Saturday, May 9, 2009

[NEWS] Helium Update On Article Tool

News from Helium.

It seems that Helium has made some changes with its article tools and it is now possible to paste from words and link management. The changes would probably address to the difficulties faced by writers when making 'hyperlink' to words.

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On Wednesday, May 6, we updated Helium to a new version of the site editor along with some related changes under the covers. The editor is used when you add an article, create a leapfrog, or add or edit bio information. The main impetus for the change is to address the difficulties some people were having with managing links in the article text.

The most significant addition to the editor is the ‘Paste from Word’ feature.

Adding links to your articles

The way you link and unlink text when creating an article hasn’t changed. The link and unlink tools look like this on the toolbar:

Highlight the text you want to link, and use the ‘link’ tool from the toolbar to add link information. To remove the link, you should be able to place your cursor anywhere in the linked text and select the ‘unlink’ tool from the toolbar. You can also select any portion of the link text and use the unlink tool. You will see improved accuracy with the link picking up exactly what you want to link, and staying that way.

Pasting content into the editor

There is a new, easy way to get your content onto Helium: Use the “Paste from Word” button atop the text editor window in the Write flow.

The Paste from Word button looks like this on the toolbar (and the words “Paste from Word” show up when you scroll over it):

Please use Paste from Word by default. If you experiment with regular paste and it works, fine. If not, clear out everything you’ve done and try Paste from Word.

You can paste any content - just not content from various versions of Microsoft Word - into the window that pops up when you click the Paste from Word button. When you click on the ‘Insert’ button, the editor will strip out all the extra “hidden” formatting that can cause problems later and insert your text into the main editor window. You should then check the formatting of your article and add or fix links in the main editor window before publishing the article. The same applies to your bio text.

Article preview

Article preview has been simplified a little and should now more accurately reflect the formatting and links in your article.

Always preview your article before hitting the publish or submit button.

Other useful information

* Read more about the upgrade from VP of Engineering Tracy Flynn
* Read about how to make – and get the most out of – great links in your articles.
* Take a look at our new Help Wiki that's actually searchable! (User Guide will be no more!)

Janice Brand | VP, Content & Community | Helium.com

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