Purpose

These are special-purpose pop-ups for accessing standard definitions. A single dictionary is used for the whole site. It can actually be loaded & viewed by students as a dictionary. However, it also used as the source of the definition pop-ups.

The definitions are kept in a page called dictionary.htm which is normally located in the root directory and which is loaded into a hidden frame in the frameset.

Definition Styles

Currently uses pop-up styles, vis—

popup
controls the appearance of the definition pop-ups
poplink
controls the appearance of the definition links

Available Functions


insertDefLink(name, link )

Arguments

name
a string giving the unique name of the definition's key in the standard dictionary.
link
a string containing the text for the link itself. This is exactly how conventional links work.
Return
Nothing is returned
Action

The definition link is written dynamically into the document at the point of invocation.


startDefLink(name)
endLink()

Comment

These two routines are an alternative to the insertDefLink routine. The only difference is that the startDefLink function is invoked before the link text and the endLink after it. No link argument is used because the link text is already on the page between the two calls marking the beginning and ending of the link.


Usage

The advantage of definitions is that standard concepts like and are available all over the site. While they are just pop-ups authors do not have to write the actual pop-up since it is found in the standard dctionary.

Definition style is controlled by the class .definition in the style sheets and definition links by .deflink.