Shifting Ground Help N.B. The buttons shown in the text are for illustration only. They won't work if you click on them.
General Navigation
There are currently four areas in Shifting Ground - a Noticeboard, a Resource Area, a Bibliography Area and a Discussion Area. When you're in the main view of any of the four areas in Shifting Ground, a 'Navigator' picture will be visible in the top left corner of your screen. You can use this Navigator to move between the four areas of the site, or back to the Shifting Ground home page, by clicking in the relevant place.
You can also use it to check what area you are in at any time, as that area will appear 'greyed out' and with a green arrow next to it. In the Noticeboard Area, for example, it will look like this:
Viewing an Area in Shifting Ground
The content in each area is made up of either main topics or responses to them. In the main view of any area, topic and response subject headings are shown highlighted as blue underlined text e.g .
Clicking on this (highlighted) text displays the contents of the topic or response. Move to the next response or topic in the list by clicking on . or back up the list by clicking on .
If there are many topics and responses, they will be displayed on more than one page. Click and to move forwards and backwards from page to page.
Expanding and collapsing
To get an idea of what is in any area display just the Main Topic subject headings by pressing . Pressto see the full list again. You can also press the blue triangles to expand and collapse individual topics.
Choosing your view
Without leaving the main view of any area, you can see topics and responses organised in different ways, by clicking on the list of views that appear at the bottom left of any main view. Generally, each area allows you to choose to view a specific category of material in that area. This is how the submissions in each area are categorised:
Noticeboard
Conferences and Gatherings
Forthcoming publications
Notices of general interest
Resource Area
Book notes
Details of useful journals
Papers
WWW links
Bibliography
Books
Edited Collections
Journal articles
Discussion Area
Straightforward questions
Short notes
Book discussions
AFPP IV Post-Conference Discussion
Additionally, you will be offered views which display material in 'All' the categories, generally organised by date (this can be particularly useful if the discussion goes through a busy period).
The Bibliography Area is slightly different, in that all the views in this area will display entries of all three types - books, edited collections and journal articles - but ordered in a different way.
Responding to a topic or response
Click on the topic or response to which you wish to respond.
Click on the button. A form will appear for you to complete with your contribution. When you have finished, scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click on the button. It is usual for a warning to appear saying that information is going to be transmitted across the Web. Click on the button to submit the response.
If you change your mind and decide not to submit your response, click on the arrow to return to the previous screen.
Attaching Files
If you use Netscape version 2.x, 3.x or 4.x you can attach files (e.g. formatted documents, spreadsheets, HTML files or images) to your main topics and responses. To do this, use 'Browse' button to locate the file on your computer or network - simply typing the filename will not work. (Some releases of Internet Explorer do not support this feature. Apparently there is a 'patch' you can download to fix this - we'll make thus available to Shifting Ground users when we find it!)
If you need to add more than one attachment edit your first response - each time you edit you can add another attachment (or write a separate response for each attachment). Note that attaching very large files might be a problem for colleagues who are paying for their connections!
Starting your own discussion topic
If you are in the main view of an area at the time, there will be at least one link on the left hand side of the screen, allowing you to submit a new notice, resource, bibliographic entry or discussion topic (depending what area you are in). However, if you are viewing a particular item in the Resource Area and the Discussion Area at the time, then a button like this: will appear at the top of the screen. Click on this button.
In either case, as for a reponse, a form will appear for you to complete and submit.
Searching
You can also search for information if you know the kind of thing you are looking for e.g. assessment, which may be an element of a topic or response, but does not appear in a title. Clicking on the blue 'Search' link on the left had side of the screen shows a window where you can enter any word you like as a search term e.g. assessment.
Clicking on the button means that this word is then searched for in all the project details.
A list of all topics and responses containing that word will appear. Another search bar also appears at the bottom of this list. This allows you to refine your search by adding another search term if a long list has been returned e.g.
Printing
You can print any of the Web pages that you see by selecting Print from Netscape's File menu. You will only be able to print if you are logged into the network using your LAN username and password.
Adding URL's and HTML code
URLs written like this http://www.lancs.ac.uk in the body of a topic or response automatically appear as 'live' links. If you edit a topic a response containing a URL you will see the HTML code that makes the link active. You can change the text within the URL or remove it altogether and enter a new URL - but if you do edit an existing URL do not remove the square brackets enclosing the HTML code or the URL will no longer function as an active link.
Currently only http:// style URLs are formatted as 'live' links. In the near future mailto and image source links will be formatted automatically too. Currently if you want to enter these, enter a line similar to those shown below: (without spaces between the angle and square brackets)
Many other HTML fragments can be entered into topics and responses in this way, they will appear formatted so long as (a) they are valid and (b) they HTML is enclosed in a single pair of square brackets. Some other examples are shown below:
[ <strong>Make this bold</strong> ] Make this bold
[ <em>Emphasise this - make it italic?</em> ] Emphasise this - make it italic?