Mathsticks Update

We took mathsticks offline for a short time yesterday to get the builders in to help us update a number of features.

Firstly, we have included a set of new sharing buttons (Sexy Bookmarks). These will now appear at the bottom of every teaching resource/activity page.

While these include all the usual suspects such as FaceBook, Twitter and Delicious, our chief reason for updating to this particular set was to obtain a Printer Friendly button for you.

We know many of you like to save sections of material from mathsticks (not just the resources themselves). However, printing from a website page can be a nightmare - what looks good on-screen tends to be ink-wastingly messy on paper. The Printer Friendly feature changes all that - once you select the button you can easily crop away any headings, paragraphs or images you do not want printed. This ensures you print only what you need, and streamlines the process wonderfully. We hope you like this new feature.

We also took the opportunity to relabel our downloadable files to make it easier to spot where they are! Now, if you are not logged in you will see a more obvious statement (an an unhappy face) reminding you to register/log in:

When you are logged in, (if there is a mathematical resource attached to the page) you will see clearer text and a more obvious arrow pointing to the link, like this:

Another change you may notice is the development of two mathsticks+ buttons. All our resources that have additional files (for mathstick+ members) carry this orange button just above the Tags list:

mathstick+ members themselves, however, see a different button, and have access to all the additional files, like this:

Finally, we have never been keen on those websites that are covered with adverts, you know the ones: the ads appear wherever there is a tiny slot of space, and even hide in amongst the main text. You never know whether you are clicking a link, or heading off on an unwanted journey to some online 'shop'.

We dislike that so much it will never appear here. However, over the last few weeks we've been testing new (smaller, less annoying) banner Advertisements - the square ones that run down the right-hand side of the website. These are rather special because they are 'served' entirely by us, and not controlled by any other website.

This means we have better control over what appears there, and it also means we can open up our Advertising space to you, our members. So, if you have an educational blog or website, you can now Advertise it directly on our mathsticks website - just follow the Advertise here banner on the main page to find out more.

We hope these continued improvements help to keep the mathsticks website firmly in your 'favourites' category.