On June 17, 2008, we upgraded to CommonSpot 5.01, the latest version of the CommonSpot web content management software. The upgrade includes the following enhancements:
- A new menu bar with larger buttons replaces the three icons at the top of the page. When you click on a button, the resulting menu will stay open until you click on an item on the list or click outside the menu.
- Menus are are larger and easier to read.
- A new mode indicator makes it easy to see if you are in Read, Author or Edit mode.
- New "Show Tools" buttons, which allow you to easily hide and display different icons on the page to quickly display a simpler view of a page.
- Element icons have been consolidated into one icon. The new consolidated icon looks like a gear:
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The new element icon "floats" over the content of the element, so as not to displace the content on the page:
When changes have been made to an element, the gear icon will be replaced with a yellow icon, to indicate work in progress:
- Icons are square, to make them easier to click.
- Keyboard shortcuts for commonly used commands are available for Windows users:
| Login/Logout | Alt - Shift - 0 |
| Read Mode | Alt - Shift - 1 |
| Author Mode | Alt - Shift - 2 |
| Edit Mode | Alt - Shift - 3 |
| Preview On/Off | Alt - Shift - 5 |
| Show Container Tools | Alt - Shift - 6 |
| Show Element Tools | Alt - Shift - 7 |
| Show New Element Links | Alt - Shift - 8 |
| Standard Metadata | Alt - Shift - 9 |
- Click on the gear icon for an element to display a short list of the most commonly selected options related to that element:
There is a More option, which you can click on to display the full list of element options:
When the full list is displayed, you can click on the Less option to collapse the list:
- You can click on a link while in author mode, to test the link or navigate to another page for content. Your lock on the original page will remain in place, until you go into author mode on a different page. When you go back to the original page, you will still be in author mode.
- Under the Properties and Actions button, Page Properties has been broken into two options:
- a Standard Metadata link
(the first screen of the old Page Properties):
- a Custom Metadata link:
(the second screen of the old Page Properties):
Faculty members authoring course pages only need to go into Author mode and select the Custom Metadata option to author a course page:
- The Formatted Textblock element has been improved, and the Mac authoring bug fixed.
The new formatted textblock has a "Property Inspector Panel" just under the text area. This panel allows you to easily change the properties of certain objects in the textblock, such as a table, horizontal rule, images, lists, etc.:
There is also an option to clean up the HTML after copying text in from a Word document (which tends to include a lot of unnecessary html tags):
To clean a paste from Word:
