Using Farfalla requires setting it up by following one of the three guides under the install page of this website. After Farfalla is successfully added to your web browser or to your own website, using it is easy. You can follow this guide to understand everything you need.
Basic actions
Showing/hiding the toolbar
By clicking on the Farfalla logo, you can make the toolbar slide in and out of view, as shown in this short video:
This allows to hide it when it is not needed.
Positioning
On the right side of the small logo on the sidebar, you can find a dashed area, a sort of grip. Your mouse cursor, passing over it, should transform in a pair of arrows pointing up and down. By dragging and dropping from that point, you can change the toolbar position. And remember: this setting will persist among pages, until you change it again or until you close your web browser, ending your session. See it in this short video:
Profiles activation
In order to benefit from Farfalla, you must select a profile from the drop down menu, as shown in the following image:
To confirm your choice, you only need to clic on the “get preferences” button on the right.
What are profiles?
Farfalla is basically structured in plugins and profiles. Each plugin is a piece of software accomplishing a single, simple task. Some of them are stand-alone, some others need to be combined to work effectively. As an example, there is a plugin called “hicontrast” which is standalone and its only function is to change the style of a page to an high-contrast color combination. On the other hand, a plugin such as “text-to-speech” requires another one, called “jplayer”, in order to produce audio output.
Profiles are groups of one or more plugins, selectable by the end user. Each of them is thought of as a template, and addresses one specific need. By selecting one of them, the corresponding plugins are loaded and made immediately available to the user.
When a profile is loaded, the toolbar shows three things:
- a button area (optional): some plugins, as the “hicontrast” one mentioned above, can be activated through buttons appearing in the toolbar. Those which don’t need to be activated manually normally do not have any buttons here;
- the “change profile” button: clicking on it allows reverting back to the profiles selection menu;
- the plugins list: on the right part of the toolbar, the list of the plugins loaded by the current profile is shown.
The following image highlights the three parts. Notice that when a profile is loaded, the bar automatically shrinks to give space to the rest of the page content, you need to click again on the logo to enlarge it.
The following sections explore the use of the four basic profiles. In the future, Farfalla project will expand in two directions: adding more profiles/plugins and allowing users to create their own profiles.
Selective Magnification
Selective magnification relies on one plugin only, which loads no further buttons in the toolbar. It simply creates a sort of magnifying lens to be moved over the current web page simply by moving the mouse pointer around. It will concentrate on page elements and offer their contents enlarged in a side panel. Whenever the mouse should pass over this panel, it would move on the other sie of the page to give space. If the panel is too high for the page size, you will be able to scroll it by using the up and down arrow keys. Watch it in the following video.
Whenever you will enlarge a portion of the page containing links, they will be numbered in the magnification panel. By pressing the corresponding number on your keyboard, you will be able to follow the corresponding link. Another video shows this interaction with links.
Mouse only
This is a profile dedicated to people who can use a mouse (or another pointing and clicking device) but can’t use a keyboard at all. It includes only the “keyboard” plugin.
By selecting it, you will have access to a virtual keyboard, appearing on the screen only when you will need it, basically after clicking in a text area of the current webpage. To hide the keyboard you will have to click on the “accept” button on it, thus entering the text. For canceling you operation at any time, you should only click outside the keyboard area once.
Low vision
This profile includes two basic solutions for people who have trouble in understanding text due to its size or to poor contrast. It features the “fontsize” and “contrast” plugins, both of them adding extra buttons to the toolbar:
The “plus” and “minus” buttons respectively allow increasing and diminishing the text size for the whole page.
The “High contrast” (HI-C) button changes the colors of the page, basically making a black background, white text and green links.
Mouse improvements
This profile adds a visual improvement to the mouse pointer by the means of the “bigcursor” plugin. The cursor is substituted with a bigger one, borrowed from the wonderful Sugar Learning Platform.
