On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 12:22 PM, William Stein wrote:
> Any suggestions?
I'm thinking about the new user, who (a) doesn't know at all that you
can add text (b) can't figure out why there are two colors for the
bars or (c) tries to type code into TinyMCE and can't get it to
evaluate.
What about having a small text link, similar to "evaluate" that says
"annotate", "add text", "doodle" or something similar? Placed
somewhere suggestive like the "evaluate" link is. Not sure where that
would be relative to the input cells, output cells and the blue bar.
Maybe it could be shoved off to the right margin, keeping "evaluate"
shoved off to the left margin (simple with CSS?).
Maybe long-term the notebook could have an expert mode. Colored bars
for the pros (which would be nice once you know what's going on) and a
novice mode with more help or more obvious controls, but maybe a tad
more cumbersome. You could go in/out of expert mode with a link at
the top, and/or set your choice permanently with some configuration
option.
I really like the idea of the students having an editor that they can
use to write on a worksheet, and especially the possibility that they
can start learning simple LaTeX without the usual overhead of a big
install, the \begin{document} structure, the command line, etc. So
anything that makes TinyMCE's presence more obvious to the uninitiated
would be another great addition.
Rob
On Feb 16, 11:01 am, Bill Page <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 12:22 PM, William Stein wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 9:21 AM, Bill Page wrote:
>
> >> Shouldn't there be a more visible way - similar to what you do to
> >> create other new cells?
>
> > Any suggestions?
>
> What I was looking for was some king of highlighting as I hover the
> mouse over the cell. Right now I see a blue bar where a new
> computation would be inserted if I click the mouse. It appears right
> at the start of each cell just *before* the input box and another
> final one at the bottom of the page.
>
> What might seem natural to *me* would be another color of bar, say a
> red, just like the blue one but at the bottom of each input cell just
> *after* the input cell and for good measure an extra initial one at
> the top of the page. Of course these should only appear when moving
> the mouse in the right location. The click a red bar would lead to
> inserting an "HTML" block via TinyMCE. All it would take is just one
> experiment by a user to know which input bar does what.
>
> Well, that's my two-cents worth but I realize there may be several
> other ways to accomplish something similar.
>
> Regards,
> Bill Page.
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