Use of a "Composer" form to speed the creation of online Satellite Meteorology Tutorials

The Navy Research Laboratory at Monterey (NRL Monterey) maintains a reatlime satellite meteorology site accessed by users throughout the globe. Since many of the served products are not immediately understood in the field, users are asking for explanations of their accuracies, strengths, limitations, and correct interpretations. Thus, NRL Monterey has established a series of online tutorials which are linked to the realtime products. To speed and standardize the creation of these tutorials, NRL Monterey has developed an electronic form so that scientists, with little knowledge of web programming, can create these tutorials without assistance.

To create a tutorial, a scientist need only fill in the blanks on this form. No programming is required. He/she inserts image/loop names, accompanying captions, and text explanations. After filling in the form, the scientist runs a program that converts it into an HTML program. This HTML program is run to create a prototype web page that contains all the specified training materials in a hyperlinked format, ready for use on the web. If needed, the scientist can revert back to the electronic form for further editing. Once finalized by the author, the tutorial is integrated automatically into the NRL web page containing the live products.

At the conference the composer software will be demonstrated live on the Internet. Examples of the created tutorials will also be shown and discussed.