How-to Guides

Collaborative Sites: Format your content

September 1, 2009 by Sue Weier

Basic formatting icons are available to help you arrange your post and make it more readable.  The icons are similar to those in Microsoft Word or GoogleDocs. 

Below you can see the icons available in your course site.  Use the numbers below each bracketed set of icons to see the definition and examples.

1. Font formatting:  bold, italics, underline, strikeout:  Select the text, then click the appropriate icon to see the formatting.
2. Alignment: left, center, right, full:    Select the text, then click the appropriate icon to see the formatting.
3. Lists: bulleted, numbered:    Select the text, then click the appropriate icon to see the formatting.
4. Outdent/indent:  Select the text, then click the appropriate icon to shift the paragraph out or in.
5. Undo/redo: Click the appropriate icon to undo or redo changes that you've made.
6. Links:  Insert/edit link, Unlink, Anchors.

   To create a link:

   1. Select the text
   2. Click the Insert/edit Link icon.
   3. Enter the URL of the link destination.
   4. Select a target from the dropdown menu
   5. Enter a descriptive name for the link.
   6. Click Insert
   
   

   To break or remove a link:

   1. Select the highlighted link text.
   2. Click the Unlink icon.  The link will be removed.

   Anchors:

   Anchors allow you to create a link within a single page. This is often used to create a page menu at the top of the page, with terms that jump down to the appropriate section.

   To create an anchor tag:

   1. Select the target text.
   2. Click the Anchor icon.
   3. Enter an appropriate Anchor name.
   
   

   Create a link to the anchor:

   1. Select the text that the user will be clicking on. .
   2. Click the Insert/edit link icon.
   3. In the URL field, enter the pound sign, followed by the anchor name. Ex. #tests, where tests is the anchor name.

 

7. Pictures:  Upload or link to an image.

   To link to a photo on another website:

   1. Click the Picture icon.
   2. Enter the Image URL and provide a description for the image.
   3. Click Insert.
   4. Adjust other fields if needed

   To upload and link to a photo:

   1. Click the Picture icon.
   2. Click the Browse icon, located next to the Image URL box.
   3. Click Upload.
   4. Click Browse to find the desired field on your hard drive.
   5. Click the appropriate filename.
   6. Click Upload. You'll see the filename appear in the file listing.
   7. Click the filename.
   8. Click Send to tinymce. (located at the top of the window)
   9. Enter an image description
   10. Adjust other fields if needed
   11. Click Insert

 

8. Clean: remove messy html codes.  Use this if you've pasted from another document and the table, list, etc isn't appearing correctly. 
9. Superscript/Subscript: select the text and click the appropriate icon.
10. Edit HTML source code:  If you're familiar with HTML and wish to your own coding, click this icon to see the code in a separate window.
11. Insert horizontal line:  Position your cursor in the desired position and click the icon.
12. Remove formatting:  Use this if your document formatting doesn't paste correctly from another application.
13. Insert special characters:  Click this icon to see a popup window with special characters, including currency, foreign characters, proofreading marks and fractions
14. About TinyMCE
15. Paragraph/Heading styles:  Select the text that you wish to change, then select the appropriate formatting from the dropdown menu. Heading2 is a typical subheading.