Improving usability

Crossed wires

Image courtesy of clairity

Introduction

When authoring structured content and creating multiple subpages and sub-subpages navigation can become confusing. You may have noticed that when you create a subpage in WikiEducator that the page heading at the top of your wiki page publishes part of the URL including the "path" of the subpages. For example, the URL for this page is:

• http://wikieducator.org/Wikieducator_tutorial/Navigation_templates/Improving_usability and normally the page header of this page would be displayed as:
• Wikieducator_tutorial/Navigation_templates/Improving_usability, however on this page the wiki publishes the shortened form of the main page headinging, i.e.:
• Improving usability

Consequently when navigating structured learning materials, new users visiting your site on WikiEducator may become confused with these long headings.

WikiEducator has developed a special syntax that enables you to customise the text that the wiki displays as the main page header. In this section we will demonstrate two approaches you can use to alter the page headings of your materials.

Comparing default pages with pages using customised headings

Activity

Using the example navigation template below on Big cats: Go to the Topic on "Tigers" and click on all the links associated with "Tigers" observing what the wiki displays for the main page header; Now go to the Topic on "Lions" and click on the associated links observing what the wiki publishes for the main page header; Do you notice any differences?

You will notice that the links associated with the Topic on Lions above, do not display the long URL. For instance Big Cats/Tigers/Siberian/Tiger In the sections that follow, we will show you how to do this.

Creating Customised Headings

Two main options are available to create a Customised Heading:

• An auto generated Short Heading; or
• A self inputed Customised Heading (truly Customised)

Auto generated Short Heading

To create a short title for your page use the following: {{ShortTitle}}

It will display the short name of the page based on the last part of the URL.

Customised Heading

Wondering how to make the title on your page shorter ... try this template out!

To get just the name of the subpage use the following:

{{MyTitle|}}

To create your own title for the page use the following:

{{MyTitle|My short title}}

Tip: All the title templates above will work whether placed either at the beginning or the end of your page

Work in progress, expect frequent changes. Help and feedback is welcome. See discussion page.