Enhanced menu system for the Access Grid VenueClient


Overview

Navigating the standard Access Grid VenueClient through various servers, lobbies and other rooms before reaching the desired venue can be quite tedious unless the venue is already listed in the users "My Venues" hotlist. Thats fine if the destination was visited previously and you remembered to add it to the hotlist.

An alternative is to have an extra menu which contains a list of venue servers, each entry of which cascades out as the mouse passes over it to show all the venues available at that server. Here's an example (at half normal size):
VenueClient with cascaded venue menu

Here, the "Extra" menu shows various known servers. The mouse is positioned over the server "V1", which has cascaded out to show the rooms available at that venue server.

Adding the "Extra" menu to an existing AG toolkit installation

Two files need changes to implement the new menu system. They may be patched, or just replaced completely with files available from the download page.
  1. Patching: cd to the directory with your AG files. A typical location in a Linux distribution is /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/AccessGrid. If it contains the files VenueClientController.py and VenueClientUI.py, then you're in the correct directory. Patch it with the command something like: cat ~/Extra2.4.diff | patch (which assumes the patch file Extra2.4.diff is in your home directory)
  2. Replacing: cd to the directory with your AG files. A typical location in a Linux distribution is /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/AccessGrid. If it contains the files VenueClientController.py and VenueClientUI.py, then you're in the correct directory. Replace these files with the new versions, using a command something like: cp ~/VenueClientConroller.py . and then cp ~/VenueClientUI.py . (which assumes the new versions are in your home directory)

Populating the Extra menu

Initially, there will be no entries in the new Extra menu; it needs to be populated. Populating the menu (and keeping it up to date) is made possible through the use of an AG Shared Application dedicated to this purpose. You will need to navigate to the venue where the Shared Application is available, then run it to load the venue information.
  1. Navigate to the "ServerInfo" room at the Asia-Pacific Access Grid server. From the Lobby, go to the "Service Lobby" and, from there, to the "Server Info" room. The Asia-Pacific AG Lobby is at https://vv2.ap-accessgrid.org:8000/Venues/default
  2. Install the ServerInfo.agpkg shared application from the "Data" section of the venue
  3. Load the server information by joining the "Venue Server Info" session in the "Application Sessions" section of the venue.
  4. Restart the VenueClient. Unfortunately this is necessary to see the new menu entries, as they are loaded (automatically) when the VenueClient starts.
Rooms may be added or removed from the various venue servers at any time and the layout of these rooms may change too. The "Venue Server Info" application session is periodically updated to reflect these changes and its a good idea to join this session occasionally to load the latest server information to keep your new menu system up to date.

Any comments or suggestions to c.willing (at) uq.edu.au
This project was developed at University of Queensland Vislab, with assistance from the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC)
First presented at the 2005 AccessGrid Retreat (San Fransisco) as part of the "ServerInfo and GridMultiplier" presentation