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Lab 2.1: Dash

Released: September 23rd 4:00pm ET
Due

Introduction

In this lab you will be using Dash, we will be introducing you to some key features that Dash has and how to use them. In order to make the most delicious donut - you need to have an idea of what other donut stores do well, and what they don’t do quite as well!

Objective: The idea of this lab is to introduce you to a hypermedia system and some of its features with the purpose to ideate and consider which features you may want to implement in the hypermedia systems that you are building!

For this lab you will be split into two groups. Each group will spend 1 hour on Intermedia and 1 hour on Dash. To get checked off for this lab, fill out the form at the end.

Checklist

Norm will lead a session on Intermedia! If you are fascinated and want to use the machines more than just this lab, reach out to Norm and he will happily help get you access to a machine.

Using Dash

After you have created your account you will be able to use Dash as much or little as you would like! You will be using Dash later on to build your own corpus (which is the Content Creation assignment) so the idea behind this lab is to get your familiar and to get you started!

Note: You will be using Novice mode throughout this lab, there is a LOT more in Dash that we have removed from novice mode in favour of usability. If you have any questions about a feature feel free to ask!

Step 1

  1. Go to https://browndash.com/signup to make an account.
  2. Create an account using your Brown university email address (@brown.edu).

At anytime, if you are confused about anything you can check Dash’s documentation here (which is also accessible through the Help button within Dash). If not, feel free to ask a Dash RA about anything at all! You can also always reach out on the #Dash channel on Slack!

Choosing a use case

There are many ways you can use Dash, unlike other hypermedia systems that address specific issues such as Roam Research and Remnote, Dash is not made for a single use case.

As you work through this lab, and so that your use of Dash is more interesting for you, we hope you pick a use case that will be useful to you (note that this is not mandatory).

Here are some options:

Populating your dashboard

Step 2: Watch this video on Creating and Importing Documents

Step 3: The first thing that you’ll want to do is collect some materials for your dashboard. Try and collect some of the following materials to use:

If you are stuck without an idea for a use case, and without materials then you can download from this Google Drive folder and use the materials about our beloved Blueno or Donuts available there.

Note: Go to 6:54 in the video on the best donuts in the each state to find PVD’s best donuts!

Additionally, here are some websites that you can import:

Some websites, particularly websites that contain a lot of Javascript (eg. Google Docs pages) will not render inside of Dash. If a website does not load at all, it is likely either due to CORS permissions or the fact that the website is not a basic HTML page.

Donut

Blueno

You can also drag videos directly from YouTube. Try to keep them to under 4 minutes, the way that you drag them in is the same as how you would import a webpage!

Once you have a populated Dashboard, you are ready to add some links to create relationships!

A link in Dash can be thought of as a bidirectional connection between two documents, or a reference to one document from another. It is also a document in itself, meaning that we can add tags and other key/value pairs. The same source selection (called an anchor, i.e., a persistent selection) can link to multiple destination anchors. In addition, source and destination anchors can both range from the entire document to a portion of a document (i.e., a phrase within a long text document, an annotation on a pdf, a selection on an image, etc).

Linkboard

The first method for link creation is through the linkboard, which is convenient for creating multiple links from the same source. This functions as a clipboard (similar to copy and paste) for links in the sense that your source is always “copied” to the linkboard, which we call Start link until you clear it, which we call Complete link or “copy” another source. You can see the steps taken to link from a video, Free Solo to a webpage, Tommy Caldwell.

You can also link from an annotation to an annotation within another document. In text based documents you select the text and use the same Start link button. In temporal media documents, or with overlayed documents you can link directly from the annotation itself.

Using Dash’s search functionality, you can also search to create a link from any selected text using the Search link button that appears when you have text selected.

Once you have created links you can use the link menu to navigate to the document that you have linked to. You can also edit the properties of the link such as it’s Description and Relationship.

If you use the pointer button in the document decorations to turn your document into a button! Now if you click on the document it will follow the link directly to that button. For example clicking on the pointer in the following image will link it directly to the El Capitan reference that we linked it to earlier.

You can also visualise links by toggling the line in the link manager on. The lines will be visualised according to their relationship. Each relationship is represented by a unique color. The thickness of the relationship indicates how many other documents have the same relationship. You can use the link menu to edit the links and change the relationships!

Note: The line API that we use does not work very well when you are zooming in and out. As a result, you may notice some visual glitches when you are zooming in and out and also showing links.

Step 4: Create links between the documents and try out following them and setting link relationships!

Annotation and markup

You can find the documentation on markup here.

Step 5: Annotate and markup any documents that you would like to markup!

Views

Views are the different ways that you can view a collection of documents. Dash supports three views in novice mode, and an additional 10 in developer mode. The most essential views that dash supports include:

View Description
Freeform Unbounded 2D space in the form of a canvas. This is Dash’s primary view.
Schema Manipulating documents via key-value pairs and maintaining structured viewing and sorting of data.
Stack Categorizing documents by specified keys while maintaining a live preview of each document.

Step 6: Play with Schema and Stack view. Particularly in Schema view try and add a new metadata field to a document! If you are interested you can also try out some of the views in Developer mode (however be warned that some of them may not work!)

[Optional] Views in Developer Mode

Switching to Developer mode will give you access to the other 10 views. Feel free to play around with them, they are certainly in an even less stable state so don’t surprised if things break / do not work as you expect!

[Optional] Ink

You can find the documentation on inks here.

[Optional] Collaboration

Ask an RA if you want to try out real-time collaboration in Dash!

Checkoff

There are many more features that you have not yet used - for example trails, which you will be introduced to in the Content Creation assignment. Let us know if you have any questions about anything!

Fill out this Google Form to get checked off!