Tag Archives: New Feature for Educators

Navigation Improvements are Live!

18 Feb

Last week we mentioned that navigation changes were coming soon.

Today we’re excited to launch a better way to navigate your workspace! Now it’s easier for you – and your users – to find key features like uploaded files, get in touch with other users and locate tasks and milestones (for Business Edition).

We made a few tweaks based on your earlier feedback and rest assured we’re keeping all your desires in mind.

With these improvements, we wanted to:

  • Tie your workspaces together and make moving between them easy
  • Make navigation within your workspace clear and simple
  • Highlight common and popular actions and bring them into easy reach

These changes are available now. To see them log into your workspace, or take a look at these screenshots from a sample standalone and business edition workspace.

For more details, check out our usermanual.

Standalone Workspace Navigation:

Standalone Workspace

Business Edition Network Workspace:

Network Workspace

Details about the navigation:

On stand-alone workspaces, the breadcrumbs allow you to navigate directly to your personal list of workspaces (also listed on your my.pbworks.com page), and view the list of workspaces that you have recently used.

On networked workspaces, the breadcrumbs allow you to navigate to your network dashboard and to the the workspaces that you have recently used.



These workspace tabs allow you to access the front page of your wiki, quickly navigate to your uploaded files and administrators will be able to view their settings. These features act the same, only the navigation has changed. If a user does not have access to your uploaded files, they will not be able to view the list of files on your workspace.

What do you think about these improvements? Tell us in the comments.

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New feature preview – Navigation Improvements

4 Feb

In the next few weeks your workspace navigation will be automatically updated. This update will change how you access your core collaboration features, making them easier to discover and use. The navigation impacts how you:

  • Create and manage wiki pages
  • Access uploaded documents and files
  • Share the list of users on your workspace User
  • Manage project plans (Business Edition)

Changes on Stand-alone workspaces:

Top level navigation to access your my.pbworks.com account and navigate between your many workspaces by clicking ‘workspaces’.

Tabs to easily view your wiki, pages & files and settings. The settings tab is only available to workspace administrators.

User Tab that all users can see.  Now the user list will be viewable to all users on your workspace.

Changes on Business Edition Network Workspaces:

Top level navigation to access your network dashboard and navigate between your recent workspaces by clicking ‘workspaces’.

Tabs to easily view your wiki, pages & files, tasks, and settings. The settings tab is only available to workspace  administrators.

User Tab that all users can see.  Now the user list can be viewed by all members of your workspace.

These screenshots are just a preview and the navigation may look slightly different when it’s activated on your workspace.

Tell us what you think of the new navigation!

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Rename your Front Page

2 Feb

page name change

The front page of your wiki is the first page that users see and acts as the table of contents for your site. Information on the front page should explain the purpose of your wiki, how you want users to participate and important pages that users can navigate to when getting started.

Now you change the name of your front page to more accurately reflect the purpose of your wiki.

To rename your page, choose edit and click ‘rename this page’.

pagetools

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Get unlimited wikis and users for your school district with District EditionN

4 Aug

In the beginning, individual teachers bought our Classroom Edition.  Then as word spread, entire schools bought our Campus Edition.  Now, just in time for the 2009-2010 school year, we’ve taken the next logical step and launched our District Edition.

PBworks District Edition gives each K-12 school district that signs up an *unlimited* number of wiki workspaces and users.  Now you can share PBworks with every single student, teacher, administrator, parent, and yes, janitor in your school district.

Already, districts like Baltimore County Public Schools and the Wake County Public School System have signed up…maybe you can convince your district to be next!  Here is our announcement.

Each time, we’ve been surprised by the enthusiasm for our larger Academic packages, but we think District Edition is probably the upper limit for size.  Unless….

Country Edition anyone?

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New Feature – Full Screen Edit

15 Jul

Have you ever edited your workspace and though, “This edit box is just too small, I want more space!”

No problem! Our latest feature, called Full Screen Edit, allows you to expand your edit box to the full width and height of your screen. With full screen edit you only see the toolbar and save button, all other page elements are hidden from view.

To enter fill screen edit mode, click the ‘flower’ button on your toolbar. Click once again to return to normal editing.

Full screen editor

What do you think of full screen edit? Tell us in the comments!

McTeach: Love the new addition on PBWorks! You can now switch to fullscreen mode when editing a page! Very handy!!

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Star important pages and receive personalized notifications

31 Mar

Our new feature, Starred Pages, makes it super simple to bookmark the pages that matter most to you and quickly navigate to them.

If you have a large wiki with hundreds of pages, you probably work on only few of these pages but you receive notifications about all the changes on every page.

Now you can bookmark the pages that matter most to you and create a personal folder of just starred pages.

Personalized Notifications (Premium Feature)
Starred Pages goes beyond simply providing a convenient bookmark. Now premium users can chose to receive selective notifications about just those starred pages. Before, you could only turn workspace notifications on or off. Now you can choose between four different levels:

1. No notifications for this workspace
2. Only notify me about changes to Starred Pages
3. Only notify me about changes to Starred Pages and newly added items (new pages and files)
4. Notify me about all changes to this workspace

Click the star, to bookmark a page
starred-pages

View your starred pages on The Navigator
starredpages2

Or view all starred pages on your personal dashboard
personal-pages

Set notification preferences (Premium Feature)
preferences

We’re really excited about this new feature and so are the people already using it!

“Personalized notifications!!! You guys listened to us! Woohoo! thank you, thank you, thank you. Our IT documentation will benefit from this greatly”. -Elias P.

For more details about how to use Starred Pages and Granular Notifications, check out our user manual.

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New Feature: PBwiki Has Spellcheck!

18 Mar

Yes it’s been a long time coming but today we’re thrilled to announce — PBwiki now comes with spell check!

To double check your spelling, click on the spell check icon in your toolbar (beside the plugin icon). All misspelled words will be underlined with a dotted red line. Right click on the word to view suggested spellings.

spellcheck1

We love feedback, let us know what you think!

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New Feature: Now readers can comment on wiki pages

19 Dec

This week we’re excited to release one of our most requested features – Reader Commenting. Before,wiki users with ‘Reader’ access were only allowed to view your wiki.

Now, you can enable Readers to leave comments.

Why reader comments are useful

The ability for readers to leave comments is great if you like to get input from everyone in your organization, but you don’t want to give them full access to edit other pages on your wiki.

Reader comments are also useful for classrooms. Teachers can post questions on a page and have students answer them without having the ability to edit the questions.

How we keep your wiki safe with Reader commenting

Note: To keep your wiki safe, only users who have been invited as readers are enabled to comment. Visitors to public wikis won’t be able to leave comments unless they’re added to the wiki as readers

If you already have a wiki, you’ll need to enable this feature by doing this: Go to Settings —> Wiki Security —> Uncheck the ‘Disable reader commenting’ box.

New wikis will have Reader Commenting enabled by default.

How are you going to use reader commenting? Tell us in the comments!

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New feature: Extend your wiki with embeddable HTML / JavaScript

18 Dec

You can already easily insert YouTube videos and Google Gadgets into your wiki using the Plugin menu (click Edit >> Insert plugin).

Now, we’ve made it easier to extend your wiki by inserting HTML and JavaScript into your wiki.

Use HTML/JavaScript to add outside widgets to your wiki

Custom HTML/JavaScript allows you (or your admins) to add interactive elements — also known as widgets — to your wiki pages.

Examples:

  • Forms you create from Wufoo
  • Slideshows from Flickr
  • Any other widget with embeddable code!

Included: Security options for administrators

Widgets can sometimes result in unexpected behavior, so we’ve included built-in security for this feature (learn more about PBwiki security).

If “Allow JavaScript and other potentially unsafe code” is checked, only wiki admins will be able to edit the plugin in the future.

When other wiki users edit the plugin, they will not see the checkbox. If potentially unsafe code is detected, a warning will be shown. Potentially unsafe code, such as JavaScript, is automatically removed from the plugin to help keep your wiki safe.

To use the HTML/JavaScript plugin

1. Go into edit mode on your wiki by clicking the “Edit” tab.
2. Click the “Insert Plugin” button
3. Choose “PBwiki Magic”
4. And then choose “HTML/JavaScript”
5. Type in your code
6. If you’re a wiki administrator and want to include JavaScript (“script”) or CSS (“style”), check “Allow JavaScript and other potentially unsafe code”
7. Click “Preview,” then “OK,” and now “Save” your wiki page.

And if you have any questions, please check out the PBwiki Manual on Custom HTML / Javascript.

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