Frequently Asked Questions
More questions? Send an email to support@coachingplatform.com
Questions and Answers
- What is szpace™?
szpace™ is the generic name for the web-based collaboration space provided
by coachingplatform Inc. The szpace software derives its name from its
creator Mark Szpakowski and because it builds on the difference between the
notion of space and of place. The name szpace actually stands for enhancing the
value of people meeting in places by offering them a complementary web-based
space. Different szpace-powered sites are branded differently:
MyLearningPlace, coachingplatform, eDesign, and so on. All offer a
user-controlled home on the web for collaborative work and learning, where
each user can organize multiple topics with custom mixes of home pages,
libraries, discussion forums, and courses.
- What do users find compelling about szpace™?
Here's a selection of comments:
"It's always available and easy to access via any web-browser."
"It's my space, with custom options that let me build my look for my stuff."
"I have the option to add clients and partners into any part of my space at any time."
"It's easy to learn and easy to use."
"I get total portability for my critical documents and professional tools."
"All participants can contribute and share all forms of material, no read only hierarchy."
"From one and the same interface - a secure home on the web - I can cooperate with others and manage my personal, private workspace."
"I can create custom shared and private workspaces for each group, project or topic, with just a few clicks."
"I can invite who I want into each workspace - no need to ask any administrator."
"I'm in control of my topics/workspaces."
"I can share my knowledge with all the users of coachingplatform by creating a public topic."
"With this tool I easily bridge the space barriers between members of a worldwide active team or network."
"Allows for ongoing collaboration in the way I need it."
- What browsers
and settings should I use to best view szpace™?
Any modern web browser, with Javascript
and cookies enabled, should work with szpace™.
Browser requirements are described in detail here.
- Is there more help available?
Yes, click on the Help button at the bottom of the szpace™
screen. This gives details on what all the buttons and tabs do. You can
also use the Help outline as a way to get a quick overview and tour of szpace™.
- How do I
create a Topic Home Page?
The Topic Home Page (under the
topic's Info tab) is a web page. If you own the topic you can create
and edit its Home Page. Click the topic's Settings tab,
and then click Customize Topic Info Page. You can then use one of
three editors:
- Simple Editor.
Just fill in the forms, type, and make selections - no HTML knowledge
necessary.
- Upload Web Files.
This lets you upload HTML file(s) and associated image and other resources.
Create your HTML file using a text editor, HTML editor, WYSIWYG web page
editor, or by Saving As HTML from a word processor. A free WYSIWYG simple
web page editor is Netscape Composer: if you know how to use Word, you
can use this editor. NOTE: Make sure that all your files (HTML and images)
are in one directory: you cannot use sub-directories.
- Use Web Location as Topic
Home. Provide a URL for the web page to be used as the topic home
page. Any page on the web can be used: just copy/paste its location.
- How
do I modify a file I have already uploaded to the library?
As the owner of the file, when you click on the ? icon next
to the file name in a library view, the Edit button will
be enabled. Click that, and then click the Manage Files button
at bottom right. You can now re-upload a modified version of the original
file: this will update your library item.
- How do I to manage my files, topic by topic, on
my own machine?
Since you are basically editing files on your machine, and then uploading
them to a topic library, you could create a szpace™ folder, and inside it
one folder per topic, named after that topic. Here is a further suggestion
for organizing each topic folder:
- create a Home folder inside the topic folder. That's for holding your
Topic Home Page web file(s) and image resources
- then keep originals of files for that topic in the topic folder.
- How does szpace™ differ from newsgroups or web forums?
szpace™ includes discussion forums, which are much like newsgroups, except
that in szpace™ they can be created with the click of a button. But there's
much more: with szpace™ you get your own home on the web, which you control
and personalize. Your place can have multiple topics, each of which can
be completely private, shared by invitation with others, or public. Each
topic has its own home page (which could be an entire web site); libraries,
with folders of uploaded documents and bookmarks; discussion forum; list
of people; and course.
- How can I save a library document to my computer?
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If the document
is a single-file document, when you click the ? icon, a Download
button will be active. Click that and a dialog will appear which you
can use to navigate to a folder on your computer to which you want to
download the file.. |
When you click the document title, or click the ? icon and then the
View button, the document will be displayed in the szpace™
content area. If you're using Netscape as your browser, here is how to save
the document to your hard drive:
- Click in the frame where the document is displayed
- From the File menu, select the Save Frame As...
command
- Navigate to where you want the file saved, and clickSave.
From Internet Exporer, you can save the file by clicking File
in the upper left hand corner of the browser.
- How can a topic owner create a course?
Any topic owner can, if the site policy permits it, create a simple course,
and make it available to the topic participants. Under Settings,
click Customize Course to start the process of developing
your Course. Check Help for further details.
- Is there a list of available public topics?
Click the Catalog button at the bottom
of the screen to get a list of publicly available topics. Click the title
of a topic to see its description, and its Add link to
add the topic to your topic list.
When you create a topic, it is by default private, so only you or people
you invite into it can see the topic. However, by clicking a checkbox in
the topic's Topic Settings screen, you can make the topic public: it will
then appear in the site catalog.
- Why can't I can't see all of the page on my screen?
szpace™ is best used with a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or more. 800x600
is works okay, but will require more scrolling..
- Why can't I go 'back' to szpace™ when in help?
Help opens a new, smaller browser window. It may be in front of your main
szpace™ window. Move the Help window around to find your szpace™ window, and
click on it to bring it to front.
- How can I unsubscribe from a topic?
To remove yourself from a topic, go to My Options: Manage Topic
List. Click the topic's title, and then click the Delete Topic
button. On this screen you can remove yourself from a topic, or re-order
the topic list. If you are the owner of a topic, you can remove participants
from it, and also remove the entire topic. If you remove your topic, its
participants will get emails notofying them of the topic's removal.
- What is the "HOME" button?
Clicking Home will take you to your szpace™'s Home Topic. This topic
is always at the top of the Topic List. You can re-order your Topic List
(see My Options: Manage Topic List) to make your own topic
your szpace™'s "HOME".
- Can forum messages be sent to me by e-mail?
Yes. In the topic, go to the Settings tab and click the
box that says Relay Forum Messages to my email address.
- How do I control visibility of my e-mail address?
To make your e-mail address visible, go to My Options:
Change Profile and checkt the box that says Make
my Email address visible to other members of szpace™. Your e-mail
address will only be visible to other topic participants in topics that
you have joined.
If you do not want your email address to be visible, uncheck that checkbox..
- What are those red dots beside some of my topics?
These are Topic Lights: if there's been activity
(a change in the topic home page, in a library, or in the discussion forum)
in a topic since you last visited it, a light goes on next to its name in
the Topic List, and the corresponding tab will also become red.
- When I use Netscape Mail (or some other e-mail
client), the messages I get from the forum extend off the end of the screen
(ie, do not wrap).
This can be fixed as follows. While in Netscape, change your preferences
as noted below:
Edit
Preferences
Mail and Newsgroups
Messages
There is a Message Wrapping area in this section - make
sure that the box marked: Wrap incoming, plain text messages to
window width is clicked on.
- How do I make links to szpace™ clickable in the
Pegasus (or other) email client?
This occurs when Pegasus (and some other e-mail clients) wraps long lines
in email messages: the link is split into two lines, with only the first
line being clickable. The result is that you click on an incomplete URL.
The best fix available now is to copy and paste the two pieces of the URL
into the location bar of your browser.
- When I create an HTML document in Microsoft Word
(various versions), the image(s) linked to the HTML file are not visible when
I upload the HTML file and its associated image(s) to szpace™.
When a multi-file document is uploaded, szpace expects to find the HTML
document and its associated image(s) in the same directory.
Howevever, when an HTML document is created in MS Word, Word places images
in a subdirectory below the directory containing the HTML document. For
instance, if you create an HTML file called web.htm in the directory
c:\Mydocs, MS Word 2000 will store any images associated with that
file in a directory called c:\Mydocs\web_files. Word 2000 writes
the HTML image tag like the following:
<img src="./web_files/picture1.gif">
When you upload the HTML and image files to szpace™, however, they are
all uploaded to the same directory. Thus the image tags will not be pointing
to where the images actually are.
To correct this situation:
- move your image files from c:\Mydocs\web_files to c:\Mydocs
- using a text editor (like Notepad, or using Word as a text editor (be
sure to open and save the file as a text file)) do a global search/replace,
so that all occurences of img src="./web_files are changed to img
src="
- to use the example above, this will change <img src="./web_files/picture1.gif">
to <img src="picture1.gif">.
Using MS Word 97
Microsoft Word 97 produces clean HTML when a file is Saved As... HTML.
To ensure that files created in Word 97 are usable in szpace™, use
the following procedure:
- Create a folder to store your HTML files and images.
- Create your Word document and save it in that folder.
- Insert some images in the Word document, and save the document
- Save the Word document in HTML format in that folder
- The contents of the folder you created should now include both the HTML
file, and any images associated with the HTML file.
- Open the HTML file in a broswer to check for any problems.
- Upload the HTML file and images to szpace™ as a multi-file document.
NOTE - When creating and editing web files, you can avoid such
complexities by using an HTML editor. There are a number of free or inexpensive
WYSIWYG web file editors available.
- What are some free or inexpensive WYSIWYG HTML
editors?
Netscape
Composer is available for most platforms, and is free.
On Windows, Cute Page HTML
Editor is free adware.
Check this Macintouch discussion
for MacOS 9 and MacOS X editors.
Please let us know your experiences and recommendations, so we can share
them with others.
- The Download button doesn't work right.
You're probably using IE 5.5, or Netscape 6, or an older version of Mozilla
on Windows. There are bugs with these products that break proper handling
of the Content/Disposition protocol. Netscape 6/Mozilla does
work properly on Macintosh and on Linux. A fix for IE 5.5 is promised with
Service Pack 2.
Meanwhile, if you're using IE5.5, you can download a (single-file) document
by clicking the ? icon next to its title, and then right-clicking the
Download button. A menu will appear, from which you should select Save
Target As... to download the file.
- When I try to login, all I get is the login page
again.
This happens when cookies are not enabled in your browser. Most browsers have
cookies enabled by default. Check the Browser
Requirements page for information on how to enable cookies if they have
been disabled.
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