How to annotate
1. To annotate text, begin my highlighting the text you wish to comment on (hold down your mouse cursor at the begining of the word or phrase, drag your mouse so that the highlight covers the text you wish to annotate, then release the mouse cursor).
2. On releasing the mouse cursor, a small blue icon will appear; click on it to open the annotation authoring popup:
3. Write your annotation in the large white text area in the popup:
Use the icons at the top of the popup to style your text (e.g. highlight a book title and click the I icon to make it italic) or to embed an image or video.
Categories are broad ways of identifying what an annotation does. The colored buttons at the bottom of the popup are the available categories for identifying your annotation. Choose one by clicking on the button (currently, multiple choices are not supported; you're encouraged to separate different types of annotation content into separate annotations). If you forget to choose a category, you'll receive a message ntifying you that the default category of "Interpretation" has been applied.
Tags are fine-grained ways of identifying what an annotation does or what the highlighted text is. The field above the category buttons accepts tags: these are terms describing your annotation that are more specific than the categories. You can add no tags at all, or any tag terms (they don't need to already be in use on another annotation). Separate tags with commas. For example, an annotation in the category "Translation" might use the tags field to further identify the text being annotated as French and a song lyric (see screenshot below).
Categories and tags power the site's filters, described in more detail below; in short, filters let you limit the annotations displayed on a page to just those of interest to a given reader.
Press save to finish your annotation (you may need to refresh the page before it is accessible to the filters).
How to filter annotations
Filters let you limit the annotations displayed on a page to just those of interest to a given reader. Categories (broad types of annotations) and tags (user-defined, fine-grained types of annotation and descriptions of annotated text) power the site's filters. On the right side of each page is the Filters Box:
The Filters Box allows the reader to:
1. toggle buttons to display no annotation highlights (none), only those the logged-in user authored (mine), or all annotations on a page
2. filter to only show highlight for annotations with specific tags, a specific category, or authored by a specific user
You can see what filters are currently active on the page in a list under "Selected Filters" (e.g. in the screenshot above, the current page is being filtered to only show highlights for annotations by user Amanda Visconti).
How to read annotations
Click on any highlighted text to make its corresponding annotation(s) appear in the sidebar on the right side of the page. If you click on multiple overlapping annotations, these will all appear in the sidebar.
How to edit annotations
When viewing annotations in the annotation sidebar on the right side of any page, you can click on the "edit annotations" link to visit a page that will allow you to edit the text of the annotation.
Problems, ideas, questions
Please use our Feedback page (also visible in the header menu) to contact us.
Note also that sometimes you must refresh the page after creating an annotation for it to appear in the sidebar or be accessible when filtering.
How to change your username or password
Visit http://dev-rc-distro.pantheon.io/user and click on the "Edit" tab that appears under your name:
You can then update your username, password, and email address.