Suffolk's 22,000 students take this tutorial to learn how to use Pine, and if they pass a proficiency test the software validates their Email account automatically.

Click on the image below to display it full screen, or visit the site at http://www.sunysuffolk.edu/Pine/pinemail.html

(To take the on-line test: register as Is A Guest, birth date 99/99/99, Social Security number 999-99-9999.)

There are 4 tutorial sections, and each has an interactive exercise. They are: Logging In, Reading Your Mail, Sending Mail, and Basic Unix Commands. Icons move the user through the tutorial sequentially, launch execercises, and begin the test.

In the test, a cgi script authenticates user log-ins, and calls a java applet that simulates Pine Email tasks. At the end of the test the java applet passes the results to another cgi script that updates the MSQL database, validating the user email account.

There are 75 pages in the site, and an equal number of screen captures. Over a dozen custom java classes were written for the tutorial. 240 hours were spent developing the software.

The web site was a Long Island Software Award finalist in 1998.