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How to navigate this site

Basically two different navigation approaches have been integrated:

  • systematic navigation, starting from the menus in the top bar
  • contextual navigation, allowing to follow paths starting from the current page/view.

Moreover, a livesearch function can be invoked from a control placed at the right of the main menu bar:

 

it allows to perform fast full-text search of projects, members and educational resources, based on keywords (sub-strings) to be found in some of the metadata describing them; results are grouped by type.

The menus

The user menu

The user menu, which is placed at the right end of the top bar, reconfigures itself based on the current user and its authentication state.

Currently, for an anonymous user, that is a user not yet authenticated or not registered at all, the user menu includes controls related to registration and authentications:

The user menu of an authenticated user includes a link to the user dashboard with the name and the avatar of the the user him/herself,  a few other controls being descibed herebelow, some of which are available also inside the user dashboard, and the Log out icon:

  • the envelop icon: a link to the summary view of the messaging functionality that allows the user to exchange private messages with any other user of CommonSpaces; a small red flag is superimposed to it if there are unseen messages inside the inbox
  • the comment icon: a link to a page summarizing new (unseen) posts in forums of projects of which the user is a member; a small red flag is superimposed to it if there are unseen posts
  • the barchart icon (only for the Community Manager of CommonSpaces and Community Administrators): at its right there is a sub-menu of functions producing statistics on users activity an user-generated contents
  • the toolbox icon (only for users with staff status): a link to the back office section of the CommonS Platform, from where staff people can compose and translate editorial contents.

The main navigation menu

The main navigation menu, which is placed just below the user bar, is splitted in a few menus roughly targeted to different groups of functions. It currently includes the following sub-menus:

  • the About menu: links to pages aimed at presenting CommonSpaces and the Common project
  • the Communities menu: functions related to the communities, the projects and their members
  • the Library menu: functions to browse and search educational resources
  • the Help menu; links to pages containing user documentation.

Contextual navigation

Contextual navigation allows to follow paths related to the contents shown/listed in the current page. Obviously, this is a very rough definition. Just an example: the last section of the help page Searching the catalogued resources, illustrates how you can navigate bewteen the browse and search functions and the detail view of an OER.