The MOA2 tools, which have been developed by Rick Beaubien, are now ready
for testing. You can find instructions for downloading the plug in and
firing up the tools from the MOA2 project page:
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/MOA2
Can I ask that you all take a few minutes and try to install the plug in
and run the tools via your browsers? You should try this on a _fairly_
speedy machine with a good amount of memory. We would like feedback on our
instructions and on the tools themselves. Rick will send occasional
updates to let us know when the tool is being upgraded, or when it will be
down (Right Rick?).
Rick says that you should try running the tools on "Netscape Navigator
rather than Internet Explorer (I would recommend version 4 or 4.5. I have
tested it on both versions). This is due to a bug in JDK1.2 that Sun
claims already to have fixed, but the fix has not yet been made public. The
bug often (but not always) causes IE to crash on loading the applet."
Right now there are two objects loaded into the database, and we expect to
have many more in the near future, but these will all be Berkeley objects.
We very much look forward to loading objects from other institutions into
the testbed -- it's a relatively straightforward process to re-produce MOA2
objects from the database, so if you have some items ready now, and others
later, we would like to have anything you do have sooner rather than later.
IMG will be gearing up to do evaluation work (and helping us as
participants get prepared to assist with evaluations) and the tools/testbed
will be an important part of this process.
I will be contacting you individually to see how close you are to having
objects to place in the testbed.
We are having lovely spring weather here in Berkeley, and hope that you
around the country are enjoying the same.
Merrilee