Stacks delivered via the web?

[Signe Marie Sanne]

Hello Judy,
I have used stacks delivered via the web to various students for more 
than a year, and I must admit that each time I'm looking at the 
downloading I still feel lucky to how discovered this genial solution 
and think you should go for it. In previous years when I saw 
descriptions of it I did not understand all the things which had to 
be done to implement it (perhaps it was me not being a native 
speaker, or perhaps the descriptions were to computerese for me as a 
former lecturer in Italian). I shall try to explain it in simple and 
plain words how it is done:

A link on an ordinary web page downloads a stack (which Troy Rollins 
calls a "stub" and Sivakatirswami earlier has called a portal stack, 
I tend to call it a particular kind of net browser). This stack has 
to be in standalone format for each platform. When compressed their 
size is 1.2 and 1.6 MB. This stack is to reside permanently on the 
student's harddisk.

In the stack there are menus (in my case in the form of buttons) 
which, when clicked, download and open the various educational 
programs. These programs are read into memory and leaves no trace on 
the student's harddisk (not even in the cache folder as far as I 
know).

The various educational programs are very easy to maintain: each time 
I make a change on whatever platform, I just upload the stack to the 
server (no need to make platform specific versions before uploading).

See Richard Herz' excellent explanation and examples: 
http://mechanics.ucsd.edu/research/herz/web_24/.

I have also made a stack to show uploading/downloading, compression, 
proxy handling etc.: 
http://www.runrev.com/revolution/developers/developerdownloads/usercontributions.html. 
It is called "Stacks Down - A Stack uploader & downloader".

Please feel free to ask further questions.
-- 

1. amanuensis Signe Marie Sanne      e-mail: signe.sanne at roman.uib.no
Romansk Institutt                            tel:  +47 55 58 21 27
Oysteins gt. 1
5007 Bergen         	 http://www.hf.uib.no/hfolk/mlab/default.html
Norway