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The wiki is easy to change
The editor window
When you invoke the editor you will see a page with an editing window above which will be an editor palette looking much like this:
Simply click in the space below the editor palette and begin typing. You can format the text as you wish by selecting the text to be formatted and clicking on the appropriate icon. For example, to create italics select the text and click on the "italics" icon (look for this
in the palette). Icons exist for making text bold, underlined, Other icons control line properties, like those controlling alignment (right, center, left or justified:
). You can also invoke styles, formats, font faces and font sizes using the pull down menus seen in the palette. In the example above the font "Verdana" is selected.The two links showing a color palette allow you to color either text itself or the background to that text.
To distinguish paragraphs it is useful to put two "returns" between them.
Creating links
. A pop-up window will open with a pull-down menu that allows you to create a link to the internet, elsewhere in the wiki, to an "anchor" or a link to an E-mail destination. Select the type of link you would like to make and enter the location of the target (the URL of the internet page or the name of the wiki page, for example) in the appropriate box. You will probably not need to use anchors (positions on a page that you can direct the browser to jump to on clicking the hyperlink).Creating an entirely new wiki page
Remember that every page must have an entirely unique name. Please, when creating new pages try to make them as short as possible and as specific as possible. DO NOT use generic names like "writing assignment". Instead, John Doe might decide to create a page like "John Doe Assignment 2".
Wiki pages are never lost! (well almost never...)
Do not dispair if a page you have saved seems to have disappeared. Clicking on the "history" tab at the top of the page brings up a list of ALL previous versions of the page. You can click on a link to any of those pages, edit and save it to restore a "lost" page. Pages that have not been saved can truly be lost. BEWARE of navigating away from a browser page on which you are editing a page. If the page has not been saved it can easily be lost!
Supported web browsers
The wiki runs on software that your browser automatically downloads as you navigate from page to page. Unfortunately, not all browsers are able to understand the wiki software. You may find, therefore that some parts of the wiki fail, for example you may not see the editing palette or you may not be able to enter text into the editing window. If you experience this problem you should dowload the most recent version of the browser, or if that does not work try another browser. We know that the wiki works on various forms of Mozilla (e.g., Firefox v 1.5) and does not function in Safari.
Sandbox
Nearly all wikis have a Sandbox in which users new to the wiki can play with the capabilities of the wiki editor. Feel free to use ours!
