Intranet SetupIntranet SetupThe following discussion indicates how to proceed in a network configuration if you want to avoid installing the Typequick Client software on each machine and prefer students to access the Typequick products from browsers (although there is no reason why you couldn't have some users accessing via the installed versions of the programs, and some users accessing via web browser).
After completing a browser based installation, you will have the following items in place:
If you cannot provide the conditions above, you will not be able to run Typequick in a browser.
In this discussion we will assume the web server is already operational and that the LAN structure already allows access to a Typequick Server. Given those prerequisites, we need only discuss how the Typequick components should be set up, and how the site's web pages should be structured to allow access to the Typequick application.
In principle the setup described here could also operate over the Internet, but speed issues may make this impractical. An application like Typequick for Students uses a large amount of multi-media content which has to be delivered from the server machine to the workstation. While so much data is routinely transferred around an intranet, over the Internet there may be such long delays that the application becomes unusable. The practicality of use over the Internet will heavily depend on which Typequick application is being used and the bandwidth available between workstations and the sever, and also whether Internet users are able to access the Typequick application via the port set aside for it.
There are two steps involved in setting up the installation. If you want to avoid students having to log into the Typequick application when they access it, there will be a third step. The operations are outlined below.
Before you start the installation you should decide on the location of two folders that will be required during the install process. The first folder is a location where the Typequick web pages (and some other resources) will be placed. These web pages will need to be linked into your web-site. Typically the folder will be put somewhere below the root of the web-site, or in a folder which can be made a virtual folder in the web-site. Run the setup program on the Typequick CD while seated at the web server. When you reach the Choose Install Set panel, highlight the Web-Server button before pressing the Next button. Then, enter the details on the following panels till the installation completes.
This registration process must be done in order for the Web Server installation to function on a Windows 2003 Server. Otherwise the following message will be displayed on the workstation browsers "The tqinstall.properties file was not found. This file needs to be created or a re-install done".
Once the installation has been completed, access to the Typequick application is set up on the web site by adding links to the HTML files which were installed to the web-site installation folder.
There are a set of files for each component that can be run. For instance there are 4 HTML files to run the Typequick Professional product. These files are called lttTQClient640.html, lltTQClient800.html, lttTQClient1024.html and lttTQClient1280.html. These run the same program but look best at different screen resolutions (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x1024 respectively). If the mix of workstations that will access the application are all using the one screen resolution then the link on the web site to this application need only point at just one of these files. If a mix of screen sizes is possible, then it is best to provide the 4 links and let the users chose the one appropriate to their own screen resolution.
In addition, there are a set of HTML files with the word "Auto" in the file name. These also provide access to the the Typequick application, but they are designed to bypass the normal login process that normally occurs when the Typequick application is started. The pages make some assumptions about the workstation environment:
1) Each student has their own login on the network and that the account used to login to the workstation prior to starting the Typequick application via the web page is the student's own login.
2) One file in the Java Runtime on each workstation has been adjusted so that the web page has the right to pick up the students login name from the environment on the workstation. The file that must be altered is "java.policy". The file resides in the lib/security folder under the Java Runtime root folder. The line that must be added to the file is as follows:
permission java.util.PropertyPermission "user.name", "read";
If the student's account does not exist in the Typequick database when a student uses one of these web pages, an account in the Typequick database is silently created with the loginID, fullname and password all set the student's network loginID.
If you do not want automatic account creation, remove the line the web page which has the text "fullname" in it. If the line is removed and the student is not in the Typequick database, the login fails quietly and the student is unable to proceed into the application.
The default arrangement used by the client program when running in a browser is for it to access static resources from the web server via TCP/IP port 80, but to access the TQserver via a different port (default is 4774). For a client browser to successfully access the TQServer, the port between the client workstation and the web server must be open for incoming connections to the web server on the TQServer port (default 4774).
In some situations the TQServer port may have to remain blocked. If this is the case, it is possible to configure the Typequick program to use port 80 on the web server (for IIS web servers only).
To make Typquick use port 80, two entries in the tq.properties file must be altered (NOTE: only change the tq.properties file which is associated with the web client, it defaults to the location C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\Typequick). The entry
AccessServerViaWeb=false
must be changed by altering the default value false to true.
The second change will only be required if the web client part of the Typequick installation did not go into the default location. The line
WebRelayPath=/Typequick/TQRelay.aspx
will need to be altered to reflect the folder selected during the install. For instance, if the web client part of the Typequick install went into D:\WebTQ and inside IIS, this area was assigned to a virtual folder called TQ, then the line should appear as
WebRelayPath=/TQ/TQRelay.aspx
A further change is required in the file TQRelay.aspx. Part way through this file there are two lines as follows:
strTQServer = "192.168.0.1"
iTQServerPort = 4774
These two lines must be adjusted to reflect the IP address and port number actually being used by the TQServer program.
Once these entries are changed, the client browser will access the TQServer program via port 80 on the web server. The result will be for the TQRelay.aspx page to relay any traffic to TQServer by opening its own TCP/IP connection on port 4774. The TQServer program will not know that the client programs are not using port 4774, and will still respond to connection requests on that port if they arrive from any workstations (eg workstations inside the firewall).
If after checking, TQServer does not start, change the line in it's TQ.Properties file that has the text
debug.logging=false
to
debug.logging=true
and restart TQServer. Once the entry is set to "true" TQServer will produce a TQServer.log file which will contain information that can help uncover the problem stopping the program from starting properly.
If the Typequick client program (started by one of the HTML pages such as lttTQClient800.html) fails to load properly, the most likely cause is that the PC on which the browser is running does not have the Java Runtime installed with a high enough version (must be at least 1.4.0). Enable the Java console so that any diagnostics can be seen.
On some PC/Java Runtime combinations, the Typequick client may indicate that it does not have the focus (in the status line at the bottom of the application area). The result will be that the application looks ready but the application will ignore keys the student types. Upgrading the Java Runtime version to at least 1.4.2 generally cures this problem.