Time for action—creating and laying out your View

  1. To create a View from scratch, click on the My Portfolio area on the Main Menu bar.
  2. Now click on the My Views tab. You should see a screen similar to Punam's below; she has decided she is now going to create a View about the Tudors. You will see that you currently have no Views listed in this area:
  3. Click the Create View button on this page.
  4. The screen you now see is almost identical to the one that you saw when creating your Profile Page; however, the title is different—Create View Step One: Layout. From the title, you can probably guess that there is going to be more than one step. In this Time for action section, we will be concentrating on this first step. You will notice that no blocks have been automatically added for you:
  5. Punam decides to start creating her first View on 'The Tudors'. She remembers that the text block hides under the General tab. Drag a Text Box into your View. Punam uses her textbox to write an introduction to her View:
  6. She then decides that she wants to add an image to her View. To add an image, click on the Files, images and video tab.
  7. Drag the An Image block into your desired position on the page and fill in the settings in order to link to an image stored in your Files area or upload a new image. This is what Punam's View now looks like:
  8. Finally, Punam decides to add a video to her View. You will find the videos block under the Files, images and video tab. We are going to add a video from the popular video sharing website, YouTube (http://youtube.com). Start by dragging the External Video block into your View.
  9. You will then see a pop-up box with options for this block. Before you enter your settings here, you will need to navigate to an external video site and choose a video that you like. This doesn't have to be YouTube; you could also choose Google videos (http://video.google.co.uk), Teacher Tube (http://teachertube.com), or SciVee (http://scivee.tv). Search for a video that you would like to add to your View. When you have found it, copy the URL from either the address bar or from the link provided with the video.
  10. Punam has found a video from a 'Horrible Histories' Series on YouTube. On the settings page, enter the URL in the Video URL section. Then choose a Height and Width for your video in pixels. The standard 250 x 250 is usually fine. When you've finished, click on Save:
  11. Her View now looks like this:
  12. On seeing her View, Punam decides the she would like the video to be in the middle column and the image to be in the right-hand column.
  13. You can move blocks around the page using the same drag-and-drop method that you used to add them. Click on the title of the block and try dragging it around the View. You will see how the other blocks move to make space and a dotted box appears to show you where it will be positioned:
  14. Punam drags her blocks into the correct position and her View now looks like this:
  15. That's all there is to creating a new View, adding blocks, and rearranging them.

What just happened?

We just saw where we can go to make Views in Mahara, had a go at adding some blocks, and learned how to rearrange the blocks on the page.

You will have noticed that there are a few differences between the Profile Page and other Views too. The blocks are all the same with the exception of the wall block, my views block and my groups block, which are only available in your Profile Page. However, virtually everything else to do with creating, editing, and manipulating blocks around your View is identical. If you feel like learning a bit more about the blocks available to add to your View, look for the section called Blocks, which appears later in this chapter.

Any time you want to see your View while you are editing it, just click on Display my View on the layout editing page:

This will show you what you View will look like to a user. The only difference between what you see and what a user sees is that you will also see a bar at the top of the page. Use this bar to go Back or Edit to return to the editing page:

Unlike editing your Profile Page, creating a View is a three step process. This is useful as you can come back to each of these steps later and edit them individually without having to go through the whole three-step process each time. We haven't finished with Views yet; just had a look at the first step of View creation. There is one more thing to mention in the first step—changing your View layout.

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