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ECPS Online Editor

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The online editor is used throughout the course profile system for fields that may require formatting.

It can be used to:

  • Justify text
  • Bold, Italicise and Underline
  • Cut and Paste
  • Bullet and Number paragraphs
  • Indent
  • Hyperlink
  • Add tables
  • Spell Check (Internet Explorer Only)

However, the editor has some peculiarities that need to be considered, particularly when pasting text from Word.

Browser and platform issues

Windows Users:

The editor is fully compatible with the Windows operating system, and will run under the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, Mozilla and Opera.

Macintosh Users:

Two of the most popular browsers for the Macintosh OS, Safari and Internet Explorer for the Mac, have not been updated for many years now and are virtually obsolete. The editor makes use of technologies which these browsers are not yet able to process and so are incompatible. Macintosh users are recommended to use the free Firefox browser for the Mac which is fully compatible, as are Netscape and Mozilla.

Users should note that the behaviour of the online editor can be slightly different between browsers. Users of Firefox, Netscape, or Mozilla will notice more functions (such as viewing the Source) use pop-up windows. However, the end result will be identical regardless of the browser.

The buttons

ECPS online editor buttons

1 Source View and/or edit the HTML source directly. Click Source again to return to the rendered view
2 Cut/Copy Cut or copy the selected text to the Clipboard
3 Paste as plain text See “Pasting from Microsoft Word” below
Paste from Word See “Pasting from Microsoft Word” below
4 Spellcheck Download, install and run a spellcheck application which can run within the editor. (Only available to Internet Explorer users.)
5 Undo/Redo Undo the last action or redo the last undone action
6 Find/Replace Find or replace a specified text string
7 Select All

Select all content in the editor
Remove Format Remove any formatting from the selected text
8 Bold/Italic/
Underline/
Strikethrough		 Apply formatting as specified
9 Subscript Apply subscript formatting (as in H2O)
Superscript Apply superscript formatting (as in E=mc2)
10 Numbered List Apply numbered list formatting to the selected paragraph/s
Bulleted List Apply bulleted list formatting to the selected paragraph/s
11 Decrease Indent/
Increase Indent		 Decrease or increase the indenting applied to the selected paragraph/s
12 Align Left/Centre/
Right/Justify		 Align the selected paragraph/s to the specified position
13 Link/Unlink Apply a URL link to the selected text or remove a selected link
14 Insert Table Insert a table of specific dimensions (columns and rows)
15 Insert Special Character Insert an unusual character not normally found on the keyboard (similar to Windows' Character Map or Word's Insert Symbol feature)
16 Universal Keyboard Insert text from character sets of non-latin languages

Pasting from Microsoft Word

When pasting text into the editor from Microsoft Word, avoid using the usual CTRL-V methods. CTRL-V will paste not just the text but also a lot of unnecessary invisible code and formatting which may result in a mismatch of formatting styles in your inserted text. Instead, use one of the options at the top of the editor screen (as shown below).

There are three ways to paste text into the online editor:

CTRL-V

Internet Explorer users will be presented with a dialog box asking whether you want to clean the text before pasting. Answering OK to this question will start the Paste from Word procedure (see below), but clicking Cancel will result in all of the unnecessary Word formatting being pasted into the field along with the text (highly undesirable).
Firefox/Mozilla users will not see this dialog box - the editor will instead just paste the contents of the clipboard into the field along with all of the unnecessary Word formatting.

Paste as plain text

This method will paste the text and only the text - any formatting will be lost in the paste operation. This option is recommended if Paste from Word (below) achieves undesirable results (probably a rare occurrence). Any required formatting can be re-applied using the formatting buttons at the top of the editor.

Paste from Word

This method will filter out most of the Word code before pasting it into the system. This is usually the best option.

Track changes and comments

Text copied from Word which contains markup (usually as a result of inserted comments and the activation of the "Track changes" feature) will cause problems when the text is pasted into the Editor. Before copy-pasting from the document into the ECPS it is recommended that:

  • all changes in the document are accepted;
  • Track changes is turned off; and
  • all comments are deleted.