Last modified: Apr 29, 2013
Recommended web browsers for this course are Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Internet Explorer. The instructor and course developers regularly test the course with these two browsers. Other browsers may work as well, but you use them at your own risk. The tests in this document will help you decide if a browser can be used in this course.
You are generally best off using the most recent (non-beta) browser release. Even so, there are many options on how to configure your browser that this document can help you check on.
It’s unlikely that I have anticipated all the possible problems you might run into in configuring your browser. Also, browsers are changing all the time, so they represent a moving target. If you encounter problems that are not covered here, please use the Forum (if possible) or email to let me know what problem you had (and, if we are able to resolve it, what worked for you).
Finally, before we get on to the tests, what if you frequently access the course from school, work, or library PCs where you have limited control over the choice of browser or how it is configured? One good way to deal with this is to get a copy of the Firefox portable edition, a version of the browser configured to be run from a USB memory stick. That way you can have a stable browser environment wherever you go.
Javascript is used in many web pages on this site to provide crucial functions.
We’re going to try a series of tests to see if your browser runs Javascript and if it works with some key course features.
The grey box above should contain the text “Javascript is working”. If not, your browser probably has Javascript turned off. Consult your browser’s documentation to turn it on.
This section checks your browser’s ability to display mathematics (using the MathJaX Javascript library, such as this:
\[ \lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} ( \sum_{i=0}^n f(\frac{i}{n}) ) = \int_0^1 f(x) dx \]
Above this line, you should see something like the following graphic:
The DOM is the collection of information that your web browser presents to Javascript about the content of the current web page. The box below tests whether your browser presents the necessary DOM information:
You should see something similar to the picture below.
If, instead, you see merely an empty box, you should probably switch to a different browser (an up-to-date version of Firefox is probably your best bet). You might want to let your instructor know what browser (and what version of that browser) you have been using .
Cookies are small bits of information that a web page can ask your browser to save indefinitely or for a fixed period of time. Other pages can then ask your browser to return that stored information.
Cookies have a wide variety of uses, both legitimate and otherwise. This site uses cookies to record whether or not you have logged in, who you have logged in as, and when you did so. Since login sessions expire automatically if you go long enough without visiting any new pages, the cookies used by this site are all of limited lifetime, at most an hour or two.
This box below contains a test to see if cookies are being accepted by your browser.
Java (which is a completely different programming language than the Javascript checked for earlier) is used for animations in the course.
You will need to have version 1.7 or later of the Java JRE. Below is a test to see if your browser is running Java at all and, if so, what version it is running. (You might need to give permission for Java to run on this page.)
If you do not see the “Java is running” message above, or if the version number is less than 1.7.0, then you will need to install the Oracle Java Runtime Environment (JRE).
This section tests to see if your browser can trigger an appropriate viewer for the video content used in this course.
