PBworks User Manual

A First Look: Editor Display

The PBworks Page Editor

Below is an example of a workspace page in edit mode. Key regions of interest have been shaded green, yellow, blue, and red to highlight important areas. Click on any of the shaded regions to find out more about what that part of the page does.

Page Title

This is the title of the page you're working with. You can name and rename most pages of your workspace to whatever you want with the exception of the "FrontPage" and "SideBar" pages. These pages cannot be deleted or renamed.

To rename a page, simply navigate to the page you want to rename and enter edit mode. Then, click on the small "ab|" icon that appears to the right of the title. You'll be taken to a form that you can use to rename the page. If you don't see this icon, then you may not have rights on the workspace to rename pages, or you're looking at the FrontPage or SideBar pages, which cannot be renamed.

Font Styling

The font stlying buttons work just like the buttons in most word processor programs. Select the text in the editing area you want to change, and click the button to add the font style.

B - Makes the text bold.
U - Underlines the selected text.
I - Italicizes the text.
~~ABC~~ - Makes a line appear in the middle of the text ("strikethrough"). This is especially useful to denote text that has been removed, but you don't want to lose the information from the page.

Listing Tools

These buttons create numbered and bulleted lists out of any list you have on your workspace. Just select all the text in the list, and click the button to make the list. Each item must be seperated by a carriage return (clicking Enter or Return on your keyboard.)

Creating a list

Apple

Banana

Cantaloupe

Apple
Banana
Cantaloupe

1. Type out the
list contents

2. Select the text

3. Click either button
to make a numbered

or bulleted list.

Indentation

You can use these buttons to indent lines. If you select multiple lines of text, the buttons will indent all of the lines selected appropriately.

Text alignment

These buttons align the selected text to the left, center, and right of the page.

Copy and Paste

These buttons can be used to copy text from the clipboard, and also to paste text into the editor from an external source. Please be careful when pasting text into the editor. You should only paste plain text into the PBworks Page Editor.

Undo button

This button undoes the last change you made in the editor. You can also use the shortcut key (CTRL-Z) to undo a change just made in the editor. This button is disabled if there is nothing to undo in the editor.

Insert/Edit link

The Insert/Edit Link tool allows you to easily insert links to workspace pages, folders, external URLs, or e-mail addresses. If you want some text in your page to link to something else, just select the text and click this button. If no text is selected, the link is made with the text of whatever you place inside the tool.

Insert table

Use this tool to create a new table. To edit an existing table, simply right-click (or Control+Click on Mac), to edit the Table Properties. Tables are a good way to control the layout of your page, and to make sure your images and text displays the same across all browsers.

Spell Check

The Spell Check tool reviews user's text to identify spelling mistakes. Mistakes will have a red-dotted underline; by right clicking on those mistakes the tool will provide a list of potential corrections. As with all spell-check programs, proper names may be misidentified as incorrect, so use your best judgement when using this tool.

Insert Plugin

The Insert Plugin tool allows you to select from a number of productivity and enhancement plugins. When you click this button, a menu will appear which will let you choose from the many plugins PBworks offers. The plugins will be inserted where the cursor is, when the Insert Plugin button is clicked. For more information on Plugins, please see this page.

Text and background color

There are two buttons which let you control the foreground and background text color. You can use text color to make your text stand out, or to simulate a highlighter.

Button

Example Text

Text Foreground Color

This text's foreground was turned red.

Text Background Color

This text's background was turned yellow.

Formatting

This dropdown selector allows you to set which lines of text are the headings for your page. By appropriately selecting the headings, you can easily create a table of contents for the page, using a PBworks plugin. For more information on making a table of contents, click here.

Font

This dropdown selector allows you to set a new font for the text your typing, or for the text you just selected.

Horizontal Line

The horizontal line tool allows you to make clear separations between different sections of content on your page. Horizontal lines on this page seperate each section.

Remove formatting

This tool will remove the special formatting from the selected text and will set it back to default formatting. This is useful if you want to start over the formatting on a page or paragraph, but don't want to lose any information. This tool will not remove any links from the selected text.

Source button

Click this button to see the HTML code that makes up your workspace page. The average editor probably won’t need to use this button. If you accidentally click it, simply click it again to return to the editor. You can edit the HTML source to make minor tweaks to the page display.

Note: Although this does give you the opportunity to change some of the options in the HTML code in your PBworks Page, it is not recommended to use the source editing mode to embed anything into your PBworks page. It is heavily filtered, and the code you place in the Source of a page, may not save correctly if it is not in an HTML/Javascript plugin. For security reasons, only Administrators of workspaces can embed Javascript, and only through the HTML/Javascript plugin.

Editing area

This is the editing area of the workspace. While in edit mode, place cursor inside this area, and edit the text inside, just like any other word processor. This is only possible if you're approroately logged in, have clicked the edit tab, and have sufficient rights to edit the workspace page.

Save Button

As with any word processor, saving is the most important step to keeping your work safe. Your work is not saved on the PBworks server unless you click this button. There is an autosave feature that you can use in the event of a browser crash, so you don't lose all your data, but this is not a replacement for clicking the Save button. Save often to make sure you don't lose any precious information.

By clicking the "Cancel" link, you can return to normal viewing of the page without saving. If this link is clicked, any changes made in the editor will be lost.

Edit Tags

When you click on this link, the list of tags will be displayed in the editor, seperated by commas. You can either add new tags, or remove the current ones with this field. To save the tags, click the Save button in the lower left corner. This will also save any changes made in the editing area.

Insert Links

The Insert Links toolbar is a quick and lightweight file manager, which interacts with the editor so that you can embed content into your pages easily and efficiently, without leaving the editor. In addition to easily adding links to a page, you can also use the toolbar to embed images and upload new files. Here are some of the main features of the toolbar.

When viewing pages, you can click on any of the links in the tool to automatically create a link to that specific page. The new link is placed wherever the cursor is inside the editor.

By default, you can only see the pages of the workspace in this list, ordered by the last time they were edited. Click on the "Images and Files" tab to see a list of your files that have been uploaded to the workspace.

Before you embed a picture file, it is possible to preview it before adding it the page. Just place the mouse over the picture file, without clicking anything, and a preview of the file should appear. This preview will disappear once you move the mouse away.

When viewing files, you can click the "Upload files" link to upload new files to your workspace. The new files will show immediately in your Images and Files list.

The page tools area allow you to rename or delete a page if it is possible for you to do so. If this tool displays the above message (that the page cannot be deleted or renamed), then you may not have sufficient permissions on the workspace to rename or delete pages in general. Additionally, the FrontPage and SideBar pages cannot be deleted by any user of your workspace, including Administrators and workspace owners, so those users will see this message when editing the FrontPage and SideBar.

Here is what the page tools look like to an Editor or Administrator on a workspace, while editing a page that is not the FrontPage or the SideBar.

Page tabs


View mode	Edit Mode

The View and Edit tabs show you what mode you're accessing the page content in.

The View tab shows you a web page on the workspace: you're looking at the rendered HTML and images that have been added to the page. This is what users see first when they encounter your workspace.
- When you navigate around a workspace, you are automatically in View mode.
- When you click the View tab while in Edit Mode, PBworks prompts you to save the page and returns you to View Mode.
The Edit tab puts you into Edit mode and allows you to modify the contents on the page. The editor is covered in much greater detail here.

Workspace Title

The workspace title is the text that is displayed at the top of every workspace page in view or edit mode. It is also visible when viewing files in the Pages and Files manager. Clicking on the workspace title will always take you back to the FrontPage of your workspace.

Users with non-basic workspaces have the Customization option, available in the Settings, to completely remove the title from the page display for all users. All users can change the workspace title, by editing the text for the title in the workspace Settings.

Account information

In the upper right corner of every page is the email address of the user that is currently logged in. If you don't see a certain page, or if the renaming or deletion options are not available to you and you believe they should be, please check this area, to make sure you're logged in as the right user, with the right account.

Here's what clicking on each element of the account information will do:

Email address - By clicking on the email address, the user is shown a listing of their starred pages, and their notification settings for this particular workspace.
Account - Clicking on the "account" link will bring the user to the page where they can adjust their display name and account information.
Sign Out - The sign out link will completely sign the user out of PBworks, and they will have to log in again.

Full Screen Edit Mode

Use this button to enter Full screen editing mode on your workspace. Click the button again to return to normal editing. If you click save while in full-screen edit mode, you'll be returned to the View mode of the page you are editing.