Browsing and learning

What a student sees.

Where the pages come from

Almost everything a visitor reads is a page an editor wrote from the same blocks as a lesson: the front page, the course listing, the students’ own page. The header and the footer show a menu an editor built (Menus), and only the course page and the lesson player are addresses HiLMS keeps for itself. See Pages.

The catalogue

The course listing is a page with the Lista kursów block on it — on a new installation, the one the header calls Kursy. It lists every published course as a card with its cover, category, title, summary and lesson count, newest first. Courses in every language are listed together; a card that is not in the language you are reading says which language it is in.

• Beside the results sits a column headed Zawęź katalog. It opens with Szukaj kursów and then the filters: Język, where you may tick as many languages as you like, and Kategoria, where you pick one. Type in the search and the results narrow as you go; it looks at titles and summaries. Each filter option says how many courses it would leave you with, and an option with nothing behind it is not offered. Wyczyść filtry appears as soon as anything is ticked.
• The editor who put the listing on the page chose how many courses fit a page, how many columns they run in, whether the search is offered at all and which filters are.
• The number of courses found is announced, and the results take the keyboard’s attention when a filter narrows them.
• When nothing matches, the listing says Brak kursów pasujących do wyszukiwania. and Wyczyść filtry brings everything back. A listing with no published course at all says Nie ma tu jeszcze żadnych kursów. instead, because there was nothing to search.
• The address bar follows your search and your filters, so a filtered view can be shared or bookmarked.

Languages

Where the site speaks more than one language, the header carries a link per language, each written in its own language. Choosing one takes you to the same place in that language: the addresses of the other languages carry their code (/en/…), and the site remembers your choice — on your account as well, if you are signed in.

A course exists once per language. If you are reading in English and open a course that was written in English too, you simply get it; if you open the Polish one, HiLMS takes you to its English twin when there is one. When there is not, you get the course in the language it was written in, with the site around it still in yours. More in Languages.

The side panel

A course page and a lesson open with a panel down the left of the screen, holding what you act on rather than what you read. The page itself keeps the middle, and the footer runs along the bottom of the page beside it.

• The button beside the site’s name at the top of the page opens and closes it (Pokaż panel / Ukryj panel). On a wide screen the panel takes about a third of the width at most, and closing it gives the space back to the page; the site remembers your choice for a year, on that browser.
• The panel scrolls on its own when what it holds is longer than the window, and stays in place as you scroll the page.
• On a narrow screen — a phone, or a small window — the panel slides over the page instead, dimming what is behind it. Close it with Zamknij panel, with the Escape key, or by tapping the dimmed page.

The course page

The cover, the category (click it to filter the catalogue, where the site has a listing page), the title, the summary and the description, then Prowadzący — a card per instructor with their photo, name, job title, a short biography and their links — and the course’s tags.

The panel beside it, O tym kursie, opens with the course itself: its title, the faces and names of the people who teach it, the number of lessons and the total minutes, and then the button that gets you in (below) — or, when you are already in, your progress and Kontynuuj naukę.

Under that sits Program kursu, the programme:

• Each section folds. Click a section’s title to open or close it. One is open when you arrive: the section holding the lesson you would continue from, or the first one. Beside each title is the number of lessons — or, once you are in the course, how many of them you have finished, such as 2/5.
• Each lesson hangs from a line under its section, with its marks lined up at the right: a crossed-out dollar sign on a free-preview lesson, a padlock on one you cannot open yet, a tick on one you have finished, and its length in minutes. Each mark says its word to a screen reader (“Darmowa”, “Zablokowana”, “Lekcja ukończona”), because a lesson that simply refused to be clicked would tell you nothing.
• Once you are in, the programme on the course page is yours, exactly as in the lesson player: every lesson opens, and the ones you finished are ticked.
• A course with no lessons yet shows the sentence Ten kurs nie ma jeszcze lekcji. where the programme would be.

Getting in

The button changes with the course and with you:

You see	Means
Zapisz się za darmo	A free course: one click and you are in
Zaloguj się, aby się zapisać	A free course, and you are not signed in
Kup dostęp	A paid course; the button opens the shop that sells it
“Dostęp do tego kursu jest przyznawany indywidualnie.”	A paid course with no shop link: ask whoever runs the site
Your progress and Kontynuuj naukę	You are already in; the button goes to where you stopped, or to the first lesson if you have not opened one yet
“Masz miejsce w tym kursie. Jego pierwsze lekcje są w drodze.”	You are in, but the course has no lessons yet; come back later
“Dostęp wygasł” with the enrol button	Your access ran out; joining again renews it if the course is free
“Dostęp do tego kursu został cofnięty.”	Your access was taken back; joining again will not help, ask the site

The lesson player

Open a lesson and you get the lesson itself: text, images, video, audio, downloads, questions and quizzes, whatever the editor put there.

• Poprzednia lekcja and Następna lekcja at the foot of the lesson.
• Zakończ i kontynuuj — the button that marks the lesson done and moves you on. On the final lesson it says Zakończ kurs.
• If the lesson holds a quiz, the button waits until you have passed it (Zalicz quiz w tej lekcji, aby przejść dalej).
• The panel beside it, Nawigacja po kursie, opens with the course’s title — click it to go back to the course page — its teachers and its size, then your progress: the share you have done in large figures, how many lessons out of the total, and the bar. Under that is the programme, open at the section of the lesson you are reading, with that lesson marked and ticks on the finished ones.

The lesson itself is set at a reading width, so a line of text is never wider than a line you can follow, and the footer under it runs at the same width.

Videos and files in a lesson

A lesson’s videos, recordings, pictures and downloads open only for somebody the course is open to, through links that stop working within the hour; copying one to a friend gets them nothing. A video’s link does not open when pasted into the address bar — only the lesson’s player plays it — and the player offers no download button.

Some sites mark their uploaded videos with your e-mail address, drifting slowly across the picture (it keeps still if you have asked your device to reduce motion). It is there so that a recording of the screen names whoever made it. On such a video the player’s own full-screen button is replaced by Pełny ekran at the top right of the frame, which takes the video full screen with its mark; right-click menus on it are switched off.

HiLMS remembers where you stopped, so “continue” always means the right lesson.

A lesson you may not open yet says so and offers the enrolment button. One whose access has expired says that instead.

Free preview

Lessons marked with the crossed-out dollar sign (Darmowa) open for anybody, signed in or not. Everything else needs access to the course. A course that is not published — a draft, or one taken down — opens nothing, free previews included, to anybody but the people who may preview it: its files stop opening too, even through a link somebody saved while the course was public.

Editors and administrators can open every lesson of every course to check their work; an instructor can do it for the courses they teach.

My courses

The page an editor set aside for you — on a new installation, Moje kursy in the header — lists the courses you have access to, newest first:

• a progress bar with how many lessons you have finished out of the total;
• a badge when a course is finished (Ukończono …), and a badge saying Dostęp do … when your access to it ends on a date — an expiry nobody shows you is an expiry you cannot act on;
• Dostęp wygasł instead, once it has;
• a button — Zacznij the first time, Kontynuuj afterwards — that drops you where you stopped.

Every date the site shows you is written on your own clock: the one on your account if you set one, and the site’s otherwise (see Your account).

That page is usually marked Zalogowani, so signing in is what opens it, and it is where HiLMS sends you after you sign in.

When you finish every lesson of a course, the course is marked complete and you get an email saying so. It stays on the list, so you can go back to it whenever you like.