Iwitness Frequently Asked Questions

Last updated August 2007

Iwitness Introduction

• What is iwitness?
• What are the system requirements for iwitness?
• How do I Install iwitness?
• How do I use iwitness?
• What does it mean if a record is PUBLIC or PRIVATE?
• How do I get an account?

Troubleshooting

• I keep getting "Error: SK4" or some such

Iwitness

What is Iwitness?

Iwintess is a website that makes it very easy to record events that happen in the Urban Dead game, and to manage those records. With a single mouse click, you can upload the html code you are viewing on your browser (the game screen)- the Iwitness web server will store it as a file, as well as in a database. These files can be shared with others by giving them the URL of the file. They look much like screen shots of the game, except that all the useful links are still active, allowing the viewer to access further information about the scene.

What are the system requirements for iwitness?

If you can play the game on a computer, its almost certain you can use Iwitness on that computer. You will need to save a couple of hyperlinks for future use; Firefox calls these "Bookmarks" and MicrosoftIE calls them "Favorites". These links are unusual in that they contain javascript code instead of an http URL, but most javascript compatible browsers (which you are almost certainly using) work fine. There are a few cases where problem occur, but these are more along the lines of browser configuration issues rather than system requirements.

How do I install iwintess?

"Installing" Iwitness is simple- there is nothing to download or install in the conventional sense. Just follow these directions exactly step by step to use Iwitness your first time- after that, the process is easy!

1. Right-click these links and bookmark them (for Firefox) or add them to favorites (for IE). Alternately, you can just drag the link to your toolbar.
   • PUBLIC
   • PRIVATE
2. This will create a pair of bookmarklets.
3. Put the bookmarklets an an easily accessable spot; your toolbar is ideal.
4. You may want to register for an account. Returning to iwitness.urbandead.info should let you do so if you do not already have one.

How do I use iwitness?

While playing urban dead in the the game window, open one of the bookmarklets (the one corresponding to the type of record you want) from within your browser's bookmarks / favorites. The bookmarklet should open a new window and request some input. At the prompt, enter a comment such as "PK report" or "revive request" or "mall siege". Comments are limited to 250 characters. You can only use alphanumerics, hyphens, spaces, and underscores; other characters will truncate the comment.
This will open a new page that contains a link to your record and some other basic information.
You need to do this while viewing the game screen you wish to make a record of- doing it while viewing this website (or any other page besides a UD game screen) will result in an error message, or the new window opening but never loading. However, Iwitness uses its own windows and will not interfere in any way with game play, but you must allow pop ups from www.urbandead.info for it to function fully.
If you succeed in this process, you will get a result like this.

What does it mean if a record is PUBLIC or PRIVATE?

Public records are just that- anybody can (if they take the time to look) find them and look at the information they contain. Private records are hidden in directories whose contents are not open to the public view, and the random number string appended to the end of the file name makes it impossible for anybody to find them through luck or accident. "Private" records are in fact so hard to locate that if you don't record their location, you'll never them again. That's OK when you just want to share a quick secret with some friends in a private chat room or secure forum, though- just copy the link and paste it somewhere you and you friends can find it, but others will not see it!
User accounts do provide a way to retrieve all of the private records a user creates while logged into that account, so while still quite private, they are not going to vanish. User accounts also potentially allow for other levels of security; all of these are essentially private records that only certain people can see, or which do not display all of the details of the record in order to protect the privacy and safety of "innocent bystanders".

How do I get an account?

Just go to the top right of the Iwitness idex page and click where it says "register". No email confirmation is required, and you may have more than one account. As in a forum, your account name does not need to match any character name. We strongly advise against using the same name and password combinations here as for the game.

Troubleshooting

I keep getting "Error SK4" or some such

That's actually a sign that you have installed and are using Iwitness correctly. The problem is, it won't accept the data you are sending because it either lacks needed information, or contains code for scripts, iframes, or other elements that urbandead.com never uses.
Cases of lacking information are rare, but Iwitness will not, for example, accept a report from a "sleeping" character. Because no location can be determined, ther isn't enough information to create a record that would fit into the database in any useful way. If you need to make a record when sleeping, we suggest using the back button to make a record at the point where you have 1 AP left, and using the comment field to explain what happened when you used that last AP.
Cases of "bad code" are fairly common, because extensions actually alter the code that is submitted to Iwitness when using the bookmarklets. The most common "problem feature" is a map in some versions of UDtool that is rendered in an Iframe. This map is SUPPOSED to show some sort of zombie tracking tool, but that tool relies on a website that has been dead for some time, so all it shows is a 404 page. You can turn that feature off, and it will both solve this problem, and make your extension run better.
As a general rule, you can always make a record by hitting the back button a few times, turning off some extension features, and then going forwards again to the page you wanted to record, which will re-render without the extension modifications.