I. Introduction A. New Features II. Main Page III. Editor A. Viewer Pane 1. Zoom 2. Page Numbers 3. Scrolling Editor B. Editor Pane 1. Note Area a. Text Features b. History c. Page Adjustment 2. Export a. Web b. Text 3. Search a. Listing b. Highlight IV. Settings V. Troubleshooting A. Browser Support B. Text Displaying Incorrectly C. Editor Note Sorting Behavior D. Historical Notes
Welcome to Flashnotes. Flashnotes is a web application that allows you to take notes alongside your documents. Its purpose is to provide a high quality standards-compliant environment for easy note taking and organizing. Student notes are stored online for easy access all around the world. Notes can be viewed at home, in the classroom, or on the go, allowing for an unprecedented level of flexibility and freedom. Write once, read anywhere.
Flashnotes 2.0 is FlashNotes redefined. We've improved the style and the layout tremendously, not to mention the note taking. Notes are now dynamic. In the previous version of flashnotes, you had a set of notes for every page in the document, and only one page could be viewed at a time. FlashNotes 2.0 provides easy and convenient access to every note for a document at once. Whether a document has two notes or twenty, they will all be visible and accessible.
The home screen of flashnotes is a dashboard for further access. The announcements for a user's courses are immediately visible for the student's convenience. The courses a student has access to can be accessed by hovering over the drop down list just above the main banner.
<~picture of menu~>Once a course has been chosen, a similar drop down menu listing the documents available for a course will appear. The announcements for that specific course will now be the only announcements visible on the left panel. The right panel will be replaced by the documents for the course, allowing users to follow whatever path they are more comfortable with.
The editor is where most students will be spending the majority of their time. The editor, besides providing a way to access the other documents for a course and a listing of courses available to the user, also offers a Viewer Pane and an Editor Pane. There is also a splitter between the two that can be used to resize both panes to favor one over the other.
The viewer pane renders the a DPF document directly to the web page. The document viewer provides a scroll bar and appropriate mouse wheel access so that users can easily traverse the document. Barring that, page numbers are also available as an alternate method. Changing the page number directly is likely a desirable outcome when switching to a page far away. As the viewer pane is scrolled, the document pane is scrolled with it so that the appropriate notes are visible.
Zoom functionality is provided with a variety of zoom levels. The percentage values range from 50% to 200%. Other zoom levels include Automatic resizing, actual size, and the standard fit-to-page and fit-to-width. Simply zooming in and out at will is also possible.
The pages controller appears as a spinner in those browsers that properly support that element. For other browsers, it will appear as a simple input box. Any number from 1 to the number of pages in the document may be entered here.
The Editor Pane provides most of the interface updates for FlashNotes 2.0.
Notes are presented contained in a number of boxes that are tied to a specific page number. These note blurbs are sorted automatically by page number, and can be opened for editing by being clicked. Once clicked, the text will be replaced by an advanced editable text area using a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) interface.
The editor specifically supports Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, Font highlighting, Font Size, Font Color, Font Family, Bullet Points, Numbered Lists, and horizontal splitters. Contact FlashNotes Help to request more features
Once a note has been selected for editing, two icons will appear on its right side. The first of these is the note history button. Clicking this redirects to the note history page, which will allow the user to restore the current note to any previous version of this note.
Once a note has been selected for editing, two icons will appear on its right side. The second of these is the page adjustment button. Every note is tied to a specific page number, although you can have multiple notes per page. FlashNotes will prompt the user for a new page number within the bounds of the document. If an appropriate number is not supplied, the system will request another. Pressing cancel will end this behavior and cause the note to remain on the same page it was in
Exporting and Printing notes are essential features for the student on the go.
To export notes, highlight over the export menu to reveal the menu options. Exporting to a web file will return a .html (web page) file for download. Exporting to text will return a .txt (notepad) file. Either of these files can be saved and read at the student's leisure, with or without internet access.
Printing a set of notes is largely the same procedure. Simply click on the print button and adjust the appropriate options
Search functionality greatly supports the accessible design that FlashNotes considers as its ideal. Using the search box, users can scan through the entirety of their notes to find specific words. The entries just below the search box are removed if their respective notes do not contain the search term. These entries can be clicked to have the editor pane scroll directly to the desired note. The viewer pane will also arrive at the page tied to the note in question.
This is a known issue that occurs for certain users running Google Chrome version 16. Please update to a more recent version of Chrome or use another browser to access FlashNotes
A simple refresh of the page in question will fix 99% of all sorting errors. If errors persist, please contact FlashNotes Support.
Returning students should have had all previous course notes restored. If this is not the case, please contact FlashNotes Support.