AOB Forum Enhancements
All Academy of Bluegrass Forums have been enhanced with new capabilities. Here's a summary of what's new:
[b]Improved Message Headers
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Message headers are better organized to clearly show information about the student who has posted the message, including:
- "avatar" (student's picture)
- Student's user name
- Online right now? (dot is green if student is online right now)
- Add to my Buddy List (a Buddy Request is sent to that student)
- Contact? (if you wish to email that student)
- # of posts made by each user
- School designations (one for each school enrolled in)
[b]School Designations
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- Students have an instrument symbol for each school for which they are enrolled
- Artists have a "star" over their school designation
- ArtistWorks staff, and other AOB Admins have an "A" designation
[b]New Message Format
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The body of the message is now clearly defined. All information and actions related to the message are embedded in the message itself, allowing you to focus on the content of the discussion without being distracted.
You will see "delete" and "edit" for messages you yourself post.
[b]New Quoting System
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A flexible "quoting" system has been instituted to make easy for you to make it clear what you are responding to. While you are reading a message ...
... if you click "Reply", you get taken to the reply window with nothing quoted
... if you click "quote" with no text selected, you get taken to the reply window with the entire message is included as a quote
... if you first select some text, then click "Quote", you get taken to the reply window with the selected text included as a quote
(Note: Quoted text is not editable.)
In a message with a quote, a link will take the reader to the message from which the quote came. This will make it easy to "go backward" to see the full context of discussion. (click "date/time")
[b]Adding "rich text"[/b]
In the message input window, you can now easily add "rich text" tags. The toolbar icon commands insert simple HTML tags into the text (therefore it is not a WYSIWYG editor). There is a preview button to enable you to see what the formatting commands will do before you post the message. Learn more about these command by clicking on the '?' icon.
[b]Add PDFs to posts
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You can attach PDFs (which are shown as downloadable attachments)
Click on "Attach an image or PDF to this message."
[b]Add URLs in your posts[/b]
You can add URLs (links) to messages. You can create a reader-friendly text to be used rather than that actual Internet URL
[b]Forum Search[/b]
A forum search is now provided which searches the entire forums for all messages related to your search.
There are search fields at the top of every Forum page. The search feature allows you to search across all messages in all forum topics. The subject line and the body of all messages are searched. If you like, you can search for whole phrases by putting the phrase "in quotation marks"
You can also get lists of messages from students. For example, "tonyt" will find all messages posted by "tonyt".
[b]
Search Results[/b]
When you click on an item in a search result list, you will get the message where the text occurred, and all responses that have were made to that message.