[Xerte-dev] Re: Modules and htaccess

Wed Apr 10 16:05:43 BST 2013

I'd prefer to say, finish your stuff, then I'll mangle

Mangle away… this obviously has links to the properties panel and URLs for each piece as we discussed earlier in the week. To summarise the discussions, here’s where I thought we’d got to:

The user would select the delivery option from the properties panel;
Different URLs would provide access to the content – so the flash / html URLs would actually be available
Principle: authors test and check rather than auto-conversion
The setting in the properties panel would drive the URLs in the various feeds etc
Principle: existing links continue to work
Workaround: we can leave the play_html5.php page in place as it’s not only Ron who is already putting content ‘live’ this way
We need to accommodate the site template as well (which I’m going to have to rename for political reasons here, otherwise M&C will kill it. Learning Module?)

Is there anything else? If we have a good list, we’ll only have to do the work once…

Thanks Tom and Pat for picking this up,

Julian

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat @ Pgogy
Sent: 10 April 2013 12:13
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Modules and htaccess

I didn't make the changes last time (as sorry to sound like a stuck record) as I didn't think we'd agreed on it / added it to the road map. So I didn't want to waste a day of Fay's time in changing stuff.

I felt xenith was important and so I didn't want to screw it up with the wrong sort of changes.

You could place a header redirect in playhtml5.php to redirect the URL to another link, thus old links could be maintained - albeit as a work round.

I'd prefer to say, finish your stuff, then I'll mangle

Pgogy Webstuff - http://www.pgogywebstuff.com
Makers of web things of a fair to middling quality

On 10 Apr 2013, at 11:24, Julian Tenney <Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk>> wrote:
Is there any way we can do both things, i.e. leave the existing stuff in place so things don’t break, but build a new modular play engine that handles the modular stuff much better? When I put the site template in it was obvious that it was a bit of a pain, as you say having to add new files to the root folder is bad news, and having to modify other files in the root folder is also not so plug and play: there is specific (if (thisSortOfTemplate) do this else do that) code in there, which shouldn’t be there really.

We wanted to put a new zip out on 26th April, a tentative deadline. I don’t mind waiting a few more weeks, but we really need to get this out there so that it can be installed in places before the summer – so those who want to build materials for next year can use it over the summer. The end of May would be about as far as I’d want to wait I think.

What do others think?

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of xerte at pgogywebstuff.com<mailto:xerte at pgogywebstuff.com>
Sent: 10 April 2013 11:19
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Modules and htaccess

True, and happy to shut up

But I first raised this in November - http://listsnottingham.ac.uk/pipermail/xerte-dev/2012-November/002868.html<http://lists.nottingham.ac.uk/pipermail/xerte-dev/2012-November/002868.html> - but it didn't go anywhere

----- Original Message -----
From:
"For Xerte technical developers" <xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>>

To:
"For Xerte technical developers" <xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>>
Cc:

Sent:
Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:41:32 +0100
Subject:
[Xerte-dev] Re: Modules and htaccess

Always we seem to hit something fundamental right before we're due to finish the work. There is a degree of frustration here with two things:

- we have already worked through this twice: Fay has worked through it once with Pat to get the html5 links working, and I have worked through it with Pat to get the site template working. Now we want to do it differently?
- if you take pre-release code and it changes, well, that's sometimes life. Play_html5 was always intended as a way of beta testing the templates, rather than anything else.

At this stage of things, I think we should go with what we have, and Tom's database solution solution, and get this phase of work done, and then address it later when we have a new cycle underway. I appreciate the issues, but there is no point in getting hung about functionality that no one is using yet (modularity), at the expense of functionality that everyone wants to use (html5 delivery).

-----Original Message-----
From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ron Mitchell
Sent: 09 April 2013 18:15
To: 'For Xerte technical developers'
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Modules and htaccess

For me the basic principal must be whatever we want to be defaults for any new solution mustn't break existing links or require people to duplicate or re-write any code to maintain that compatibility. The vast majority will not have the time, skills or inclination to do that. So...

/play.php?template_id=123 and /play_123 including the embed code links should continue to play existing LO's via Flash likewise
/play_html5.php?template_id=123 and /play_html5_123 should continue to work even if that's no longer the default for new html 5, 6 or 7 LO's.

I can see the point about not referring to html5 and keeping it more future proofed and again I can't see a problem with changes like this or the new defaults being Play.php?template_id=560&method=HTML as long as existing links aren't broken. But what would be the Apache/htaccess version of that?

Over time JISC Techdis and other organisations and individuals have shared many links to LO's they have made public with the community, with their learners, with colleagues and this includes sharing of the play_html5 links. Rightly or wrongly that's what we've had since the 1.8 release so obviously we shouldn't break those links if we can possibly avoid it.

HTH
Ron

-----Original Message-----
From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Smith, John
Sent: 09 April 2013 17:25
To: xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Modules and htaccess

Howdy

I personally think you need to run everything through the same page, with parameters. Its the only way you can prevent worsening the situation 12 months down the line where we have many deployed play urls which have to be maintained... Plan to deprecate play_html5 and then people can rewrite that page to your main play.php page with method=html or even duplicate the main play.php file as play_html5 if they must.

Begs the question - should we drop references to html5 and just call it html - what happens if they release html6 in a few years?

Regards

John Smith
Learning Technologist
School of Health and Life Sciences

Sent from Samsung Galaxy SII

"Pat @ Pgogy" <xerte at pgogywebstuff.com<mailto:xerte at pgogywebstuff.com>> wrote:

Could we use the following URL structure?

Can the play URL be

Play.php?template_id=560
And
Play.php?template_id=560&method=HTML

And not playhtml.php?

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