A point is just a single place on a map, which can be represented by an (x,y) coordinate pair.

A line is used to trace a path. It can contain many vertices, and can be used to form shapes.

A polygon is a shape. Clicking inside a shape activates the polygon; this is the difference between a polygon and a line. Clicking inside a closed line does not activate the info bubble for that object. Clicking inside a polygon does.

Once you have chosen what kind of object you want to create and its location, you will see the “Add Media” frame on the right.

Here you can set the title of your object, timespan,  license, and description of the object.

Author name is automatically filled in from the nickname you supplied when you registered. The author name can be changed individually for any object.

To set the time, you can type the year, month and date by either clicking on the fields or tabbing between them. You can also use the arrow keys to change these numbers. Typing “-” (the minus sign) toggles between “BCE” and CE (when “BCE” is not displayed). The date on the right must always be later than the date on the left; HyperCities will prevent you from entering an end date earlier than the start date, and vice versa.

The description field allows rich formatted text. To edit the HTML source, click on the “HTML” icon.

A note: many users compose the descriptive text in another program and then copy and paste the text into HyperCities. If you do this, it’s best to use a plain text editor like Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac), and do your formatting in HyperCities itself, unless you know HTML. Avoid word processing programs like Microsoft Word; Word generates HTML that look stranges when it is displayed in HyperCities. HyperCities also edits out some formatting that Word puts in, so generally, it’s best to write the text in Notepad (or TextEdit), without formatting, and use HyperCities to do the formatting. The HyperCities text editor is WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

Add images by clicking the “Insert/Upload Image” icon. Videos, however, must be hosted on other video websites such as YouTube, Vimeo, etc., and they can be embedded on Hypercities by copying and pasting the embed code from the hosting service.

To display base maps with your object, click on the “Select Base Map” button. This shows a list of maps that are visible in the current viewport and timespan. To select a map, just click on it. Use the “x” near the map to remove it.

If you want other objects to show up with your object, click on the “Select Other Items” button. You can use this window just like the regular collection list. Just check the items on that you want to appear.

Once you’re done, save your object by clicking “SAVE” on the lower right corner.

Click here to see how to add your object in a collection.

 

• Creating a New Collection

Creating a new collection requires you to go to the add media interface.

At the bottom of the “add media” frame, click the “My Collection” box and click on “Create New.”

Type in the desired new collection name, and click OK.

Once you click OK, your collection will be inside “My Collections.”

• Editing a Collection

To add your collection into an already existing collection, edit your collection by viewing it in Narrative mode. To do this, click on the Narrative Mode Button.

In the Narrative Mode, you will see different options such as “Expanded View,” List View, ” “Edit Collection Info,” and “Delete Collection.” To edit the collection, click the “Edit Collection Info” button.

Click “My Collection” box at the bottom of the “Edit” frame. Then search for and select the name of the collection you want to put your new collection into.

Click SAVE and your new collection will be added automatically into the collection you just selected.

Tags recognized by HyperCities in a KML file.

This diagram does not include elements that describe placemarks and folders, like “title”, but these should be interpreted correctly.

Please also note that the link, location, scale, and orientation tags only work if they are associated with a model, not a 2D object.

1. Create your snapshot. To do this, set up Hypercities exactly as you want it, then click on the snapshot button. Remember the number at the end of the URL that you’ll be given.

2. Open the object that you want to put the link to the snapshot inside. Click on the “HTML” button. This will display the HTML source code of the text in your object. Find the text you want the user to click on to display the snapshot. Just before the text, without leaving a space, enter the following:

<a snapshotid=”1234″>

Replace 1234 with the number you were given when you created the snapshot.

Just after the text, again without leaving a space, enter this: </a>

What you should end up with is something like the following:

<a snapshotid=”1234″>Click me to display the snapshot!</a>

3. Save your edits as normal. Now, when a user clicks on the link, they should be taken to the exact state you created. Clicking on the link again will take them back.

First, each citation must have a reference code unique within that particular piece of content. This code can be something as simple as ’1′ for the first one, ’2′ for the second, and so on, but the important thing is that they must be unique within the description of that particular object. You can reuse the same codes in different objects, even if they’re within the same collection. Codes are used to link the links (the piece of text you click on) to the text that is displayed in the window when it pops up. They can contain letters and numbers, but please avoid other characters or spaces.

Once you have your list of codes, you can begin to enter them. If the content is already in Hypercities, you enter it using the editor. You can also add them to a KML file if you’re planning to upload your collection as a KML file.

Using the edit window:

1) Open the edit window. Once it’s open, click on the HTML button.

Your text should look different now, with a lot of codes you didn’t see before between greater-than and less-than characters. This is because you are now editing the HTML code that controls how your text is displayed.

2) Find the piece of text you would like the user to click on to display the footnote.

3) Just before this piece of text, without a space, insert the following code:

<citation refcode=”ref1“>

Replace “ref1″ with the code for this citation.

4) After the text the user will click on to display the citation, you must close the tag. Again, right after that text, enter the following text:

</citation>

Do this for all your citations.

5) At the very end of the document, you enter the text that will be displayed for each citation.

If not, what this means is that you need to create another list of all the text you want to create. Use the following template.

<CitationList> (This needs to appear before the first citation)

<citation refcode=”ref1“>Here is the text to be displayed</citation>

<citation refcode=”ref2“>Here is the text to be displayed for your second footnote</citation>

(Put more citations here)

</CitationList> (This needs to appear after the last citation)

HTML is allowed within the <citation> elements, but don’t put anything else between the <CitationList> and the <citation> tags inside it.

If you know XML, we are creating a CitationList element with citation children that have “ref” attributes with the same refcodes that you used before. The text of these children will be what is displayed in the new window when the user clicks on the link.

Please note: the text that the user clicks on to display the citation will automatically appear blue, superscripted, and underlined. Do not apply these styles yourself. In fact, if you put a <sup> tag around the text, it will be double-superscripted.

If you’re uploading a KML file, just follow steps 2-5, and make sure these all of this appears in the CDATA section of the description element of each object. The CitationList must also appear inside the CDATA element at the end of it.

Sample:

1. Outline your collection hierarchy.

While it’s easy to change the hierarchy once your items are already in Hypercities, creating the hierarchy first will save you some time. For our example, let’s suppose we’re working on a project called “The Programmer and the Author,” and we have four files, houseofleaves.kml, infinitejest.kml, whitenoise.kml, and neuromancer.kml. Let’s also suppose we want to have the following hierarchy:

• The Programmer and the Author
  • The 1980s
    • William Gibson, Neuromancer (neuromancer.kml)
    • Don DeLillo, White Noise (whitenoise.kml)
  • The 1990s
    • David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (infinitejest.kml)
    • Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (houseofleaves.kml)

2. Create the top-level collection.

This is the “meta-collection.” Once you’re logged in, go to “My Profile” and click on “Create a New Collection.”

how to create a new collection

Fill in the required information. In this case, the collection is called “The Programmer and the Author.” This collection may not show up in Hypercities yet because it doesn’t have anything in it.

3. Create any subcollections that will contain more than one collection.

Collections with more than one collection should be the next thing you add. Click on “Create a New Collection” again and enter the appropriate name, e.g. “The 1980s.” Be sure when you do this to add the collection to the collection it will be inside on the “Add To …” tab.

Here, we would add “The 1980s” to “The Programmer and the Author.” Again, these collections may not show up in Collection List view (though they will show up in the Add To … tab) if they have nothing in them.

4. Upload the KML into the appropriate place.

Now is when the real fun begins. Once you have created the collections, upload your first KML file. Click on the Add Media button.

The bottom button is the “Import K ML” button. Click on this.

In the window that pops up, fill in the required information. You must fill in a title, but this will be ignored if a name is specified in the file.

Once you have entered the appropriate information on the first two tabs, click on the Add To tab. Put this in the appropriate collection. Here, we would be putting whitenoise.kml into “The 1980s.”

Click the “submit” button.

Repeat the process for all the files.

Helpful tips:

• Before uploading your files, check them by opening them in Google Earth. This will validate that your KML is correct. If there’s a problem, it will frequently give you a more accurate assessment of what is wrong than Hypercities.
• If you only want your sub-collections to appear as collections of the collection that contains them, be sure that the containing collection is the only collection checked in the “Add To …” tab. Otherwise, they will show up under any collections that have been checked.

The second video will teach you the basics of creating a map using Google My Maps.

The third video tells you how to add your Google My Map into HyperCities.

To find an object’s permalink, look in its information bubble. Click on it once it’s on the map, then click on “More info…” and copy the URL from “Link to this object” field.

To find a link to a collection, go to the collection’s Narrative Viewby clicking on the double arrow (>>) next to its name, and click on “Link to this collection.” Also, once you open Narrative View, the URL in your browser’s location bar will contain the URL that will link you back to this collection.

A Note on Permalinks

You’ll notice that all the links folow this basic format:

http://hypercities.ats.ucla.edu/#item_type=collection&item_id=8835

However, if you are one of the lucky people who was using Hypercities before July 2009, you may have a URL with a question mark (?) rather than a hash symbol (#):

http://hypercities.ats.ucla.edu/?item_type=collection&item_id=8835

These will still work, but it’s better if you swap out the question mark for a hash symbol. Putting in a question mark causes Hypercities to reset itself every time you change the link. Using the hash symbol doesn’t.