New Text / HTML Editing Experience

TL;DR: 

We have just updated Studio’s course authoring experience for Text components inside of the course experience. Included below is a summary of the changes included in this update.

Release date: 4/21/22

Product owner: @Marco Morales (Deactivated)

Formerly known as the HTML Component, the newly renamed Text Component includes updates that make it even easier to include text and images in your course content. The newly updated editor:

• makes incorporating special characters and symbols easier,

• adds undo / redo actions,

• lets you author tables without going into HTML mode,

• makes emoticons easy to include

• and more.

Updated Editor Overview

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Example text component editor

The visual above shows the updated Text component editor, with a new toolbar that starts with the new undo / redo actions, existing formatting options, text layout tools, as well as list and indentation controls. Additional details for the other tools are described below.

Adding Images

We have made it easier to reference existing files & uploads from your course in text components as shown in the visual below. You can search and sort all images as well as upload new images to your course as you are authoring a specific text component.

Open

Table Tools

Another category of new tools we have added includes the addition of tables without needing to jump to the HTML editor. The table toolbar icon lets you drop in a table component, and selecting a given cell lets you create, remove, or adjust rows and columns.

Emoticons

You can now also easily add emoticons into your text content, a small but visually obvious way to break up long stretches of text content. You can see the emoticon library tool referenced below.

Special Characters

We have also introduced a way to include special characters into your text content, including mathematical and symbolic elements.

Future Improvements

We will be looking to improve linking to other parts of the course to eliminate the need to copy and paste jump-to-location IDs. Other improvements include in-context image editing tools, spellchecking and other tools.