File Drag and Drop

Our enterprise electronic notebook iExperiment supports file drag and drop only in the Firefox browser. The video below demonstrates and discusses file drop in iExperiment for a number of different files. Below the video is a description of the application’s file drag-and-drop behavior for a variety of file types.

When a file is dropped on an iExperiment record, the application examines both the file type and dropped file location on the experiment record to determine how to handle the dropped file. In most instances, the contents of a dropped file are added below the section it was dropped on. On the occasion that iExperiment cannot determine where to place the information, a popup message will let you know of this issue. A number of file types can be processed by iExperiment including:

Oxygen Team image file icon Image Files: When an image file is dropped on to an experiment record, the file is placed in a figure box. iExperiment will give a default title above the image and a default caption below the image. Both the title and the caption can be edited. Most image file extensions are recognized and placed in figures, except for TIFF files due to the lack of support in web browsers.
Oxygen Team text file icon Image Files: Text Files: When a simple .TXT text file is dropped on to an experiment record you are offered three options: 

  1. The file can be stored as an attachment and displayed in an attachment box with a title to the right of the file icon and a caption below the icon and title. Like figures, both the title and the caption can be edited.
  2. The file can be saved as an attachment and the contents added as the attachment caption.
  3. The file can be placed in a text section. In this case, the file will not be saved as an attachment but added as part of the text.
Oxygen Team text- XML file icon XML Files using iExperiment’s Schema: Full records, parts and material descriptions can be added using iExperiment’s XML schema, which can be found at www.iExperiment.net/XML.
Oxygen Team spreadsheet file icon plus CSV iExperiment CSV Files: Lists and tables are added to experiment records using a comma-separated values (CSV) format.  The CSV file can be dragged and dropped on to a section in a record, or added using a menu.  A tutorial on the creation of CSV files for iExperiment can be found at www.colabrativ.com/csv-table-creation/.
Oxygen Team upload file icon Other Files: All other files that are dropped on to an experiment record are stored as attachments. Attachments have a title and a caption, both of which can be edited. iExperiment recognizes and displays the appropriate icon for a number of file extensions, including Microsoft Office, Adobe’s PDF, VectorNTI and the Protein Data Bank files.

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