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Inquisit 2.0 Web Edition (IWE) extends the power and flexibility of the Inquisit
2.0 experiment engine to the web. With IWE, your experiments can be launched directly
from a web page without having to manually install Inquisit on the client machine.
Data gathered from the web can be saved back to a web site, ftp site, network share,
or even an email address.
What are the benefits of Inquisit 2.0 Web Edition?
Unlimited client licenses. With IWE, Inquisit experiments can be run on an
unlimited number of client machines. This makes IWE an ideal tool for large scale
data collection in laboratories, class rooms, or over the Internet.
Easy web deployment. IWE allows you to launch your experiments directly from
a web page. The IWE engine is packaged as an ActiveX control and a Mozilla Plugin
that is automatically downloaded by the web browser. Starting an experiment with
IWE is as easy as browsing to a web page.
Power, flexibility, and accurate timing. The IWE engine affords the same
power, flexibility, and timing accuracy as the Inquisit desktop engine. How is that
possible? Because the IWE engine is the desktop engine. Literally. We’ve
just repackaged it in a way that makes it easy to deploy over the web.
Compatible with Inquisit 2.0 Desktop. Your Inquisit 2.0 scripts will run
interchangeably between the desktop and web engines. There is no need to maintain
and test multiple versions of your scripts.
Free Inquisit 2.0 Desktop license included. Each web license you purchase
includes a free desktop license so that you can easily create and test your Inquisit
scripts on your development machine before deploying them to the web.
How does the Inquisit 2.0 Web Edition work?
IWE experiments can be launched through a standard HTML web page. Most customers
will simply copy the reference page at
http://www.millisecond.com/web/launch.aspx and make a few minor modifications
to run their particular script.
If you are interested in the technical details, to run in Internet Explorer, the
page must have the IWE ActiveX Control embedded in it, which can be done using the
HTML <OBJECT> tag as follows:
<OBJECT
id=
"InquisitControl"
classid="CLSID:79D43078-27F8-476E-B38C-E22ADB75152C"
codebase="http://axl/millisecond/setup/ax/InquisitAx.cab"
/>
To run in Mozilla based browsers such as Firefox and Netscape, the page uses the IWE
Mozilla Plugin, which can be embedded using the <EMBED> HTML tag.
The id attribute specifies the instance name of the control that we’ll use
below when calling methods on the control. It can be anything, although “Inquisit”
seems like a sensible choice. The classid attribute is a globally unique
identifier that the COM runtime uses to identify which ActiveX control this is.
The codebase attribute specifies where the IWE ActiveX control should
be downloaded from if it isn’t already installed on the client machine. Internet
Explorer will automatically download the control on the user’s behalf when they
browse to the page. You are free to have your clients download the control from
millisecond.com as in this example, or you can host this control on your own web
site. Next, the page must have client-side java script that calls the RunScriptFile
method on the IWE in order to launch the experiment, as shown in this example:
document.getElementById("InquisitControl").RunScriptFile(“http://www.millisecond.com/myscript.exp”, "myuserid", 1, false);
The RunScriptFile method takes four parameters:
ScriptPath: the URL where IWE can download the script.
Userid: the userid of the account that has specified the script as active.
SubjectNumber: the subject number to use for this subject.
MonkeyMode: a Boolean flag indicating whether Inquisit should run in monkey
mode for the purpose of testing a script.
RunScriptFile will download and parse the script, and if there were no errors it
creates a full screen window and runs the script in the same fashion as the Inquisit
desktop engine. Using javascript, you can call this method when the page loads,
when user clicks a button or types a key, or when any other event is fired by IE.
This gives you great flexibility in determining how the experiment integrates with
your web site.
How does licensing work with Inquisit 2.0 Web Edition?
Unlike Inquisit Desktop, IWE is not licensed based on the number of client computers
that install and run Inquisit experiments. In fact, an IWE license entitles you
to run Inquisit experiments on an unlimited number of client computers.
IWE licenses determine the number of experiments that can be run at a given
point in time. An IWE license entitles you to run a single web experiment (as defined
by a single Inquisit script). If you wish to run one web experiment at a time, you
would only need a single IWE license. If you wish to collect data for five different
experiments in parallel, you would need five IWE licenses.
IWE enforces the licensing policy at run time by checking whether the script it
has been instructed to run is listed as an active script for the specified user
account. If the script is active, the experiment runs as normal. If the script is
not active, it can optionally be run, but no data will be collected. In order to
collect data with IWE, you must therefore register the URLs of your active scripts
using the Inquisit Web Script Manager web page.
You may change your list of active scripts as often as you’d like. However, the
number of active scripts you may specify is limited to the number of IWE licenses
held by your account. Importantly, this means that IWE must be able to connect
to www.millisecond.com from the client computer in order to collect data.
IWE can not be used to collect data on machines that are not connected to the Internet.
What are the machine requirements for Inquisit 2.0 Web Edition?
The client must have a working Internet connection.
The client must be running either Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher, Firefox 1.5
or higher, or Netcape 8.1 or higher.
The client must be running Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, or 2003, or Vista. IWE will not run
on Windows 95 or NT4 (actually, it might, but we no longer test these versions of
Windows so they are not officially supported). It will not run on any non-Windows
operating systems. Sorry, no support for Mac or Linux.
Internet Explorer security options must be configured to enable ActiveX controls
that are a) marked as “safe for scripting” and b) have a valid Authenticode signature.
By default, Internet Explorer has the appropriate settings, so this is a potential
issue only for those who have modified their IE security settings.
The user must either be logged into the computer with Adminstrative privileges,
or the computer must have the .NET Framework 2.0 installed. If neither of these
conditions apply, the client will not be able to run the IWE.
Where can I get Inquisit 2.0 Web Edition?
All the components for both Inquisit 2.0 Desktop and Web are packaged together in
a single installer, which can be obtained from our download
page
. Simply download and install Inquisit 2.0 and you'll have everything you need to
run experiments from the desktop or web. To unlock Inquisit from evaluation mode,
you'll need to purchase desktop or web licenses.
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