With this release the default installation will direct all of your users to the new Version 7.0 user interface. The Version 6.x user interface is still available (if you chose to install it) under a new URL. The complete details of this change are below.

This release includes:

1. A new admin interface for reinitializing a running LAS and for managing the product cache.
2. Many improvements to the LAS V7.0 User Interface and bug fixes through out the system.
   
3. Improvements to the back-end Ferret scripts including:
1. Improved use of striding, for better performance when accessing data on fine grids. 
2. Animations, plots to Google Earth, and analysis operations (e.g. average over a dimension) are working for data on curvilinear grids.
   
3. Improvements to locating Placemarks on Google Earth

Redirecting traffic to the new LAS User Interface

The V7.0 Release configure script give you the option to install the V7 user interface alone or install both the V6 and V7 user interfaces. Here's what we recommend and some instructions for what to do if you don't want to follow our recommendations.

If you are currently running a server based on the V6 UI and have been testing the V7 UI we recommend you install this release with both V6 and V7. Your users that come to user site via a URL of the form http://myserver.com/las/servlets/dataset will be redirected to the V7 user interface at http://myserver.com/las/. This means that links in your web site that look like http://myserver.com/las/servlets/dataset and user bookmarks of that URL will lead users to the new user interface. If you want to offer a link to the old UI and you have installed both, then it will still be available at http://myserver.com/las/v6/dataset. For sites currently with both V6 and V7 or V6 only that want to make the transition we recommend you install both V6 and V7 since there are still circumstances where an operation cannot be performed in the new UI. These are:

1. Comparisons between two different data sets.
2. Analysis operations along more that one axis (accomplished in V6 by defining a new variable based on a previously defined variable or by selecting more than one axis while defining a variable).
3. Property-Property Plots
4. Downloads of three and four dimensional data subsets
   

Of course, if you have installed a previous release with only the V7 UI then you may do so again.

If you are building new links to your LAS you can use the URL: http://myserver.com/las/. This URL resolves to an index.html file in the root of the application context on the Tomcat server. This file is a simple redirect to the new user interface. We will keep this URL stable so that a URL of this forms always points to the latest LAS. You can also edit this file and add a data set and variable id to the URL of the redirect to have LAS always start with a particular data set and variable selected. For example redirecting to: http://myserver.com/las/getUI.do?dsid=coads_climatology_cdf&varid=sst will open the COADS Climatology SST variable when a user access the http://myserver.com/las/ URL.

If you would like to keep directing your users to your V6 user interface, then you'll have to make a quick source edit and re-deploy your server. In the file: $LAS_HOME/JavaSource/

starting a line 29 comment out or remove these 4 lines of code.

      String req_url = req.getServletPath();
      if ( req_url.contains("servlets") ) {
          resp.sendRedirect("../");
          return false;
      }

Recompile and re-deploy your server.

Version specific configuration notes for V7.0

!!! BEWARE : Support for the following configurations WILL change in future releases. !!!

Configuring a default dataset and variable

The V7 UI can be configured to jump to any variable from the root URL of LAS.
Simply generate a URL using the "Link to this page" link on the upper right corner of the V7 user interface (make sure you have a plot visible first) and paste that URL into line 10 of index.html. If you are configuring LAS without the V6 user interface, edit index_noclassic.html as well.

Also, by default, this file will redirect unsupported browsers to the V6 UI (if installed) or a page listing supported browsers (browsers.html) if V6 is not installed.
Change line 12 if  you would like to alter this behavior.

Here is the script that needs to be changed:

<script type="text/javascript">
if(ie6||ie7||ie8||(ns6&&saf)||(ns6&&mz7))
// CHANGE THE FOLLOWING LINE TO CONFIGURE A DEFAULT DATASET AND VARIABLE AT STARTUP
// USE THE CATEGORY ID OF THE DATASET DESIRED, NOT THE DATASET ID
// EXAMPLE:
// document.location='getUI.do?catid=7387BAEA4E950F770B32C23837B69690&varid=sst';
	document.location='getUI.do'; // <--- CHANGE THIS LINE TO CONFIGURE A DEFAULT DATASET & VARIABLE
else
	document.location='v6/dataset'; // <--- CHANGE THIS LINE IF YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING ELSE WITH UNSUPPORTED BROWSERS.
</script>

Changing the default visualizations in the V7 UI

The V7 UI can have one default visualization associated with each supported view. This is the radio button list that appears on the left side of the UI. If no visualizations are flagged as default, the interface will pick the first one it finds for a given view.

To flag a default visualization:

1. Add the attribute default="true" to the desired operation in operationsV7.xml (remove this attribute from operations that you do NOT want to appear in this list).
2. Add a category = "visualization" attribute.
3. Remove private = "true" if it exists.

For example:

    <operation name="Interactive color plot" ID="XY_zoomable_image" category="visualization" default="true" isZoomable="true" output_template="zoom_2D_XY" service_action="Plot_2D_XY">
          
        

Adding buttons to the top of the V7 UI

Buttons in the V7 UI will launch products in a new window using the constraints set in the UI. As such, the operation associated with them may change depending on the view/visualization selected in the UI.  To accommodate that, you need to group operations together using their name attribute and add a button anchor into the UI template (this step will go away in future releases).

1. Make sure the operations that represent the button you want to create all have the same  name attribute.
2. At line 171 in WebContent/productserver/V7UI.vm, find this block of code
   

<span width="100%" id="productButtons">
	<span class="top_link" style="visibility:hidden" ID="Animation">Animate&nbsp;</span>
	<span class="top_link" style="visibility:hidden" ID="Comparison">Compare&nbsp;</span>							
	<span class="top_link" style="visibility:hidden" ID="Plot to Google Earth">Google Earth&nbsp;</span>
	<span class="top_link" style="visibility:hidden" ID="Table of values (text)">Show Values&nbsp;</span>
	<span class="top_link" style="visibility:hidden" ID="Desktop application data access scripts">Export to Desktop Application&nbsp;</span>
	<span class="top_link" style="visibility:hidden" ID="Interactive Download">Save As ...</span>									
</span>

3. Insert a new SPAN element with the ID set to the same value as the name attribute used to group your operations in OperationsV7.xml

4. Redeploy the server.

Altering the UI header and footer

Modify the files V7UIHeader.vm and V7UIFooter.vm to change the header and footer of the user interface.

Supported Browsers

The following browser versions have been tested with the LAS V7 UI:

• Firefox 2.x and 3.x
  
• IE 6+
• Safari 3+
  

Any Gecko or WebKit based browser should work.  However, older browsers are likely to have compatibility issues.  You may force the new V7 UI to run, over-riding the re-direction that occurs when accessing the site from at http://myserver.com/las/index.html with an older browser by navigating directly to http://myserver.com/las/getUI.do.