These notes are for research team
members, to assist them in preparing their entries for the PolyFilm
site. They assume you will be using Macromedia's®
'Contribute'™ package - but are generally relevant. Before
you start you must contact your team leader to obtain
the necessary software and password access.
To edit a page, start Contribute®, then: either navigate to the page where you want to make changes (just as you would
using Internet Explorer or Netscape) or select Choose... to go to the page directly
then select Edit Page.
Text styles are determined in the styles gallery (a drop down
list in the Contribute toolbar). You can select NORMAL - normal
text (this paragraph), a range of heading styles (Heading 1 (H1)
through Heading 6 (H6)).
IMPORTANT NOTE - the text styles mentioned above are
controlled by an external 'style sheet'. This ensures that the same styles
are used throughout the site, and helps maintain uniformity and a professional
appearance. Contribute offers you direct control over font types, colours and
sizes - please think carefully before using these facilities however,
as they can lead to inconsistencies in the site styling. The style
sheet cannot be edited with Contribute.
A few available styles from the style sheet are shown below:
H2 level heading -this is too large...
H3 level heading -this is the top-level heading used on the site
H4 level sub-heading
NORMAL Text content for the page - to add new text simply highlight
where you want it, and cut and paste from Word or start typing
(there is a spell check facility in contribute). The drop capital
effect at the start of the paragraph was achieved by selecting just the first
letter, and applying the 'dropcap' style to it.
Reference (style = ref) text - for image captions,
notes or references!
If text appears incorrect in the published view, check that you
have set the correct style (highlight the text you want to change
and select the desired style). (This style has been achieved by
applying italic to a section of a normal paragraph, bold is also
available for emphasis within a paragraph).
As a new member of the PolyFilm research team, you will need to
create a page for yourself. To do this you must first navigate to
your research group's folder. Simply click on the Members' research
link in the browser view, then on your team leader's link.
When you reach your research group's folder,
select Choose... from the top right of the Contribute tool bar.
One of the files visible for you to select is called new_member.php
- click on it, and a template page with notes on how to format you
page will appear. DON'T EDIT THIS YET! - Create a copy by clicking
on New Page, then selecting Copy of current page.
You will be asked to give a title for your new page - using your
name is a good idea!
You can experiment on your new page for as long as you like.
Unfortunately Contribute does not entirely restrict you to
using the styles I created for this site, and it can be a
little difficult to un-do fancy experiments! If everything
goes wrong, simply create a new page as above. Some style
notes are provided on the new_member template page.
When
you are ready to let the rest of the world see your page,
you will have to create a link to the page you have created.
Please speak to your team leader before doing this - pages should
be of good quality, and relevant to the project!
You will create the link from your team leader's page. This can
be done by navigating to your team leader's page and selecting
Edit Page. Insert your name beneath your team leader's,
replacing New team member, if this is still present.
To create the link, highlight your name, and select the Link button.
You get a range of options - you will want Drafts and recent pages,
where your new page will be listed for you to select. Click
on Publish and you're done!
You can come back to your page at any time to update it.
Linking to other documents
Contribute includes the facility to create FlashPaper™ documents,
these rely on Flash® (a plugin common to most browsers - the banner
on your site is a Flash file) to reproduce
a document. This is a useful alternative to the pdf (Acrobat) format,
and rather cheaper!
You can include Word® and other file types on your site using
Contribute®.
IMPORTANT: as with images (below) check the size
of any document you include on your site. Files much larger than
100kB will be slow to download. Files larger than 1MB are impractical,
and if popular may result in your exceeding your allowed bandwidth -
resulting in increased charges from your ISP!
Images are easily inserted into the site from your computer.
Simply select Image | From My Computer and browse to the picture
you want to publish online. You may use 'images' folders, graphics used in
creating the site are stored in special folders called 'pics' - don't
use these!
Large images download slowly, making your site
much less enjoyable for the majority of your visitors.
You must always add an alternative text description for the
image. Right click on the image you've added and select
Image Properties - the alternative text box is given at
the foot of this. You should insert text that is 'functionally
equivalent' to the image, and end the description with a
full stop (period) as this helps audio browsers parse the
description.
The alternative text you provide for an image
helps explain your site to visually impaired visitors. It is a
legal requirement in the EC.
After inserting an image you can position it on the page by right
clicking and selecting alignment in the Image Properties box
(left|right|center). Space images down the page - it is often
also useful to alternate alignment (left and right) down the
page, as this makes the page more interesting, and helps prevent
images bumping into each other on larger computer displays. It
is also advisable to add 5 px horizontal padding to aligned
images, to create a space between text and the picture.
The layout of your site is fixed at 500 px width for the
main page. This makes the page display a bit more reliable
on a range of different screen sizes, but is the MAXIMUM
allowable for any image. IMAGES WIDER THAN 500 PX WILL BREAK
THE PAGE!
