Hyperglossary Generating Program with Wiki Content and Modifiable JavaScript Automated Search Functionality.

During the Spring 2006 Confchem Conference on Web Based Applications in Chemical Education Rob Toreki presented a paper on theMSDS hyperglossary, which through the MSDS-Demystifier allowed users to embed hyperlinks to the MSDS hyperglossary in web pages and digital text documents.  This hyperglossary is associated with chemical safety and each of these links sends you to a specific HTML page devoted to the term linked.  We decided to create a wiki based hyperglossary generating program modeled after Dr. Toreki's hyperglossary where multiple authors could add to the content.  This hyperglossary is fundamentally different than Dr. Toreki's in that it uses embedded div content to present information within the webpage dynamically, and does not link to the content through HTML, but uses AJAX to gather the data from the server (behind the scenes) and present the information on the web page using javascript.   This was done with no minor amount of input from Bob Hanson. He introduced us to AJAX and helped us come to realize that we could embed into our documents a new type of link, which for lack of a better word we will call a "JavaScript Automated Search " (JAS) Link. From the user's perspective, all you need to do is highlight a word and up pops a modified search, say a Google's definition search, on the word or words highlighted.  Thus every term in the text becomes a link, with some terms containing two links (highlight for JAS and click for HTML or AJAX).  

The hyperglossary is a dynamic web site with two fundamentally different ways to access it; client (read only) which is open to the public, and administrative (read/write) requiring a login.  We have created 3 types of password protected administrative access  (master, full and restricted).  As a description of this site can get rather long and drawn out we have created a series of screen-capture animations to provide you a tour of this program. 

The direct link to the hyperglossary is http://144.167.128.82:82/hyperglossary , which takes you to the server we are running it from. From this page you can choose any hyperglossary on that server with the drop-down box (default is chemistry) and clicking View Account Hyperglossary, or you can log in administratively.  There are four forms for submitting material to the hyperglossary, the first two allow you to run content through the hyperglossary, the second two allow you to communicate with the administrators and suggest words.  The document submission form strips all intrinsic HTML tags, formatting and pictures, but allows you to cut and paste digital text documents like MS Word and Word Perfect.  The web page submission form allows you paste in a web page's URL. This form maintains images, links and HTML code, but will not accept a password protected page.  At the bottom of the page are the remaining two forms where you can request terms be added to the hyperglossary, and give administrators a feel for your academic level.

When a page is submitted, javascript code is placed in the document which performs three tasks.  The first defines the type of JAS link to be embedded into the document.  Popup blockers must be disabled for the JAS links to work as you are opening a new web page. The second inserts the AJAX hyperglossary links into the document and these are not stopped by popup blockers as you never leave the web page. The third is an acknowledgment statement indicating the document is being run through the hyperglossary.  At the time of this writing only two words are in the general chemistry hyperglossary, congenital and proton.  To the best of our knowledge the AJAX hyperglossary links work with Safari, Firefox, Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers.  The JAS links do not work on Safari but do work on Firefox, Netscape and Internet Explorer. If a document contains an HTML hyperlinked term that is also in the hyperglossary, the document's intrinsic HTML link takes precedence. We have thought about using a "hover" command for the AJAX link (allowing one word to have three links) but figured that would drive people crazy as leaving the mouse over an arbitrary word would activate the hyperglossary.

We have also created a table (below) that you can place in your own web page which allows you to submit material to a specific hyperglossary (the general chemistry in this case). This way you do not have to go to our site, pick a hyperglossary and then run it. Please note, at the time of the writing of this paper we only have two words in the hyperglossary (proton and congenital), as we are presenting a wiki hyperglossary generating program and not a wiki hyperglossary. So if you want to test the AJAX hyperglossary links you need to paste (or type) content with one of those two words into the document form or a URL for a web page that has those terms into the web page submission form. At the time of this writing the general chemistry hyperglossary precedes the Google JAS search with the term "definition:".

Only one person has login access to the master administrative page and this is the person who runs the server where the PHP script and MySQL database is housed.  This person can create multiple hyperglossary accounts.  As this is password protected we have created a video to show you the simplicity of this site.

Full administrative access not only allows you to add content but also define what the hyperglossary looks like and how it functions. Multiple users can have full administrative access to a hyperglossary.  In addition to all the utilities a person with restricted access has, a person with full administrative access can perform the following tasks.

1. Add Users (with full or restricted access) and create user profiles (like password and email address).  Note, when a client links onto a hyperglossary-linked term the content of that term is displayed along with some information on the person who initially created the term (like name, title, institution).  The idea here is to give the client an idea of who wrote the content, but there is a technical shortcoming here in that it is not practical to show a history of all wiki edits to the client (although they are available to administrators).

    

2. Adjust JAS Settings< >Turn on/off JAS functionality
   

   Determine JAS link characteristics like color, underline, italics, bold

   Insert pre-text into a search (like Google's Definition:){C}

   Insert post-text into a search (narrowing the hits){C}

   Add/Arrange Fields for Terms in the Hyperglossary. We are following the format developed by Dr.Toreki where he had 5 sections (data fields in our case) in his MSDS hyperglossary; Definition, Further Information, Books Available, MSDS Relevance and Further Reading.

Allows multiple users to use the web to add content to the hyperglossary in a wiki fashion.  They can perform the following tasks

1. Add 1-20 new words at a time

    

2. Edit content fields of existing words.

    

3. Delete words

    

4. View Words with the following sort options< >Word (alphabetical){C}
   

   User name{C}

   Author name{C}

   Title{C}

   Institution{C}

   Count (how many times a word was found in a page{C}

   Views (how many times a client looked up a word{C}

   Order submitted{C}

   View History of each word's edits to see who modified what and when.