Mapledge user quick guide

Mapledge is a website designed to help students to easily draw mind or concept maps starting from an indented text, which ist he most common way people usually take notes when participating to a lecture or when studying something.

The product has been developed within a frame of tools and lessons aimed to ameliorate the capability of students to speak in public, thus enhancing the results they can reach during interviews, presentation, etc.. Fort he other modules tools see www.explainwell.eu website.

This document is a quickguide to the use of the Mapledge tool.

How Mapledge works

Mapledge interface is made by three window frames:

Menu frame: On the left side, contains the main menus of the software.
Bar frame: The upper bar, which contains user's info.
Map frame: The largest one, in the middle of the screen, which shows the maps created by the software.
Edit frame: An hidden window, which opens on the right side of the screen when the button in the upper right side of the screen is clicked, allowing you to upload and edit the text to be mapped.

What can you do with Mapledge?

To create a map just open the editing frame, clicking in the upper right corner of the screen. Enter your text, indenting the paragraphs in a tree, hierarchicaly structured way, as in the following example:

editing a text
	open; the editing window
	edit the text using
		normal lines for concept and phrases
			the label of a map's node will be all the typed text to the first ";"
			the text following the ";" will be displayed as a rollover of the node connection lines (those lines beginning with a ":" )
etc..

when finished, just click the DRAW THE MAP button to have the drawing made in the main window. Every time you change the text and click this button, you'll have the map redrawn and updated. When the map is satisfies your needs, you can save it in your on-line maps archive (you must have a login account to do that, just create it: it's free!) and then share it with other Mapledge users; you can also print it or download it in PDF or PNG format.

Create new maps

Open

Open the default map in the editor frame choosing the upper right icon in the app window.

Select

Select the example outline choosing the arrow tool on the editor upper menu.

Type

Type your outline deleting the example text.

Lines: Each line is a node (or a connection phrase) and can contain a label (used in the node box) and a long text (shown when rolling over the node with the mouse).
Mind: In mind maps every line is a node and links are created automatically by the app.
Concept: In concept maps all the lines beginning with a colon will be used as linking phrases between the line above and below.
Links: Both mindmap and conceptmap nodes can have links: when the label of the node (ending with the first semicolon found in the line) is followed by a text another comma and an URL.
Errors: The app try always to draw a map ! if the input text is incorrect adapting it to the most plausible form of map.

Save

Save the map choosing the save icon in the lower menu of the editor window.

Modify existing maps

List: Open your map list clicking on the appropriate item in the left frame menu.
Open: Open the map you want to change double clicking on the map name in you maps list or in shared maps list.
Edit: Edit the map in the editor frame.
Save: Save the map you can also change the name of the map while saving.

Delete maps

List: Open your map list clicking on the appropriate item in the left frame menu.
Select: Open the map you want to delete double clicking on the map name in you maps list or in shared maps list.
Delete: delete choosing the delete button of the editor lower menu.

Export maps

Share

Open: Open the map you want to share clicking on the appropriate item in the left frame menu.
Choose: Choose the share icon in the lower menu of the editor frame (lower rightmost button).
Share: Type the email address of the user you want to share your map with.

Download

Open: Open the map you want to download.
Choose: Choose the download icon in the lower menu of the editor frame.
Download: Choose the download format (PDF or PNG).