Fine-tuning your activity URLs for sharing and embedding

Most textivate users will be aware that you can share links to textivate (shareable & public) resources in a number of ways, as explained on this post:

textivate.posthaven.com/sharing-and-embedding-textivate-activities

To recap, you can share a link to...: 

  1. the home page (i.e. the edit screen containing the text). e.g. www.textivate.com/aocjn1
  2. the menu page (with the thumbnails for all the activities). e.g. www.textivate.com/menu-aocjn1
  3. an activity page. e.g. www.textivate.com/3x4-aocjn1

You'll notice that all of these end in a 6-character resource identifier -- in this case "aocjn1".

This blog post looks at how you can fine tune the urls for individual activities (case 3 above) to configure the exercise screen when the student lands on it. This fine tuning involves adding extra info to the resource identifier, and we've now added this functionality to the share box.

If you open the share box for an activity which has fine-tuneable aspects (which is most of those on the text side, and many of those on the matching side) you'll see a link to fine-tune the activity url. (See above)

If you click on this link, you'll see another box with options for fine-tuning the activity. (See below)

By default, no fine-tuning is enabled. You must change the top selector to enable fine-tuning, changing it to either "Enforce configuration" (which means that the student won't be able to change any of the configuration when they land on the page) or "Initial configuration only" (which tells the page how to start, but students can change the configuration).

(Note that "enforce" adds "e" plus a couple of other parameters, and "initial" - or "start" - adds "s" plus the additional parameters.)

In the example above I've enforced it, so that when the student opens the link they will be presented with a gap-fill with the word list showing, the default number of gaps, and autocheck turned on - the student can't change any of these.

Once you've made the tweaks that you want to make, simply close the box and you'll see that the url in the url box has been updated, as has the link url in the embed code for the activity. (See below)

(If you change your mind and want to remove the fine-tuning, simply click the link again and set the top selector to "No fine-tuning".)

We hope you find this useful.

See the examples of fine-tuned urls below:

www.textivate.com/3x4-aocjn1e0 (3x4, autocheck=off, enforced so can't make changes)

www.textivate.com/3x4-aocjn1s1 (3x4, autocheck=on, initial configuration can be changed)

www.textivate.com/nextword-aocjn1s3 (Next Word, starts with 3-word chunks, but can be changed)

www.textivate.com/gapfill-aocjn1e0151 (Gapfill, no word list, 15 gaps, autocheck=on; can't be changed)

www.textivate.com/gapfill-aocjn1s1120 (Gapfill, with word list, 12 gaps, autocheck=off; can be changed)

www.textivate.com/initials-aocjn1s3 (Initials, 1/2 words affected; can be changed)

www.textivate.com/m_shuffle-aocjn1e090 (Shuffle Match, 9 pairs; autocheck=off; can't be changed)

www.textivate.com/m_1in10-aocjn1e0 (1 in 10, random order, cannot be changed)

And you can fine-tune embedded activities too. The example below is Anagrams, enforced configuration (so can't be changed), 3/4 words affected:

Click below to access the activity. (Opens in a new window on touch devices.)
Click here to open the above activity in a new window.


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