Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 22:53:34 -0800 (PST)
From: Alex Ma <ama@sdcc13.ucsd.edu>
Reply-To: macat@ucsd.edu
To: Joseph Goguen <goguen@cs.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Re: CSE 171 Website suggestions: javascript last modified
In-Reply-To: <200001220500.VAA06438@awk.ucsd.edu>

The javascript solution isn't supposed to get either of the pages to
reload automatically, the best it does is escapes any cached data and
returns the true last-modified date that the server has.  It'd be up to
the user to notice if there's been a newer version since he last checked.
On one hand, its not a really intuitive solution because the date
presented is independent of the page presented...the better (yet unwieldy)
solution would include hardcoding the last-updated as well as including
the javascript so discrepancies can be compared between cached and real
versions. 

oh well..better than nothing, until something better is found.
alex

Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2000 11:00:41 -0800
From: Jim Hollan <hollan@cogsci.ucsd.edu>
To: dcog-hci@hci.ucsd.edu, building@cogsci.ucsd.edu
Subject: Talk by Paul Maglio on Attentive User Interfaces


Paul will talk in our lab meeting Wednesday at 2PM. All are welcome.

Jim

--------------------
Attentive User Interfaces

Paul P. Maglio
IBM Almaden Research Center

Attentive systems pay attention to what users do so they can attend to what
users need.  Such systems track user behavior, model user interests, and
anticipate user desires and actions.  Because the general class of
attentive systems is broad -- ranging from human butlers to web sites that
profile users -- my focus has generally been on attentive information
systems, which observe user actions with information resources, model user
information states, and suggest information that might be helpful to users.
In attempting to create such systems, I have investigated ways in which
people understand and interact with information.   In this talk, I will
survey some recent projects aimed at (1) understanding how people
conceptualize information spaces, such as the World Wide Web; (2)
determining appropriate methods for displaying peripheral information; and
(3) exploring users' mental models of verbal interaction with information
displays.

Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 16:29:43 -0800 (PST)
From: Joseph Goguen <goguen@cs.ucsd.edu>
To: ama@ucsd.edu
In-reply-to: <4.1.20000121123615.00a1e710@sdcc13.ucsd.edu> (message from Alex
	Ma on Fri, 21 Jan 2000 12:59:00 -0800)
Subject: Re: CSE 171 Website suggestions: homework AND last modified

thanks for those good suggestions.  ive reversed the order of items, put in
the javascript date, and the meta element.  although my experiments show that
these do not always cause netscape to reload pages automatically, they should
still be of some help.

  -- joseph

|X-Sender: ama@sdcc13.ucsd.edu
|Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 12:59:00 -0800
|From: Alex Ma <ama@ucsd.edu>
|
|Prof. Goguen,
|	Is it possible for you to post the homeworks in reverse chronological
|order with most recent at the top rather than the bottom?  I'm not sure if
|its violating some user design rules or anything but from my standpoint as
|a user it's far easier to both print just the first page of the homeworks
|as well as to glance at the page and immediately see the most recent homework.
|
|Also, it was mentioned in class that the page updates itself frequently,
|and it would be great if you could stick in the META TAG:
|
|<META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="Wed, 19 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT">
| or
|<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
|
|but that doesn't always work.  A javascript trick would be using this
|snippet of code in addition to or in place of the "last modified" part
|which I assume you manually update:
|<SCRIPT>
|<!--
|  document.write("last modified: ");
|  document.write(document.lastModified);
|//  -->
|</SCRIPT>
|
|This way Javascript is pulling the last modified from the actual file, run
|everytime the page is loaded regardless of whether or not it's cached.
|Everytime the file is touched or edited, the output of
|document.lastModified will reflect the change, including even the time of
|the most recent copy.  Just a suggestion you might work with.  Biggest
|disadvantage might be time formatting and non-compliance from nonjavascript
|browsers.
|
|
|______________________________
|Alex Ma <macat@ucsd.edu>
|http://sdcc13.ucsd.edu/~ama

The book I mentioned in class today is Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. He's the author of the more widely known sci-fi novel, Snow Crash, which is also excellent and bears reading if you like this sort of thing. There's a web page with some interviews with the author, and reviews of his books at http://www.scifi.com/pulp/fw/stephenson/index.html.