wiki,
Wikis offer a convenient way to create and manage miniature Web sites within BSCW. Apart from the HTML documents ("pages") that make up the content of the website, a wiki contains up to five special documents:
•the start page that is displayed when you click on the name or
icon of a wiki,
•the layout page, which serves as the default frame for all other HTML documents of the wiki and thus ensures a consistent layout of all pages of a wiki,
•the search results page, which presents the results of a search in the wiki,
•the print template, which is the template for printing a page of the wiki, and
•the style definition, a stylesheet that specifies, for example, colors and fonts for the HTML elements used in the wiki's pages.
The latter four documents, which are responsible for the appearance of the wiki, are called wiki resource documents and are stored in a wiki subfolder called Resources. When you create a wiki, predefined start pages, layout pages, search results pages, print templates, and style definitions are applied.
Wikis can also be opened like normal folders bypassing the
start page (via 
in the context menu instead of via
, which displays the start page) and have the
functionality of normal folders, i.e. they can contain other objects besides
HTML documents and also subfolders, which themselves may or may not be wikis.
Wikis have their own system of elements with a wiki-like
syntax ([element ...]) that allows you to include general BSCW
system functions and elements developed specifically for wikis in your pages.
Examples for system functions are the date of the last modification of a page,
buttons for editing a page, the display of recently visited pages or whole
context menus. Examples of special elements are pages for search results,
sortable content lists, photo galleries, and a way to comment on a page and
display the comments.
In addition, you can also define your own text elements to use elsewhere in the wiki. For example, this way you can define the page title in each content page, which is then used in the layout page to display the page title. Figure 60shows an example wiki page that uses some of these options.
Figure 60: Example page of a wiki
BSCW elements as well as references to other pages or existing images of the wiki may very easily be inserted into pages of the wiki by using the HMTL editor integrated in BSCW. This editor offers five related buttons when editing HTML documents within a wiki.
Wikis may also be exported and made publicly available in the form of a static copy. The static copy is the result of an evaluation of the wiki where all text and BSCW elements are replaced by their values and the content pages are then embedded in the layout page. BSCW elements that cannot be used in an external environment, e.g. references to actions or context menus, are omitted during this process. Subfolders are included in a static copy.
Wikis are only available on your BSCW server if the related functionality has been enabled by your system administrator.