Quick Index: Required Software  •  Viewing  •  Navigation  •  Operating Embedded Plug-ins and Programs  •  Videos  •  Printing

Required Software

The following free software products are needed to fully view all features of this document:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or later. Other browsers may work satisfactorily, however this document was programmed to take advantage of several specific features that Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or later offers.
• Macromedia Flash Player 7 or later. Animation, movies and menus are written in Macromedia Flash (.swf files). You can have the VSL automatically tell you what Flash Player you have.  To install the Flash Player 7 from the CD, view the "readme.txt" file on the CD for instructions.
• Adobe Acrobat Viewer 6 or later. Several Adobe Acrobat formatted documents (.pdf) are included as supplemental information.

         

Viewing

The Virtual Superpave Laboratory is best viewed with a screen size of 1024x768 or larger. The VSL will automatically size your browser viewing window to 1024x768 upon launch of the program.  Smaller screen sizes will work but will also cut off portions of the viewing area and cause you to scroll unnecessarily on many pages.  Viewing areas larger than 1024x768 are fine. 

How to resize your screen:

1. In Windows, go to "Control Panel". This can be accessed by clicking the "Start" button then selecting "Control Panel" or right clicking on the desktop.
2. In the "Control Panel" select "Display".
3. In "Display" select the "Settings" tab.
4. Under "screen resolution" move the slide bar until it reads at least "1024 by 768" below the slide bar.
5. Click "OK". Your screen may go black for a moment - this is fine. It will turn back on again at the new screen size. A window will appear saying, "Your desktop has been reconfigured. Do you want to keep these settings?" and a timer will be counting down in this window. Click "OK" to keep the new settings.

Navigation

The Virtual Superpave Laboratory is designed for viewing in a web browser (specifically, Internet Explorer 5.0 or later). Thus, navigation through the document is identical to web page navigation. The document uses basic browser functions (such as "back" and "forward") and hypertext links to allow you to move between pages. Some specific navigation features are:

The top navigation menu (see below) are the same for each section and help you navigate between the larger topics.  

Each page also contains a standard navigation near the upper right-hand side of the screen to help you do the following:

• Search: allows searching of the entire document
• Index: an index of all the pages contained in the VSL
• Glossary: access to the document's glossary
• References: list of all references used in a specific Module
• Help: This page

Finally, each topic has a title in all-capital letter under the top navigation menu on the left side.  Underneath this topic title there are links to the pages addressing the topic. 

Operating Embedded Plug-ins and Programs

This document contains several embedded plug-ins (e.g., Flash Player and Adobe Acrobat Reader) that are common to many web pages. All the software to run these programs is free and the appropriate download locations are listed in the Required Software section of this page. The download web sites give detailed instructions on how to install/operate their software.
Other programs contained within this document are self-running and can be started by either clicking on their appropriate link or double-clicking on their .exe file on the CD-ROM.

Videos

Videos in this document are actually Flash MX files that will run on the Flash Player 7 or later plug-in. You do not need Windows Media Player or any other video player plug-in. If the video does not work, most likely you have an older version of the free Flash Player or you do not have a Flash Player plug-in installed (download location is in the Required Software section of this page).

Printing

Any page can be printed out by simply using your browser's print command.  Usually, there is an icon for this on the standard buttons tool bar. You can also print by selecting File » Print.  For pages that contain written content, the VSL will then print out the text from the page and format it reasonably well for reading.  The VSL cannot print media (pictures, videos, animations) with the page.  Outline pages will print out as-is, while pop-up pages (usually they show graphs, maps or tables) have a "print this page" link on the page if they are printable.