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Adjust Visibility

Manifold’s visibility options give readers the ability to configure which highlights and annotations appear with Texts in Reader views.

This page describes how to access and customize these viewing options.

Accessing Visibility Options​

To configure your visibility options, open a Text in Manifold.

Visibility Options are found in the reader settings section of the menu bar, visually labelled with an eye icon.

note

So long as you are signed in, the settings you save in this section persist across an entire instance and are not tied to a specific Text or Project, though they can be accessed and adjusted from any Text.

Understanding the Interface​

When you select the Visibility Options button a dropdown menu will appear. The menu is broken into four sections: Highlights, Annotations, Resources, and Reading Groups. Each of those sections contains one or more checkbox options to configure how Manifold will display for you.

The interface can be interacted with using either a mouse or keyboard. For keyboard use, you can tab forward and backward to focus on checkboxes and use the space bar to select or deselect.

Highlights and Annotations​

These sections each contain two checkbox options: Yours and Others. When Yours is selected, the Manifold Reader will display any highlights or annotations you have made to a Text with blue markings. For Others, the system will display all those public highlights and annotations that other readers have left in a shade of green.

It is important to note that these settings work in parallel with the Reading Groups options in this same dropdown menu. By default, both boxes are checked in the Highlights and Annotations sections. The default for the Reading Groups section is to have Show all checked. With that configuration you will see

  • all annotations that you have left, whether they were left publicly, privately, or in the context of a reading group,
  • all public annotations and highlights, and
  • all annotations and highlights from Reading Groups of which you are a member.

You can scale back the volume of what the system is presenting you and better target what you see in two ways:

  • First, you can uncheck some combination of Yours or Others in the Highlights and Annotations sections of the dropdown.

    For example, if you want to see only your annotations and nobody else’s and likewise don’t need to see anyone’s highlights, you would uncheck both boxes in the Highlights section and also uncheck Others in the Annotations sections.

    Again, because this works with the Reading Groups section setting, the system would now show you only your annotations, whether they were left publicly, privately, or in the context of all those reading groups of which you are a member.

  • Additionally, you can target more specifically what annotations and highlights the system shows you by adjusting the Reading Groups selections. As noted, the default in that section is to Show all. However you can adjust that. See the Reading Groups section below to learn how.

Resources​

Resources are the multimedia components of a Project. While Resources each have their own discrete page in a project, they can also serve to annotate a Text. They appear in the Manifold Reader as thumbnails on the left side of the screen and are denoted within the text by a cube-shaped marker.

Resources are placed on a Text by those who have the ability to add to or edit a Project. If you would prefer to not Resources in the Manifold Reader, you can disable them by unchecking Show all.

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It is not possible to hide some Resources and show others. Currently this is an all-or-nothing proposition.

Reading Groups​

The settings in this section allow you to narrow or enlarge the scope of Highlights and Annotations you see in the Manifold Reader. The selections you make here work in conjunction with the settings in the Highlights and Annotations sections. By default, everyone has the following options:

  • Show all. This is the default setting. When checked, you make available all highlights and annotations for display from your Private and Public collections, as well as from all Reading Groups of which you are a member. If you make any other selection in this section, the checkmark for Show all will automatically be removed in favor of the narrower focus you are opting for.
  • My Private Annotations. When checked, you make available all your private highlights and annotations for display.
  • My Public Annotations. Likewise, when selected, you make available all your public highlights and annotations for display.

Additional listings will also appear for each Reading Group of which you are a member. When a Reading Group listing is checked, you make available all highlights and annotations for display from that group.

Activating versus Displaying​

When you make a selection in this section you activate or make available for display all the annotations and highlights for your selection. However, what Manifold actually displays in the Reader is decided in the above sections for Highlights and Annotations:

For example, if you have Show all selected but have also unchecked all the options for Highlights and Annotations (Yours and Others), then Manifold will not display any highlights or annotations.

Alternatively, if you are a member of a Reading Group for a class and have that group selected and only Others selected above in the Annotations section, then Manifold will only show the annotations that members of that group have saved to that group, minus your own (since you have Yours unchecked in this scenario).

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You can select as many or as few options in this section to dial in what Manifold highlights and annotations Manifold makes available for display. The only exception is Show all, which encompasses all your options and which can only be selected alone.