Editing Text

When you enter editing mode a standard toolbar will appear providing formatting options to create headings, bullets, bold text, etc. The system will automatically saved any changes you make every few second, and will warn you if you attempt to leave the editor with unsaved changes. You can also use the Save button to immediately save changes whenever you like.

Immediately above the editing bar are small circles containing the initials of everyone currently editing this page.  The editor allow multiple individuals to edit simultaneously, seeing each other's edits in real time.  Also above the toolbar is the 'View Past Versions' button which allows you to explore past edits. You can copy text out of this view and paste it into the editing box to correct unwanted changes that have been made.

Add elements to the page using square bracket tags

There are a number of elements such as links, files and images which appear differently in editing mode than they do in the normal view of the page. In editing mode these element appear as tags: id numbers and commands surrounded by square brackets. By entering and modifying these tags you can control how these elements appear in the final page. 

For instance the tag: 
[image 1243] 
causes a particular image (one that was previously uploaded and to which the system assigned the unique identifier: 1243) to be displayed in the page at that location.  You'll need to view the page outside editing mode (either by exiting editing mode or opening the page in a new tab or window) to see how these tags are rendered in the final page.

What follows in the next few of pages are detailed explanations of all the tags available for formatting your text.

Accessibility

Whenever you're editing web pages (or really any content that you plan to share broadly) you'll want to take into consideration how the choices you're making will impact the accessibility of the materials.  Please check out our Accessibility Guidelines for SERC Authors and Contributor to get up to speed on these considerations.

HTML mode

The system also provides an html editing mode which allows direct access to the (limited) set of html tags (described here) supported by the system (e.g. paragraph and heading tags).  Note that the html editing mode does NOT autosave changes and does NOT allow multiple simultaneous editors.  If someone is editing a page in html mode, no one else may be editing at the same time without risking having information lost or overwritten. The system will attempt to warn you if this is going to happen.   We recommend only expert users use html mode and that they do so only when they need to make a specific change that can't be achieved through the normal editor.