Postcards from the Field - Instructions

Instructions for developers of "Postcards from the Field" on Windows to the Universe.

Step-by-Step Instructions (the "Quick Start" version)

1. Go to this web page: www.windows.ucar.edu/people/postcards/instructions/help.html
2. Click the first link, titled "Developer's interface"
3. Log in with the user ID and password that was provided to you
4. Provide your name
   1. Select it from the popup menu by "Your Name:", or...
   2. If your name is not on the list, type it into the field labelled "Enter your name, if it is not on the list:"
5. Type in a location - this will be where your "Postcard" is from - keep it fairly short (less than about 20 characters)
   1. Examples: Antarctic Penninsula, Mexico City, Juan de Fuca Ridge, etc.
6. Select a date (although the form should automatically display today's date)
   1. If the event you are describing in your postcard happened earlier than the day on which you are actually writing the card, and if that is important to depict in your card, you can set the date on the card to reflect that
7. Add an image
   1. Click the "Browse..." button to the right of the "Upload Image:" field
   2. Locate an image file on your computer, then click "Open"
8. Type in image credits. This will generally be the name of the photographer. Examples:
   1. Image courtesy of Ansel Adams.
   2. Image courtesy NCAR.
9. IF there are identifiable people in your image, make sure you have a signed "Model Release Form" for those people. If you do, click the check box beneath the image upload field.
10. Optional: Add a title for your postcard. Type it into the field labelled "Postcard Title:". Keep this under about 50 characters.
11. Type in the body text for your postcard
    1. If you want to keep it very simple, just type in some text.
    2. If you are at least a little familiar with HTML, you can dress up your text with tags. We recommend using just a few: links and bold & italic text. More details on this below.
    3. You can also use the "Link generator" (near the bottom of the form) to create properly-formatted links automatically. The list includes pages on Windows to the Universe that are related to your project, and which you might wish to link to often from your pages (as background references). Select a page from the popup menu; the link to that page will be inserted AT THE VERY END of the body text of your postcard.
       1. If you wan that link to appear somewhere else within your poscard text, you can copy and paste it to a different place in your text.
       2. You can also change the text (that the reader will see) of that link. In doing so, it is important not to change any of the text between the HTML brackets (the "<" and ">" symbols). For example, if you inserted a link to the "Earth" page on Windows to the Universe, but wished the text the reader would see to say "our home planet" instead, you would make the following edit:
          • from <a href="/earth/earth.html" >Earth</a>
          • to <a href="/earth/earth.html" >our home planet </a>
12. When you are finished, click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the page.
13. You will see a screen that tells you that your postcard has been submitted.
    1. Click the "Preview your postcard" link to see your report. Note: images may look bad if you did not crop & scale them. Our staff will process images before final posting of the page.
    2. If something needs to be changed, email Julia Genyuk using the link on this page or jgenyuk@ucar.edu

More Details

Images

Our staff will view and possibly edit (crop and scale as necessary) images you submit. If you want to, you can crop and scale your images as you desire; or you can leave that to us, and just submit raw images from your digital camera. We will do our best to make sure important features of images are retained, based on comments in the text about the image.

If you do process images yourself, you can submit images in landscape (wider than they are tall) or portrait (taller than wide) mode.

• If landscape, we recommend they be no larger than 700 pixels wide by 400 pixels tall.
• If portrait, we recommend no larger than 400 pixels tall (and less than 400 pixels wide)

HTML in Text

The things you are most likely to want to add to your text are links to other web pages. If you want to add a link, for example, to the "Earth's Atmosphere" page on Windows to the Universe:

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Atmosphere/overview.html

The HTML you should insert would look like this:

<a href = "/earth/Atmosphere/overview.html">Earth's Atmosphere</a>

If you want to add a link to a website other than Windows to the Universe (perhaps your home university or your lab), insert HTML like this:

<a href = "http://www.colorado.edu/" target = "_blank">University of Colorado</a>

Other HTML you might want to include:

• Superscripts - insert code like this: cm³ ( will appear as cm³ )
• Subscripts - insert code like this: H₂O ( will appear as H₂O )
• Bold - insert code like this: <b>This text will appear as bold!</b>
• Italics - insert code like this: <i>This text will appear as bold!</i>
• Paragraph breaks - insert code like this: <p>This is a paragraph.</p>

Special characters:

I'm a little unclear about the extent to which the codes for other Greek letters (besides mu) are supported in standard HTML. If you have a gambler's mentality, use the codes listed below. If you are more cautious, I'd suggest spelling out the names of the letters (alpha, beta, etc.). Here's a reference if you need any Greek letters I haven't listed:

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/sgml/entities.html#h-24.3