THE DRAWING BOX

You can draw a picture by yourself or with other community members. Just select a thickness (size), color and start drawing! You are advised to SAVE your masterpiece because the box is erased by clicking CLEAR. You can type letters too. Find more tips below the Drawing Box. Have fun!

Browse through our collection of past drawings at the FIBROTALK ART GALLERY.

HELPFUL HINTS

WHITEBOARD

The whiteboard lets you draw and write onto a shared whiteboard - you see what other people are drawing and they see what you are drawing. You can start drawing by simply holding down the mouse button while the mouse pointer is in the whiteboard area. The drawing colour can be changed by clicking on the colour buttons at the bottom of the board.

Different shapes can be drawn by selecing from the menu at the bottom. The default is "freehand", which simply draws freehand lines under the mouse. In any of the drawing modes, you simply hold down the mouse button in the whiteboard area to draw the shape. In text mode, simply click where you want to type, and then start typing in text - you can press RETURN to move down a line, or click somewhere else to start writing on a different part of the board. The size of text and lines can be changed by selecting the size from the menu at the left hand side.

You can save your picture by clicking on the Save button - then enter your name and email address, and click OK. Saving a picture clears the whiteboard. You can see what other pictures have been saved by clicking on Load - then select the picture to load and press Load, and the picture will be loaded onto the board. If other people are logged onto the board then they will also see the picture you have loaded.

The current background can be set by clicking the Set Background button. If any background pictures have been installed then you will be able to select one from the list. Note that the Set Background button has been removed from the main demo board - go to the single-user board to use it.

Pressing Float will make the Groupboard appear in its own window (outside your browser). When you float the applet, you will be able to access most of the functions by using the menus at the top of window. You can move the window back inside the browser by clicking Unfloat

CHAT

The chat area is simple to use - simply type your text into the text area at the bottom and the message will be sent to all users. If you type your name into the box at the top, it will appear alongside your messages (otherwise you'll be "Anon").

A list of users appears underneath the name box, and this controls who you are talking to. By default "ALL" is selected, which means that whatever you type is sent to all other users. If you want to talk to one particular person, simply click on their name in the list. Also, you can "ignore" a user (i.e. you won't see any of their messages) by clicking on their name and clicking Ignore. Remember to click on "ALL" again after ignoring a person, otherwise you'll still be talking to the ignored person!

MESSAGE BOARD

The message board allows you to post messages which are stored on the server and can be read by other people even after you have logged off. When you bring up the message board window (either by clicking on the Message Board button, or immediately when you connect to the groupboard if it doesn't have chat or a whiteboard), it will list the subjects of messages which have been posted. To see a message, simply click on it's title and it will be displayed.

You can post a message either by clicking on Post New Article, or by selecting an article and clicking on Post Reply. The only difference is that replying to a message will automatically fill in the subject of the message. When you've typed in the message, simply click on Post to post it, or Cancel to leave without posting the message.

Email Reply allows you to reply to a message via email (your reply will only be sent to the person who posted the message, so other people won't see it). Note that you can only reply by email if the person who posted the message entered a valid email address!

Clicking on REFRESH reloads the message index from the server, so that you can see if any new messages have been posted.

Press Close to quit from the message board window.

GAMES

The GAMES WINDOW will either be above the chat window (if only games and chat are displayed), or it will be brought up by clicking on Games (if the Groupboard also contains a whiteboard).

The games window consists of 3 parts:

* A list of games which you can create, and then other people can join. To start a game, click on the name and then press the CREATE button.
* A list of games which other people have started. To join the game, click on it in the list and then press Join. Note that games only stay in this list until the game has started, after which no more players can join.
* A console, which displays information about games.