Formatting with the Textbox Editor
Formatting Text Box Content with the Text Box Editor
Blackboard now comes with a formatting toolbar called the Text Box Editor.
The Text Box Editor appears when posting a new message or responding to a posted message. Use the Text Box Editor toolbar to make postings more attractive, interesting and informative and not have to learn HTML or CSS.
Tools available in the toolbar:
The toolbar is very much like the one available in MS Word. Let us look at the various tools available.
1. Bold, italicize, underline, align (left/right/center), indent and add bullets.
Cut, copy and paste.
2. Redo and Undo options allows us to go back and forth to view the changes made to the document.
3. Insert a hyperlink with the Hyperlink option.
4. Choose mailto option from the drop down box when using Hyperlink option, to add an email address to the document.
5. Search for a word or phrase in the text area.
6. Add a link to a webpage by selecting the default http:// from the drop down list, or add an email address link by selecting mailto:// from the drop down list.
7. Create a table for tabular data with the Table option.
8. Insert a horizontal line.
9. Highlight text you have already entered with color or change the Font Color.
10. Format your text with color.
11. Insert equations and math symbols with WebEQ and MathML
12. Open the html editor <html> and add html content.
13. Preview your html content before submitting it.
14 Find out how the different tools in the toolbar work.
15. Attach a file
16. Add an image to enhance your content
17. Add MPEG or AVI video content
18. Add QuickTime movie content
19. Add a fireworks image
20. Spell check your text. When Blackboard is spellchecking your work, a new window will pop up.
Please note: There are problems copying and pasting from word processing programs like Microsoft Word. To copy and paste from Word:
1. Create your document without formatting
2. Save the document as plain text by selecting .txt or plain text from the “save as type” drop down box.
3. Once you have saved your document correctly, highlight and copy the content.
4. Return to blackboard and paste your content into the text area, using the paste icon shown on the right. Finally, format your text in Blackboard using the text editor toolbar.
How to Enable or Disable Textbox Editor:
1. Click the "My CSU" tab
2. Find the Tools box on the left and click Personal Information.
3. Click Set Text Box Editor Options.
4. In the "Manage Text Box Editor" set the Set Availability option to "Available" or "Unavailable"
5. Click Submit to finish.
Note for Mac Users
The formatting toolbar is only available to Windows Operating System users with Internet Explorer Version 5.x or a later version. You will still have Smart Text and HTML formatting options.
The math and equation editors, and the spell check and preview functionalities, which are found in the PC version are also available in the Mac version. However, you will need to follow a different procedure for adding images.
Adding images to content areas on a Mac:
From the “Add Content” window, “browse” for the image file on your computer.
Using the “Special Action” drop down box, select “Display media file within the page” |
