Sam's Laser FAQ
Local Installation

1. This notice is included in its entirety at the beginning.
   
2. There is no charge except to cover the costs of copying.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Basic Installation
• Icons and Links

Introduction

Note that Sam's Laser FAQ is constantly evolving. While having a local copy is convenient and provides for fast access, you lose the benefit of always having the very latest version at your fingertips. Keep this in mind before you go to the installation effort only to find that your copy is out-of-date even before all the bits have settled into place. :)

Basic Installation

The following assumes a first time install of Sam's Laser FAQ:

• See Home and Mirror Site Locations to identify a site with a ZIPPED version of Sam's Laser FAQ.

• Download laserfaq.zip either into a new directory or into the same directory as SSTR (or a new directory if you don't have SSTR) and decompress it (unix unzip or DOS PKUNZIP):
  • Extract all files: unzip (or PKUNZIP) laserfaq
  • Extract selected files: unzip (or PKUNZIP) -x laserfaq file1 file2 ...
  • Directory of laserfaq: unzip (or PKUNZIP) -v laserfaq

  (Answer 'yes' or 'all' to any duplicate file queries.)

  The file "laserfil.htm" contains a summary of all the HTML, photos, diagrams, and schematics which constitute this release.

• To set up a remote link page to the Laser Equipment Gallery, create a new directory (in the same directory that you just decompressed into) called "laserpic" and move the file "laserpic.htm" to this new directory and also make a copy of it there named "index.html". CAUTION: If you actually have the Laser Equipment Gallery resident locally, then you DON'T need or want to do this - but you should have figured that out by now!

• If Sam's Laser FAQ is not in the same directory as your Homepage and/or SSTR, use a text editor to replace all instances of the strings "index.html" and "sammenu.htm" in the files: "lasersam.htm" and "laserpic.htm" with links to appropriate places.

• When "lasersam.htm" is accessed via a Web browser, everything may be viewed directly. To bypass the Welcome Page, link to "laserfaq.htm" instead.

• Your browser needs to be configured properly to make sense of the many ASCII diagrams, schematics, and tables. See the document: Suggested Browser Settings for font and other related information.

• The file "emaillnk.htm" contains a redirect to email links for the Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ authors (Sam and Fil), as well as the general Feedback Form. Edit this file if the location of the email contacts page should change in the future.

I routinely test all of this on Unix (Sun OS/Solaris), Linux (Redhat), and Windows (Win98, WinME, Win2000, WinXP) using both Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. Please let me know if there are any problems.

Icons and Links

• To create a link to Sam's Laser FAQ from an existing Web page, use a text or HTML editor to add the following lines to it:

  <li><a href="lasersam.htm">Sam's Laser FAQ</a> <a href="lasersam.htm">
    <img WIDTH=64 HEIGHT=64 src="laserfaq.gif" alt="LASERFAQ" align=middle
    border=0></a> - A Practical Guide to Lasers for Experimenters and
    Hobbyists.
  

  This will add the icon and create hot links to "Sam's Laser FAQ" as long as it is in the same directory with an appearance similar to this:
  • Sam's Laser FAQ - A Practical Guide to Lasers for Experimenters and Hobbyists.

  Edit as appropriate for your complete path if located elsewhere.

• If you are running Win95 or above (I don't know if this works for Win3.1x), the .ico format icon files can be used when accessing Sam's Laser FAQ from a folder or the desktop.

  To add a link from the Windows desktop directly to the Sam's Laser FAQ Table of Contents, surf over to your copy of "lasersam.htm" and press and hold the left mouse button while dragging the local "Sam's Laser FAQ" hot link to the desktop. (These are the ones just below the "Welcome" heading and near the end of lasersam.htm.) Create a shortcut there and then edit its properties to use the icon of your choice! (You can do the same thing with any of the other hot links instead if you do not intend to maintain a local copy of Sam's Laser FAQ.)