# About Psychlotron

Author | Aidan Sammons asammons@wortech.ac.uk
Copyright Information | This software may be used free of charge for educational purposes as long as it is kept unchanged. Scripts and script portions may be reused as long as they are credited in the code to the original author. NB. See www.walterzorn.com for copyright and usage information regarding WZ Drag&Drop Scripts.
History | Psychlotron was written between November 2004 and March 2005 as an experiment in resource-based learning that got way out of hand. I abandoned it before my partner left me out of neglect, so it's nowhere near as ambitious as originally planned, and has a few minor but annoying bugs in it.Major RewritesV1.0 Original version. Basic decisions about content, interface and interactivity made. Abandoned because interface implementation used a crazy number of large files & was impractical for use over a dial-up connection.v1.1 Better interface. Rewrote the navigation interface to work faster and with smaller files. Added some of the interactive demonstrations & some bells & whistles. First version to use WZ Drag&Drop. Abandoned because of unwieldy code and because of usability issues arising from overall presentation.V1.2 Complete rewrite from scratch making much better use of CSS and DHTML because I'd learned a bit more about these by then and my old code was rubbish. Also sorted out general style to make it easier to use. Got rid of some of the bells and whistles, and added a new front end.
Software | Psychlotron was written in HTML, DHTML and JavaScript 1.2ish using MS Notepad and MS Internet Explorer 6 to check the scripts. WYSIWYG web editors produce nasty code and are strictly for the soft. So there.
Graphics | All graphics for Psychlotron were produced using Ultimate Paint 2.86, a great little picture editor from JTL Development. Download a trial copy from www.ultimatepaint.com A licence for the full version costs about £20 and you won't be disappointed.
Interactivity | Some of the interactive scripts in this package use WZ Drag&Drop Scripts, available from www.walterzorn.com. This is a set of cross-browser scripts that can be added to any web page and which give you the kinds of drag/drop interactivity and animation features usually associated with Flash or Shockwave without the need for browser plug-ins or excruciating download times over a dial-up connection, as long as the browser supports scripting and the W3CDOM. It's all done using DHTML, but since Walter Z's done all the hard work, there's no tedious mucking about with the DOM on your part. Walter Zorn bestrides the scripting world like a colossus, and I salute him.
Hardware | Psychlotron was written on a Toshiba Satellite running Windows XP, (it's got a nice big telly but is still fairly portable) and tested on a Sony Vaio PCG FX101 (an oldie, but a goody) running Windows ME for backwards compatibility.
Books | The following books were helpful in learning the scripting techniques necessary to make Psychlotron work and are recommended:'How to do Everything with HTML' by J.H.Pence (Osborne/McGraw-Hill)'JavaScript for the World Wide Web' by T.Negrino & D.Smith (Visual Quickstart Guides)
Web Sites | A number of web sites supplied useful scripting tips, especially with DHTML:javascriptworld.com javascriptkit.com javascript.com webreference.com