Check out XTF in 5 Easy Steps or dive into the full tutorial below!
The tutorial is comprised of five major sections:
- Fundamental concepts, which provides information about some basic terms and components essential to XTF,
- First steps, which provides instructions for how to get the appropriate software up and running on your computer and also provides some suggestions for learning more about XSLT,
- The essentials, which walks you through a basic library index and search,
- The “crib sheet,” which provides reminders about shortcuts and basic “how to” instructions, and
- The exercises, each with a demonstration video and step by step instructions which will help you see and practice the different ways you can customize your XTF-based application:
- Exercise 1: Add new content
- Exercise 2: Change a piece of metadata
- Exercise 3: Change the logo and colors
- Exercise 4: Increase significance of titles in ranking hits
- Exercise 5: Customize the advanced search form
- Exercise 6: Change the fields displayed in search results
- Exercise 7: Enable structural searching with sectionTypes
- Exercise 8: Create a hierarchical facet
- Exercise 9: Change footnote behavior
How do I use the tutorial?
The tutorial is designed to be a flexible tool that meets your learning needs. You can go through each of the major sections step-by-step, or you can jump around to the sections that seem of most interest to you. Central terms and ideas discussed in later sections of the tutorial will link back to their entries in the “Fundamental concepts” section, so if you come upon a term you’re unfamiliar with, you should always be able to link back to a reference.
Each exercise has three major components: 1) an introduction that describes the context and applicability of the exercise, 2) instructional steps describing how to complete the exercise, and 3) a “Demonstration,” section with screenshots and/or a video to show the exercise’s successful completion. The exercises start off addressing fairly straightforward tasks, progressing towards more complex problems at the end. For any given exercise, it is also possible to simply read the introduction and/or view the video in order to assess XTF’s compatibility with your digital library needs.
We would love your feedback on the tutorial instructions and exercises…if you have particular problem spots, we want to fix them or make things clearer. If you have a suggestion for a new exercise or find an error in the instructions, let us know. For other problems, join the xtf-user list and let the XTF community know.