Pages: Adding and Editing Content
Each page type in CALI Author has customizable fields. Some are mandatory and others are optional.
There are 17 different page types. See the section on Available Page Types for information on each one.
This chapter will cover how to:
Choose a Page to Edit
To work with a page, select its name in the Table of Contents to the left. The page will open on the right. Ensure you’re on the Author tab to continue editing the page’s content.
(This video covers how to Choose a Page to Edit, Edit the Text, Change the Page Name, and Change the Page Type.)
Edit the Text
Place your cursor into the field you want to edit. Make your changes. Use the formatting toolbar to further customize your text.
Tip: Use Ctrl+Shift+V to “Paste as plain text” when copying and pasting text from a website or other source.
Tip: Remove default placeholder language where necessary, such as for optional Hints.
Change the Page Name
Once the page is open, delete the existing name and enter the new name into the text box next to Name in the Page Info section.
Tip: CALI Author will only allow a particular page name once. If you need to reuse a page name, use a placeholder name and then go back and change the original page name to something different.
Change the Page Type
Select the box next to Type in the Page Info section. Doing so will open a menu of page types. Select the new page type. See the section on Available Page Types for more information.
Tip: When you change the page type only the Question text will be preserved—everything else will be lost. If you have content you want to save, you may want to create a new page, copy and paste from the old page, then delete the old page, instead of changing the page type.
Add Images
Preliminary Note: The main Picture section is not operational and you cannot use it to add new images. However, existing lessons may have pictures that appear in that section. You can delete pictures from the Picture section by deleting the text in the File Name field.
To add images to a page:
- Place your cursor in the Question or Feedback section where you want the image to appear.
- Select the Image icon in the toolbar at the top.
- Open the Upload tab and select Choose file to upload an image from your device.
- After opening, select Send it to the server. This will automatically take you back to the Image Info tab.
- Tip: If you don’t see the image in the Preview box after selecting “Send it to the Server” and returning to the Image Info tab, and instead you see a red box with an X in it, the image may be too large. Try resizing.
- In the Image Info tab, add the Alternate Text.
- In the Image Info tab, you can also adjust the width and height.
- Tip: You can see how the image appears in the Student tab. To further customize, return to the Author tab and double-click on the image which will reopen the Image Properties box.
- Tip: See all of the media in use in the lesson in the Media tab.
Add Videos
Select the page type Text with Video then add the YouTube embed code to the Video Embed field. Leave the Video Source field empty.
Add Links
To add links to external web pages:
- Highlight the text where you want the link to originate.
- Select the Link icon from the toolbar.
- Set the Link Type to URL.
- Set the Protocol to http://.
- Enter the destination URL into the URL field.
- For example, for the CALI website, you could enter either www.cali.org or cali.org.
- To make the web page open in a new browser window, open the Target tab and select New Window.
To add links to an email address:
- Highlight the text where you want the link to originate.
- Select the Link icon from the toolbar.
- Set the Link Type to E-mail.
- Complete the E-Mail Address field.
- You may also complete the optional Message Subject and Message Body fields.
Add Popups
Popups provide supplemental information and appear as links in the text. Selecting the link opens a box containing the popup text or image on the same page.
- Create a popup page by selecting + Add popup under the Table of Contents.
- Add your Popup content to this new Popup page. Note the Popup page name.
- Return to the page where you want the popup to appear in the text.
- Highlight the text that you want to link to the popup.
- Select the Link icon from the toolbar.
- Change the Protocol to Popup.
- Under URL type the exact name of the popup page you created.
- Select OK.
Tip: There is a bug that shows an error when attempting to view the popup in the student view. It will, however, work properly once published. To view the popup in the student view in CALI Author, while still in the student view, navigate to the popup page then return to the page containing the popup. The popup will work after taking those steps.
Add ToolBar Buttons
ToolBar Buttons appear as buttons at the top of the page, and when selected, open a box on the same page that contains your text and/or images. You can have one or multiple ToolBar Buttons at the top of the page. The buttons themselves can have whatever text you would like.
- First, create a Popup page by selecting + Add popup under the Table of Contents.
- Add your content to this new Popup page. Note the Popup page name.
- Create multiple Popup pages if you want multiple ToolBar Buttons.
- Go to the page where you would like the ToolBar Buttons to first appear. Expand the ToolBar Buttons section in authoring mode.
- Once added to a page, ToolBar Buttons will continue to appear on subsequent pages. Note how the default setting in the ToolBar Buttons section for “Toolbar button handling” is to “Keep previous toolbar buttons.”
- On the page where you want your ToolBar Buttons to stop appearing, change this setting to “Remove previous toolbar buttons.”
- Select the “Number of toolbar buttons” you want to add from the dropdown menu.
- For each ToolBar Button, type in what you want the ToolBar Button text to be under “Caption.”
- For example, your button text might be Hypo and the toolbar content might contain a hypothetical scenario from a previous page that you want the student to be able to easily revisit.
- For each ToolBar Button, under “Link,” type in popup://popuppagename. Note that after popup:// should be the exact name of the Popup page you created.
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- For example, if the Popup page is named Cool Toolbar, the full link would be popup://Cool Toolbar.
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Hint: When you’re done, switch to the Student view. The ToolBar Button(s) should appear BUT it will say the Popup page can’t be found when selected. While staying in the Student view, for each ToolBar Button, navigate to the original Popup page and then back to the page containing the ToolBar Button. Try the ToolBar Button again and it should work.
