View source for User:Bigyan/How To Use Crowdlabs

[http://www.crowdlabs.org Crowdlabs] is a social repository for storing, viewing and sharing visualizations. The following instructions are meant to guide a new user through to using some of the features of crowdlabs.

== Logging in to Crowdlabs ==

Though not absolutely necessary for using some of the features, we recommend that you always log in to crowdlabs before using it. 

* To log in, click the link on top-right and follow the instructions. 
** First-time users should use the sign-up link to create a login id and password.

== Interacting with Visualization from Web Interface ==

A Vismashup is a customized application that runs on top of Vistrails and is able to generate visualization with only a necessary number of user interface controls. Vismashups can be viewed from the web browser directly and does not require any additional software to be installed. All you need is a [http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ Flash]-enabled web-browser.

* Go to the Vismashups tab and open the mashup you want to view.
** For the purposes of this walkthrough, we are choosing the "Estuary Forecast (f22)" mashup, though the general ideas are true for any mashup.
* If you open the "Estuary Forecast (f22)" link, you will see a user interface with some widgets on the left side of the screen and a visualization on the right side.
* Uncheck the "loop" checkbox to stop the movie and view a particular timestep. 
** The widgets in the left side specify the parameters for the particular visualization to view. For example, the slider at the bottom specifies the hour of the day (which in turn is specified by "Month", "Day" and "Year" boxes) the visualization corresponds to.
** You can change the values of these parameters (in the usual fashion) and then click the "Update" button at the bottom left to see a visualization with the new values

== Uploading a Vistrail to Crowdlabs ==

If you have a local vistrails file, you can upload it to crowdlabs by going to the Vistrails tab and selecting "Upload a Vistrail"
* NOTE: you need to log in before you can upload anything.
* When you upload a vistrail, all user packages/modules used in the vistrail are automatically uploaded
* You can view the tagged workflows in the vistrail by clicking it on the right panel and then expanding the "Show Workflow" panel