Find your way around the editor

The editor has four regions. One word first, because it is used throughout: a node is one step in the experience — a scene, a cover, or a page. They are all nodes because learners walk through them the same way and the editor counts them together. Where this article says "node", read "scene" if scenes are all you have made.

The header

A block across the top of the screen: the section it belongs to, the title at a readable size, a line of counts, and the controls down the right — Preview, Publish, Share, Theme, Readiness, the two undo arrows, and an overflow menu for duplicate, version history and delete.

Readiness is the one to know about. It lists what is unfinished, and publishing is refused while any picture has no description — see Readiness: what has to be finished before you publish.

Theme picks the colours and lettering learners see this experience in — see Themes and branding.

The counts line says how many nodes the experience holds rather than how many scenes, because a cover and a page are nodes too.

The "?" here opens help for whichever panel you are in.

More room to work in

The expand button, at the top right beside Preview, withdraws the app's own menu and topbar and gives the space to the editor. Nothing else moves, and the button stays where it was — press it again, or press Escape, to bring them back.

It is not remembered between visits. Full screen is something you do for a stretch of work rather than a preference, and an editor that opened with the rest of Panova already hidden would be a worse trade.

The node rail (left)

Experience nodes in order — your scenes, and the covers and pages that sit among them. Drag to reorder; the order is what learners walk through, and what "Order the sequence" scrambles. Select one to edit it. See Experience nodes: scenes, covers and pages.

The canvas (middle)

The scene itself. Above it sits Pin tools: an arrow for selecting, and a map-pin button that turns pin placing on. With the pin tool on, each click on the picture places a pin; with it off, clicking does nothing but clear your selection. Drag a pin to move it. For a 360° scene, drag to look around; the position you leave it in is not the learner's starting view unless you set it as such.

Hold Shift to select several pins at once — then edit their context, style or visibility in one go.

The right panel

Changes with what you have selected:

• Nothing selected — the experience's own tabs, described below.
• A scene selected — backdrop, projection, title overlay, audio, contributions.
• A pin selected — its label, blocks, display style and context.

The experience tabs, one line each

A row along the top of the editor, above everything else. The first five sit together on the left; Link Manager and Experience Settings are pushed over to the right-hand end, because they are tools for the experience rather than parts of it.

• Design — the working view this article has been describing: the node rail, the canvas and the panel beside it. This is where you build.
• Properties — the experience's name, its icon and colour, and the overlay a learner meets before the first scene.
• Interactivity — the activities that run across the whole experience, and the rules for each. Activities that run on a single scene are set on that scene instead.
• Review — where learner work lands: what has been handed in, and the versions learners built for themselves.
• Insights — where learners get stuck, how far they get, and whether the experience is reachable for everyone.
• Link Manager — every web address anywhere in the experience, and whether it still works.
• Experience Settings — four sub-tabs of its own:
  • General — publishing state, the direct link, how learners move between scenes, and the default look of pins.
  • About — the short summary a learner reads before starting.
  • Team — the colleagues you have named on this one experience.
  • Danger — one control: delete this experience. It goes to the Bin first, so it can be restored.

Saving

There is no save button — edits are written as you make them, to the draft, and the header tells you when the draft has moved ahead of the published version.

Because nothing is saved by hand, there is an Undo: two arrows in the header, and Ctrl+Z. See Undo a change in the editor.