VPLAB DOWNLOAD
1. Hardware & software requirements
- Pentium 200 MHz or more,
32 MB RAM minimum (64 MB
recommended);
- Windows 95, 98 or NT;
- Screen resolution: 1024 x 768 (minimum);
- Internet Explorer 4 (or later ) or
Firefox browser;
- QuickTime Player plug-in. It can be downloaded from
Apple website, http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download
- Indeo Video 3.2 codec (for video playback).
This is a quite universal codec, though relatively old,
but you can check if it is installed on your computer
and, if not, download it from various websites. Simply
put "ir32_32.dll" download in your favorite
searche engine, find a place where the file is available,
and download it into your C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM
folder.
2. Downloading the VPLab archive
a) Connect to the Internet, if you're not
already connected.
b) Create a new folder on your hard drive for the
downloaded archive.
c) If you use Win 98 or 2000, and Winzip is not
already installed, download and install it from Winzip
website;
d) Download the VPLab archive by clicking with the
right button on this link: Virtual
Physics Lab.zip (2,1 MB) and choosing
Save as... You will be asked to save the file on
your hard disk; save it in the folder you created at step
b).
e) Open the folder created at step b) and click with
the right button on the icon of the file Virtual
Physics Lab.zip, and choose Extract to folder
C:\[...]. A folder named Virtual Physics
Lab will be created, with all the files needed to
start the lab application.
3. Starting the lab application to download the base lab
files
a) Connect to Internet, if not already
connected;
b) Open the folder created by Winzip at step 2e) and
double-click on the file named Virtual Physics
Laboratory.exe. This will start the lab
application.
You can make a shorcut on your desktop to facilitate the
access to the lab. Using the right button, drag to your
desktop the icon of the file and choose Make
shortcut.
The first time it is run, the application creates various
subfolders inside its own folder and starts downloading
into the folder general the base files required
for the laboratory.
4. Downloading group & experiment files
a) If not already launched, start the VPLab
application by clicking on the file named Virtual
Physics Laboratory.exe.
b) After a short while, the NAVIGATION window
appears. It displays the list of experiments and groups
of the lab. There is a small download/update button
in front of each experiment or group available on the
server. Clicking on one of these buttons downloads all
the files required for the corresponding experiment or
group.
c) When download is completed, the download button
switches to  ,
and some of the buttons of the experiment (or to the
group of experiments) appear:  ,
 ,
 ,
 ,
 .
These give access to the SIMULATION
(Manipulation and
Analysis) and DOCUMENTATION
(Presentation, Explanations,
and Theory /
Applications) workspaces of the experiment
or group.
From then on, you may use the VPLab without being
connected to the Internet. You only have to go on-line if
you want to download or update files related to an
experiment, or if you click on one of the buttons which
gives access to the VPLab Web site, such as the Web hompage
button  ,
the online video library button 
or the on-line laboratory guide button  .
Notes
a) You may easily change the language of the VPLab to
French. Just open the file u_lang.txt in the folder
Prefs created during the download, change its content
from EN to FR, and save it again under the
same name, in text format. Both French and English versions
of the base files are always downloaded, but only the files
corresponding to the language specified in u_lang.txt
will be installed on your disk when a specific group or
experiment is downloaded as described in #4.
If you change the language, you must then download again the
group and experiment files in order to get the French
version of the files. Otherwise, access to any multimedia
document of these experiments will produce an error message,
and could even stop completely the VPLab operation.
Once both versions of the files have been dowloaded, the
VPLab becomes truly bilingual and you may switch the
language without any problem.
b) Base and experiment files will be updated from time to
time. The VPLab home page will
indicate if new files are available and how you can get
them. We suggest that you check every two months or so to
see if new files are available.
August 28, 2005
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