08 December 2011, 2:22

Hello,

For Mahara 1.5, one of the new features (sponsored by the New Zealand Ministry of Education) is re-usable text boxes. Currently, we call them "notes", but the word "text box" also still lingers around. "Text box" doesn't seem to be so appropriate anymore, but would "notes" be a good substitute?

Do you have suggestions / preferences for this? You can have a look at the notes in master.dev.mahara.org under Content -> Notes. The term "text box" comes up in the page editor where you can choose the block.

Thank you very much for your input

Kristina

08 December 2011, 3:55

Hello Kristina,

If this would be the text-box equivalent of a journal entry that can be added to multiple pages I think it's a great idea, but do agree it needs to be distinguished from the existing text-box. To my mind notes can have a different connotation - possibly more for personal use than content displayed in a portfolio. Given the text-box is much more versatile that just text (with images, etc), would it be more intuitive to the user if it was actually called 'Reusable ..." (whether ... be notes/content/block)? Or perhaps "Shared Notes". Not an elegant name I admit, but I can see why you're looking for alternative definitions for the functionality.

Regards, Gordon.

08 December 2011, 13:12

Hello Gordon,

Thank you for your feedback. Right now, notes = text box. There is not another implementation of a non-reusable text box. Existing text boxes are converted into these note / text boxes upon installation of Mahara 1.5. That also goes for text boxes used in groups, institution etc. Thus, you can re-use other people's text boxes as well, but you'll get a warning if you want to edit text allowing you to copy it as a new note instead.

You can still include images etc. in your note as it is a regular text box, just re-usable.

Cheers

Kristina

08 December 2011, 6:37

Kristina,

Will you be able to create new Notes from that section and then add them into pages, or will the notes only be created from the text boxes (as currently is in master.dev?

Is there a reason that these can't be kept separate (I may want to type stuff onto a page, that I don't necessarily want to re-use somewhere else, but think that these notes could also be useful).

Thanks

08 December 2011, 13:07

Hello Wullie,

Thank you for your reply. The current implementation is as on master.dev. We do not have plans yet to add more features as the funding of this feature has been exhausted. However, it is always possible to expand it.

All text boxes are re-usable and there is no switch where you can turn that off. It's a good idea though to add. If you want to give it a try, Mahara 1.5 hasn't been released yet.

Cheers

Kristina

16 January 2012, 17:02

I actually like adding a 'text-box' to a page. That seems straightforward.

But I also like searching through my previously made "notes" to use them again. Love the Notes feature, but don't think it needs to completely replace the term "text-boxes"  in Page editing..?

Just a terminology preference really?