The following FAQs focus on using the Virtual Hospital. Because our users access the Virtual Hospital with a variety of web browsers, we are unable to definitively answer questions about browser software and helper applications. Our Help pages offer advice about navigating a web page using a graphical browser, and how to locate helper applications. For comprehensive and updated FAQs on the World Wide Web, try World Wide Web FAQs.
Contents
What is a URL?
URL stands for "Uniform Resource Locator." A URL is the address for a resource on the Internet. It may be the address for a web server's home page or another file on the server. Our URL is: http://ww.vh.org/. The first part of the URL, before the colon, specifies the access method. Subsequent parts define the server and who operates it, and appended to that might be the path to a file on the server: /Help/VHfaqs.html. Knowing the URL of a server or file is useful for setting bookmarks to resources you wish to return to. URLs are "case sensitive," meaning they must be entered with the appropriate upper-case or lower-case letters. Your browser's bookmark feature will record the URL exactly as written.
What is a bookmark or hotlist and how does it work?
A bookmark file (or hotlist in NCSA Mosaic) is a collection of URLs you have saved for future reference. The various web browsers allow you to sort and store these "addresses" in different ways. Most browsers store the title of a web page in the bookmark list. These titles are sometimes not meaningful and you may need to edit your list to better identify the resources. Opening the list and selecting a title automatically loads the URL. An important thing to keep in mind when bookmarking a file URL vs. the server URL is that the location of files on a server sometimes change, or files are purposely deleted when they become outdated, and when that happens a file-specific URL may no longer work. If this happens to you, eliminate the file path at the end of the URL to get to the server's home page.
What do the buttons on my screen do?
See Navigating a Web Page.
What do the differences in text color signify?
See "hypertext links" in Navigating a Web Page.
What is an icon?
See "icons" in Navigating a Web Page.
What do the "question mark" and "broken" icons mean?
An icon with a question mark in place of the image means the server has not found that image file where it expects to. This is not a problem with your web browser, but simply means the web page is incomplete. A broken icon means that the image file is in the expected place but it's in an improper format that the server cannot handle. In both these cases, this is a problem on our end, not yours.
What is an image map and how does it work?
An image map is a "hot" image or collection of buttons that loads the URL of a new web page depending upon where you click. The map labels indicate where the link takes you.
Why do some files, particularly sound and video files, take a long time to load?
The rate at which a file loads is determined by three things: the size of the file, the speed of the Internet connection between your computer and ours, and the processing power of your personal computer. Our video and sound files are much larger than ordinary text files, and even under the best network conditions require patience. The Internet connection between the two computers is critical, and even the time of day makes a difference. A modem connection takes longer than an Ethernet connection, and both must contend with the load on our campus network and Internet trunk lines. Finally, the sheer processing power of a PowerPC or Pentium chip will do a great deal to aid throughput to the browser and helper applications.
What is a helper application?
A helper application is special software needed to view particular file types. The three file types used in the Virtual Hospital that require "helper apps" are .mov (QuickTime videos), .snd (sound) and .jpg (JPEG images). Recent versions of the popular web browsers (Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer) handle these file types internally or through "plug-ins," and don't require helper applications. To learn more about helper applications, check out the resources listed on our Help pages.
How do I play a video or sound file once it is loaded?
Clicking on the icon for a video or sound file launches the helper application configured in your browser to load that type of file. When the file is completely loaded a small box appears on the screen with either the first frame of the video or a representation of the sound file inside it. Click on the right-pointing arrow to the left of the image to play the file. Once the file has finished playing you can play it again without having to reload the file. Clicking back in your browser window makes the box containing the video or sound file disappear.
How do I do a keyword search of the Virtual Hospital?
Clicking on Search at the bottom of Virtual Hospital menu pages brings up a fill-out search form. The form enables you to search for a phrase (two or more words together in a specified order), or do traditional Boolean AND & OR searches. In addition, you can search partial words to pick up keywords using the same word stem, perform a search that allows misspellings, and limit or expand the number of files searched and the number of occurrences in each file. Searches can be case-sensitive, useful if you are looking for a word appearing only in a title. Once you've typed your keywords into the search box, click on the send box at the bottom of the form, and the search program will return with the title of the web page containing the keywords highlighted as a URL, and the words in bold on the line of text in which they occur. This provides the context to know whether your search is accurate or needs to be refined. Clicking on the title takes you to the file in which your keywords were found.
Why do some links take a long time to connect?
Occasionally you'll find that links to web pages within the Virtual Hospital, or links to other web servers, take a long time to connect. This is usually due to heavy Internet traffic between our computer and yours, and most often occurs during working hours. Trying the Virtual Hospital during evening hours (in North America) might alleviate this. If you try a link within the Virtual Hospital and you get a message such as "connection refused" or "connection timed out" please notify us via e-mail: librarian@vh.org and we will attempt to correct this.
Who provides the content of the Virtual Hospital?
A large portion of the content of the Virtual Hospital has been provided by the faculty of the University of Iowa College of Medicine, and staff of the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. In addition, we publish information that is in the public domain, particularly from government sources. We are always on the lookout for reliable medical information that is in the public domain.
May I put a link on my web site's home page to the Virtual Hospital?
Yes! Feel free to place a link on your own web page to the Virtual Hospital. We strongly suggest that you link to our home page rather than a page within a subsection of the Virtual Hospital, as we change and update links occasionally, and you may find yourself with an invalid URL.
May I duplicate the contents (create a mirror site) of the Virtual Hospital on another server?
We are not presently authorizing mirror sites of the Virtual Hospital. Please see our policy on the use of Virtual Hospital content for more details. There are web servers with outdated portions of the Virtual Hospital in Japan, Hungary and Argentina which might provide an alternative during times of heavy network activity.
May I translate and/or redistribute Virtual Hospital files?
Please see our policy on the use of Virtual Hospital content.
What Do These Error Messages Mean?
File Not Found (or 404 Not Found)
The URL for the page you are attempting to load is not correct, or has changed. If you've typed in this URL, doublecheck spelling, case sensitivity, colons and slashes. If this is a link that once worked but does no longer, you will have to eliminate the file path at the end of the URL to get to the server's home page and relocate the page from there.
401 Unauthorized
The URL for the page you are attempting to load is correct, but you are not authorized to view that file. If we've advertised this as a public page (as a link from another page), we may have forgotten to change its file permissions, and would appreciate a note to librarian@vh.org.
403 Forbidden
The URL you are attempting to load is correct, but it performs a system process you are not authorized to do.
500 Server Error
This is a catch-all error code which indicates that something has gone wrong in the server and the problem has stopped the request from being completed.
501 Not Implemented
The URL calls on the server to perform a system feature that has not been implemented.
Connection Refused
The URL for the page you are attempting to load is correct, but there were too many users already on the server. If this happens to you, please send e-mail to librarian@vh.org and we will try to enable more connections.
Unable to Locate Host
The URL for the server you are attempting to reach is not correct, or has changed. If you've typed in this URL, doublecheck spelling, case sensitivity, colons and slashes. If this is a link from a page on the Virtual Hospital that once worked but does no longer, please notify us.
Unable to Contact Host
The URL for the server you are attempting to reach is correct, but the server is not responding. Try again another time.