Supporting communications
*To provide asynchronous communications, I created “mail-to” links in HTML that would launch the user’s email software and automatically insert addressing information into the message. I generally placed these e-mail links at the bottom of each Web page.
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*I found (free) Web-based sources for using scripts to support internal e-mail transmission (without requiring the user’s email client software), I created pages for providing more extensive and formatted feedback via email, such as on the Contacts page on my site (achieved through the use of JavaScript code). I also use JavaScript public domain code (http://javascript.internet.com/) for scrolling banners, animation, etc.
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*Web-based discussion or bulletin-board software provides a convenient way to support online discussion. For the e-learning discussion forums on the Program House site, I use the open-source (free) YaBB discussion software (http://www.yabbforum.com).
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*For the basic discussion needs within the individual course sites (available via the Projects page on my site), I used free Web-based Bulletin Board software (CGI/Perl) from Matt's Script Archive at http://www.scriptarchive.com/.
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*For synchronous text-based communication, I used a free Java-based chat applet (and the public IRC chat server it accesses) on the Chat page on my site.
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