Forum Help
The Forum is a conferencing system, where you can read messages
in a range of topics, and if allowed by the adminstrator, take part by adding
your own subjects and responses.
Contents
The first page you see inside Focus is
the Topics Page. This lists the conferences and topics you are subscribed to. To
enter any topic, simply select its link. This will take you to the page where
you can begin reading messages. The way you read messages depends on your
preferences: you can choose to either view messages in frames, or non-frames.
If you are a registered user, you can customise the list of topics to only
display those which you are interested in. This is done via the Edit
Subscriptions button. You can also change various aspects of how Focus
operates, by selecting the Preferences
button.
The meaning of each of the buttons on the Conferences page is:
- Show All/Show Subscribed
- When you first enter the conferencing system, the system displays the
conferences and topics to which you subscribed. To view the complete list of
conferences and topics clicks "Show All Conferences". In the Show All view,
click "Show Subscribed" to return to the list of subscribed conferences only.
- Edit Subscriptions
- Click this option to subscribe or unsubscribe to conferences and topics.
- Preferences
- Opens the Preferences Page. Click the check boxes to set FOCUS to display conferences using tables, Netscape frames,
and/or Java outlining. FOCUS also supports browsers which
cannot display frames or tables.
This page lets you
select which topics will appear on the main Topics page. This information is
remembered for the next time you visit this conference site. You can use this to
customise the Topics page to only show the topics you are most interested in.
You can always get to all the topics by selecting the "Show All" option on the
Topics page.
To edit your subscriptions, click the checkbox to the left of each topic to
subscribe or unsubscribe to the topic. Once you have subscribed to a conference,
you are automatically subscribed to new topics within those conferences. To
update the system with your selections, press the "Update subscriptions" button.
The preference page lets you
alter your personal details and define how you want the display to look. This
information will be remembered for the next time you visit this conference site.
If you change any of these options, select the "Update Preferences" button to
store them.
- Browser options
- Set how you want the browser to display the list of messages in each
topic. The setting here depends on the capabilities of your browser and your
personal preferences. The options are: Java, to use a Java applet;
Use tables and Frames to use these browser features Use tables
to use tables but not frames, or plain if your browser does not support
tables.
- Low graphics version
- Selecting this will reduce the number of graphics used on the screens,
useful if you are accessing the network over a slow link.
- Quote message in reply
- If set, this will put the text of any message you are replying to into
your new message, ready for you to comment on. If not set, your reply will
start out empty.
- Number of messages to list at once
- This number determines the maximum number of messages listed when viewing
the messages in a topic. If there are more than this number of messages in the
topic you will see "next page" and/or "previous page" links to take you to
later or earlier messages, respectively.
- Personal Information
- Your name, email address and company.
- Signature added to end of messages
- You can enter text here which will appear at the end of any messages you
add.
- Password
- To change your password for this conference site, enter a new password
into both the password boxes.
The threads page displays
the messages in the topic selected. On this page, you may review and respond to
existing threads, or create new threads. Note that Focus displays messages in
threads: a thread is a discussion topic, where all the messages are about the
same subject.
The frames screen is divided into five sections. At the top left is a
Reset button. This redraws the screen if it gets confused. Across the top
is the topic menu bar. At the left are a set of message reading buttons. To the
right is the list of message subjects, and at the bottom is the window which
displays each message when selected.
If you are a registered user, Focus remembers which messages you have read in
each topic. When you return to a topic, it will only display threads containing
unread messages. (The unread messages are displayed in boldface type). You can
choose to see all messages by selecting the "Show All Threads" buttons. To read
any message, click its subject. The message will appear in the lower window,
together with some messgae options. The options available are:
- Show All/Show Unread
- To view all read and unread threads, click the "Show All Threads" button.
Unread messages are displayed in boldface type.
- Hide Responses/Show Responses
- Click this option to toggle the display between showing and hiding the
responses to the initial thread.
- New Thread
- Click to create a new thread for the topic.
- Topics
- Returns to the topics list.
The message options appear in the
bottom frame when viewing a message. If the option is displayed in grey it is
not available. The options are:
- reply
- Add a response to this thread
- previous
- Show the previous message in this thread
- next
- Show the next message in this thread
- delete
- Delete this message (only if you originally posted it and you are a
registered user)
Viewing messages in a
non-frames interface consists of two screens: a threads list screen,
which shows the messages in the topic, and a message screen, which shows
an individual message. The options available on each screen are different. Note
that Focus displays messages in threads: a thread is a discussion topic, where
all the messages are about the same subject.
The threads list screen shows the messages in this topic. If you are a
registered user, Focus remembers which messages you have read and only displays
threads containing unread messages. The unread messages are displayed in bold.
You can flip to seeing all messages (read and unread) by selecting the "show
all" link. You can also choose to only display the first message in each thread
by selecting "show threads only".
The options available on the threads list screen are:
- NEW THREAD
- Start a new thread in this topic
- SEARCH
- Search all the messages in this topic by keyword or date
- HELP
- Show this help document
- TOPICS
- Return to the list of topics page
To read a message, select its
subject. If you are not interested in a particular subject, you can select "Mark
thread as read" which will mark all the messages in the thread as if you had
read them individually.
After selecting a message subject, the message will be displayed on the
message screen. The options available on this screen are:
- REPLY
- Write a reply to this message
- LIST THREADS
- Return to the threads list screen
- PREV MSG
- Show the previous message in this thread
- NEXT MSG
- Show the next message in this thread
- PREV THREAD
- Jump to the first message in the previous thread
- NEXT THREAD
- Jump to the first message in the next thread
- DELETE
- Delete this message (only if you originally posted it and you are a
registered user)
There are two ways you can add a message
to a Focus topic: either by starting a new thread, or replying to an existing
message. When starting a new thread, you will be prompted to enter a subject for
the thread and the text of the message. When replying, the subject will already
be filled in (although you can alter it if needed), and the text of the message
will start out containing the text of the message you are replying to. You would
normally cut this down to just the part you are responding to.
If you are not a registered user, you will be prompted also for your real
name and your email address. After entering all the appropriate information, you
should select the "Add Message" or "Add Thread" button. This will take you to a
message review screen, where you can edit the message again, or delete it, or
return to the list of threads or topics.