In the left hand side menu:

- click on “Visual narratives” to see existing visual narratives - click on [add] to create a new visual narrative

You will find a form similar to those you have used for images and others documents in the dtatabase. I shall follow the sequence of fields:

- click on “Public” if you want to make the VN (Visual narrative) public on Common People or/and Virtual Shanghai - Title: this will be the title of the VN - Select which topic to which your VN is related to (Beijing, Jiangnan, etc.) - Author: indicate your name(s) - Summary: this text will appear on the “front page” of the VN as well as on the “home page” of all VNs. This is meant to provide a breif description to readers. - Files download: this is only to upload an image or images that would represent your VN. This is NOT the upload for the individual images that will go into the VN.

Once you are done, click on submit. When the VN is actually created, a new window opens where you can “View” “Modify” and “Delete”.

- “delete” is to delete the whole VN. - “modify” is to modify the items you filled in in the previous form (title, author, etc.) - “VIEW” is what allows you to create the series of “slides” that will make up the VN. Click on “View”.

The new window opens with the title, the name of the author and a view of the default slide – Gérald has baptized the program that underlies the VNs: “iSlide”. You can work within this window or you can open iSlide in a new window. You can see the following menus:

=== Show Slide in a new windows |: the visual narrative will open in a new window.

=== Show Slide | : the visual narrative will open in the window you are using

=== Show Content | : This allows you to see the sequence of slides and to modify/delete individual slides.

=== Add a Slide: This allows you to create a new slide and to add it to the VN under construction.

When you click, you obtain a new form. In the same way as in previous menus: - you need to decide whether you make each slide public - Title: this will provide the title of each individual slide (you can also leave it blank) - Item type: by default it is set on “Image”, but you can also insert a Video (movie), a static map, a map retrieved from the GIS server, and text. Because the nature of these documents vary, one has to determine the type of document that will be called. - Item transition: onely one form with two different timings: one- or two-second interval between two slides. - Comment: This is where you write any text you need to accompany the image(s) on the slide. There is no limt to the size of the text. Beyond about 100 words, there will be a scroll bar to go up and down the text. - Order: VERY important. The slides will be shown in the order of the numbers you attribute to them. It does not matter if numbers do not come in a full sequence (ex. 1, 2, 5, 8, 90), but you nedd to give a number to each slide. You can of course change this number if you want to move a slide forward or backward. - Image: this where you upload your images. You can uploads up to 6 images per slide. To upload an image, click on select. All the images of the database are listed alphabetically by their title in the database. At this moment, all the images of CP and VS are listed together. For the sake of clarity, we plan to have them listed by topic while leaving the option of listing them all to allow you to draw on each other’s images). - Map: the same applies to maps. They are called by their name in transliteration (this will be fixed as several maps only have an original name in a Western language) - Files download: skip this. This will be eliminated. This is a leftover from the original form.

From any slide, you can choose a VN in the upper left corner “Select a Visual Narrative”, select one VN (click on it) and click on “Start narrative”. You can then move from one slide to the other using the arrows in the upper right corner.