Serenity Hints

For a sunnier work session, consider these suggestions before you begin working.

• Edit Mode. Every time you open one of your own pages, click the Edit tab first before reading it. Why? Because you as the owner of the page will probably have the natural impulse to click on the page and scroll down to have a look at your text. But when you try to click on text in Plone, that opens a special quick edit function. What's wrong with that? Nothing, except that the page will flash and reload, which could take a long moment, and your cursor will jump to another part of the page. Often it jumps down to a blank space after your document text; you may be left looking at a blank reloading screen as the seconds tick by, thinking that all of your work is gone; then when it reloads you will need to tinker with both scroll bars to regain your place. So, click Edit first thing. This will give you a smoother session, whether you want to edit the page or simply read it. And every time you Save changes to a page, click Edit before continuing your session. (You can always cancel any accidental changes by clicking Cancel at the bottom of the page.)

The Big Exception: If you all want to do on a page is test links, you must stay in View, not go to Edit. Links on a page will open only if you go to View mode before clicking on them! And, if you install a link and then try to test it, it won't work unless you click Save first to return to View mode.

• Please Save your work. Often. On this one, just trust us.  If you don't, you can be speed typing along, then hit Save, and suddenly see a new page with this:

A problem has occurred Please contact cases@uwrad.fogbugz.com
Error message: "multipart/form-data not allowed"
Hitting Refresh will attempt to resubmit your request

Is that a welcoming message? We didn't think so either. We hope this is the last time you will ever see it.

If you DO see a message like this, immediately click your browser back button to return to your page and highlight and copy the new material! Paste the new material to some MS Word doc or some other location, and Save it there. At least then your material won't vanish. Then you can click Edit again, copy & paste your new material to the page, then Save. Otherwise, when you reload the page those changes will vanish. Web forms at UW have a "pub-cookie" security time-out function; even if you are actively editing along, if you don't Save changes often, like every ten minutes at least, your new changes will not be accepted. By the way, the word processing reflex of hitting Control + S to save work while you type will not save your work in Plone. You can be merrily Control + S saving away, and still end up losing all your work; Control + S will do nothing but (sometimes) open an enigmatic Save As dialogue box.

• Use Save or Cancel buttons before leaving this page! If you make any change, any, at all, please always click Save or Cancel at the bottom of the page. Otherwise you will accidentally lock the page, and your teammates will not be able to edit it, and they will need to call us. It's a common situation. If you have many open tabs in your browser, it's easy to click on some other tab and wander off your page, then close all your tabs at day's end without really saving the page. Usually your teammates can click Unlock to release the page, but they may not know that and sometimes extra tech support tricks will be needed. (There actually is a lock function in Plone, but that's another discussion.) By the way, if you see the message "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?" press OK if you DO want to leave the page (without saving your work), or press Cancel if you want to stay on the page, and then press Save or Cancel at the bottom.
  

Kupu Editing Bar Icon Functions

When you open a page and click the Edit tab, you should get the greenish Kupu edit frame.

What if the frame does not appear?

1. Set Kupu as your default editor by following these instructions. Otherwise, to find the Kup bar it may be necessary to jiggle up and down the page using the two scroll bars on the right of the page.
2. According to www.learnplone.org, "The Safari browser will not work with the page editor in Plone due to a known bug in the browser. At this time Safari has not announced a fix."

In Kupu, the 20 icons (more or less) can do the following jobs. Here they are, from left to right. And by the way, you can also hover your cursor over an icon for a pop-up label naming the function of that icon.

Bold: "B" icon. Click before you type. Or, type first, then highlight the text and click the icon.

Italic: "I" icon. Click before you type. Or, type first, then highlight the text and click the icon.

Left justify: Align text left

Center justify: Align text center

Right justify: Align text right

Numbered list: Insert text, hit this icon, and it indents with a number. Ever time you insert text and hit Enter, you will create a new numbered line. To stop line numbering, enter your new line of text, click on the superfluous number, and click the Numbered list icon again; the superfluous number will disappear and the text will be placed flush left. If you do want the un-numbered text to be indented, click icon 11 (with the blue arrow pointing right) to indent that line.

Bulleted list: If you insert a couple of bullets and then hit Enter but DON'T want the software to keep generating numbers, just click on the superfluous number and click the Numbered list icon again. If that throws off your alignment, just click on the first character of the new line, then click icon 11 to increase your indentation.

Definition list: Alignment used for typing subheadings of definitions.

Decrease quote level: Move Indentation Left: If you'd like indented material to align flush left. Click the first character of the line, then this icon.

Increase quote level: Move Indentation Right: If you click your cursor just before a line which you wish to indent, then click on this icon, the line should move 5 spaces to the right. Why not use the Tab key on your keyboard? Because this will advance you to the next field!

Insert Image: Here are instructions a-plenty for inserting an image to a page: Images, Inserting

Insert internal link: Chain-link icon. See instructions for inserting an internal link .

Insert external link: World icon

Insert anchors: Ship anchor icon

Insert table: cute crossword-puzzle icon. Plone is actually not strong on its table-making functions. If you have a ready-made table made in some other software program and you like its look, you are just as well off adding it as an image, then re-loading and updating the image whenever you update the table in the other software.

Undo: arrow pointing left

Redo: arrow pointing right

HTML: In Edit, click here to switch to editing in html. Once you open this, you will still see a green edit frame (without any Kupu icons). To switch back to Kupu, just click HTML again or else click Save or Cancel.

Text Tool Format Box: This is a drop down menu containing text appearance options. The default setting for this is Normal Paragraph. You can highlight your text and choose options such as Heading, Subheading, Character Style (in 6 decorator colors), Pull-Quote to make text stand apart in its own box, and Clear Floated Elements (this stops text from wrapping around an inserted image and allows the image to stand alone on a page). And if you wish to remove formatting, try highlighting your text and click Remove Style.

Red X: The little red X at the far right of the Kupu bar will only appear when you are in Edit mode and when you highlight the hypertext of a link OR click on an image. Clicking the red X will then allow you to break the link or to delete the image. (To break a link, don't just delete the text for the label; first highlight the hypertext, then click the red X.)

Zoom: At the very top right of the Kupu bar, this is a tiny blue and white box symbol with a tiny red arrow. Click on this to expand the text box of your page to a full screen size for easier editing. Then click the same icon to reduce the web page size again. Note: when I click to reduce the page, my cursor does not return to its previous place in the document; instead it is placed at the very top of the page.

Creating Your New Page

Copied from Tutorial 1:

Pages: Open My Folder. Open Add New > Page. Enter a title and click Save. Click My Folder > Contents to see your page. Why not use Add New and choose MS Word Document? Because then your reader will need to open MS Word and download the document before reading, and for some users this could be a complication. It's simple to just build a web page, and copy in your data. Then your readers can view it directly, search the website to find your material, and (with proper authorization) even edit the page online to collaborate with you. If you want to go up a level from a page, look up at your Navigation path and click the next highest link there. That's because a page does not have the "Up one level" link. It doesn't have a Contents tab either.

Once you've saved your page,

Note, Oct. 2009: Mary will come back and add material to this page! Thank you for reading...