone with Java skills can try to improve them (it should be a
piece of cake).

Thanks again.

Best regards

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken, Ph.D.
The RAND Corporation
PO Box 2138
1700 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138
Tel: 310-393-0411 x7971
Fax: 310-451-7018
E-mail: rmarken@rand.org