The Courseware Viewer

The Courseware Viewer is a Java program that lets you display a Descriptor Systems course. You must install the Courseware Viewer prior to taking your first self-study course, but you don't need to re-install it for subsequent courses.

Before you can perform the installation, you must first make sure you have a Java2 Runtime Environment (JRE) of at least version 1.4 installed on your computer.

Step One: Installing a Java2 Runtime Environment (JRE)

You can skip this step if you are sure that your computer already has a Java2 Runtime Environment (JRE) or Java2 Software Development Kit (JSDK) with a version number of 1.4 or later.

You can download and install the latest JRE from the Sun website. Please click the link below and follow the instructions to download and install the most recent, non-beta JRE.

Note: When you click on the link below, a new browser window will open in which you can install the JRE by clicking on the Java Software Download button and performing a Typical Installation. Please return back to this window after that installation.

Java Download Page

Step Two: Download the Courseware Viewer

After you have successfully installed the JRE, you can then download and install the Courseware Viewer. We provide two options:

If you are running Windows, we provide a Windows Installer that you can download and run.
If you are using a different operating system or like to work at the Windows command line, you can use the manual installation technique described below.

Note: You will need to configure the bin directory of your JRE into your system PATH environment variable to use this manual technique.

The manual technique involves downloading an archive containing the Courseware Viewer's files. To do so, click on one of the links below:

viewer.tar.gz (for Linux)

viewer.zip (for Windows)

After downloading, please follow these steps to install and test the Courseware Viewer.

Open a command-prompt window or console and change to the directory to which you downloaded the archive. Then unpack the archive to extract the JARs to a directory on your hard disk. This directory will act as the installation directory for the Viewer. If your computer has Windows installed, WinZip can unpackage the archive. If you are using Unix, you can use the "gzip" and "tar" programs to unpackage the archive:
```
tar zxvf viewer.tar.gz
chmod +X viewer.sh
			
```

In the command prompt, change to the installation directory. Look for the viewer.bat batch file if you are running Windows or viewer.sh file if you are running a Linux with a bash shell.

To launch the viewer, type
```
viewer.bat
```
under Windows or
```
./viewer.sh
```
under Linux.