Adding comments to a brick is simple.  Check the  "Comments" box on the last "Configure Options" stage of creating a brick.

If your password doesn’t work, please do the following:

1)    Point your browser to http://www.inquiry.uiuc.edu (This is the “old” Inquiry Page; though you may not have seen this page in the past, its password function is the same as the new iLabs v3.)

2)    Click on the login link (medium-blue tab at the lower right corner of the banner).

3)    On the next page, you’ll see three boxes.  In the bottom box, right underneath the text “Forgot your password? We will email you a new password,” type in the account you normally use to access iLabs.  Then click submit.

4)    You’ll receive a reply very quickly.  This reply sends you a new, randomly-generated password.  Use this new password to login to iLabs (http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/home/).  After you login using the new password, open the “Edit My Profile” link to change your password to something you prefer.  You can change it back to your original password.

Right now you can get full functionality of iLabs 3 using Netscape and internet Explorer. It also works fine with Camino. If you are using an RSS enabled browser (like Firefox) you might notice that when you view your iLab you can subscribe to an RSS feed. With this you can get updates when changes are made to your iLab (for example bulletin board postings, document uploads, etc). It doesn't tell you exactly what the changes were, but it does tell you which bricks were changed. Ideally, we could continue to refine this feature to get better granularity of updates.

Here is a basic overview:
URL: http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/rss/.rss (example: http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/rss/cameron.rss).

You'll receive recent changes to the iLab (within the last 24 hours) categorized by brick. You'll see notifications like "3 updates in Bulletin Board."  The permissions are ignored for the time being, but this is not such a problem as it doesn't show details of the changes yet, just tallies of how many changes have been made.

How to create a BB?

Bulletin boards in Version 2 of iLabs are now working properly. However, recent difficulties with the v. 2 bulletin boards have led several users to ask how to create a v. 3 iLab solely as a bulletin board. Here is a way to easily create a BB that will work right away in your v.2 iLab. Basically, you create a new v. 3 iLab, for the sole purpose of making a bulletin board in that iLab. You then point your v. 2 iLab users to the v. 3 bulletin board. The entire process should only take about 10 minutes. The v. 3 BB functions similarly to v. 2 BBs, so your users shouldn't have difficulty in switching to the new BB.

To supplement the instructions below, an audio-narrated, onscreen tutorial walkthrough is available. (Requires free Macromedia Flash plugin.) View walkthrough

1) From iLabs v.3 "Home" (http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/home/), login in with your usual Inquiry name and password. Then click on Create an iLab.

2) At the "Terms of Use…" page, click the check box at the bottom right and hit the Submit button.

3) At the "Your New iLab" page:

Fill in the Name of your iLab. Tip: use a name that is the same or similar to your v. 2 iLab. Fill in the Nickname, which will become part of the URL for your new iLab. Click the "Create iLab" button at the bottom of the page.

4) On the next page, under the green "iLab Created" bar, click "Setup Permissions" and set the permissions as desired for access to your new bulletin board. Then click the "Update User Roles" button at the bottom right of the page.

5) On the next page, click on: "Click Here to return to iLab homepage"

6) On the "Congratulations!" page, click on "Add New Brick" under the "Edit iLab" bar at the top of the right hand column.

7) On the next page, under the "Create New Brick" bar, select "Bulletin Board" from the pull down menu and click the "Create" button.

8) You are now at the Setup Wizard page. Change the bulletin board "Name" and "Description", if you want to. Then click the Continue button.

9) On the page to set up permissions, just click the "Continue" button.

10) You are done! You should see your BB at the top of the left hand column. Click on "Create new Topic", to get the URL for your new BB to show up in the address bar of your browser. Cut and paste the BB URL (leaving off the -create_topic.php-) into your v.2 iLab, wherever you feel it is appropriate to put it.

11) When someone clicks on your new v. 3 bulletin board link from your existing v.2 iLab, they will be prompted to login when they get to the new v.3 bulletin board, even if they are already logged in for v.2. They will use same inquiry name and password as for v. 2.

The Document Center is where you upload and download files . There are three types of document folders:

Use document folders for documents that you want users to download to their computers, i.e., word or pdf documents.

Use Web folders for documents you wish to display within a web browser on the user’s computer.

Use Image Gallery folders to display a set of images within your iLab.

** Is your Document Center missing? ** A bug was introduced to iLabs when we added the new translation feature; URLs were automatically changed. If you search for your document folder URLs according to these examples, you should be able to find them again:
change: http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/top/documents/588/home/
to: http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/top/documents/588/Home/

change: http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/top/documents/588/home/top_images/
to: http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/top/documents/588/Home/TOP+Images/

If you are a registered member of the Inquiry Page (www.inquiry.uiuc.edu), your login will also work to create iLabs. There is no need to create a new profile.

Special Feature
The new capability is for individual items in a List to display separately in the center column. This can be seen in the Help iLab (follow the "Help" link from the main page at http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu ), and in the Bioinformatics Seminar course site (http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/biosem/).

In each of these, a list is displayed in the left column, using "show_all_small". To the right of each individual item is an icon (currently a chain-link) which can be clicked on to bring up the particular item from the list, in the center column.

The new feature provides this capability in a much more straightforward way than before, when it was necessary to create the content of each detailed item as a separate Text Display Panel brick, and use a URL field in the List brick to point to the direct URL for that Text Display brick. It's of course still possible to display entire lists in the center column; you can click the new detail permalink next to a particular item there to display it separately.

Using a List Tool for displaying different bricks in your iLab
You can follow the same instruction for setting up a list and include the URLs of different bricks in the URL field of a list. Please Remember: after you have organized your bricks in a new list tool, DON'T delete the brick, you just make them invisible using Arrange Bricks.

Displaying a year
Select the "short text" field type for your date field (rather than the "date" type).

iLabs Version 3 (http://ilas.inquiry.uiuc.edu) is the successor version to iLabs2, or Community Inquiry Labs (http://inquiry.uiuc.edu/cil).  Sites created using iLabs2 are maintained online in read-only format for archival purposes.  However, security issues have prompted the iLabs team to disable editing of iLabs2 sites except by special request.  Creators and administrators of iLabs2 sites may ask that write-level access to their sites be restored to them on a temporary bases, in order to facilitate transfer of content to the current iLabs, v. 3 service.  iLabs staff are also happy to assist with the transfer of content from iLabs2 to iLabs v. 3 upon request.

Right now you can not just click a button and delete an ilab.But you can easily and effectively delete your ilab by deleting each brick, removing all users, and setting it to private.  A total deletion is possible by  writing to the system administrator at the help address.