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Quick User Guide to DAOL

Two versions of the user interface

DAOL provides you with two main views: the article you're reading, and the commentaries about the article. These two views can be either displayed in two separate windows (Overlapping Windows Interface), or in a large single window (Tiled Windows Interface).

Tiled Windows Interface: If you have quite a large display size (e.g. 800x600 resolution upwards), you may wish to take advantage of the Tiled Windows Interface, which is shown below. From left to right are frames containing the Contents, the Article, and the Commentaries:
 
Tiled Windows Interface
 
On a smaller display the frames will be smaller, but you can adjust the vertical divider left or right to see more of the article or the commentaries.

Overlapping Windows Interface: On a smaller screen (640x480 is the minimum), you may want to use the Overlapping Windows Interface, as shown below. The one window contains the Contents+Article, and the second contains the Commentaries window. If using the Overlapping Windows Interface, we recommend that you arrange the Article and Comments windows as illustrated below, so that both are at least partially visible, so that you can (i) easily flip between them with a single click, and (ii) see when their content is being updated.
 
Overlapping Windows Interface
 
The advantage of the Tiled Windows Interface interface is that all information is visible at all times. If you are using the Overlapping Windows Interface, you have to mouse-click on a window in the background to bring it to the front.

Printing...

Printing articles

Printer icon

There is a Printer icon in the lower left corner of the Article Window. Next to it are two options .HTML and .PDF. These allow you to view or download the paper as a web page or as a file in the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Clicking on the links will start up a new window with the webpage or the Adobe Reader viewer. We recomend the PDF version for printing as it will print accurately in the DAOL journal format. You'll need the appropriate Adobe Acrobat Reader for your computer to view and print the PDF version. To down load the paper in HTML or PDF format you will need to 'right click' on the link and select a location to which you wish to save the file.

Printing a frame's contents

To print the contents of a particular frame, click in it (so that your browser knows which Frame you want), and then choose 'Print Frame' from the standard 'File' menu.

Adding a comment

From the open Article Window, there are three simple steps:

  1. Display commentaries in the Comments Window
  2. Find the right place to enter your comment
  3. Enter your comment

We walk through this process below...

1. Display the commentaries in the Comments Window

Comment icon

Clicking on this icon will open the Comments Window for the particular section, figure, table or data etc.

Example extract of a Review Debate

2. Find the right place to enter your comment

Following exactly the same principle as Usenet newsgroups or bulletin boards, the strength of a discussion organised as 'threads' around different topics is that debate relating to a specific topic is clustered together -- as long as reviewers enter their comments in the right place! Inevitably this is never perfect, but please check that you are not obviously re-inventing a topic which is already being discussed. If you see a comment which relates to your interest, then click on it and see if you should feed into the debate there (e.g. you might find that another reviewer has already said exactly what you are thinking -- it will add weight to this point if you add an 'Agree' comment in response to this).
 

3. Enter your comment

When you are satisfied that you are in the right place to insert your comment:

  1. Add Comment

    Click the 'Add Comment' button at the bottom, which will take you to a simple form to complete... 

  2. Give your comment a Title;
  3. Type in your comment, adding URLs if you are linking to another site (these will be made active);
  4. Categorise your comment using the pop-up menu - by default it is unclassified ('None'), but you can indicate if you are explicitly 'Agreeing' or 'Disagreeing' with the comment or aspect of the article you are responding to;
  5. To promote a spirit of discussion, we would encourage you to identify yourself (and if you wish, email and Web address) - but you can of course choose to remain anonymous.
  6. Finally, 'Preview' your comment to check that it will display correctly, and then 'Post' it if you're happy with it (or use your Back button to return to the previsou screen and edit it).
  7. Your Comments Window will then be updated to show your comment. If you selected 'Agree' or 'Disagree', an icon is added which reflects this.

Accessing this Help

Help

Clicking on the 'Help' button in the Article or Comments Window will take you to the relevant point in this Help file.