[Xerte-dev] Re: Community Website

Thu Apr 25 15:37:01 BST 2013

Phew...

Regards,

John Smith
Learning Technologist
School of Health & Life Sciences
Glasgow Caledonian University

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2013 3:30 PM
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Community Website

Then it is done.

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 Tom Reijnders
Sent: 25 April 2013 15:25
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Community Website

Done....
Op 25-4-2013 16:11, Julian Tenney schreef:
OK, the UoN xerte site now points to http://www.xerte.org.uk/jdownloads/Xerte%20Online%20Toolkits/xertetoolkits_2.0.zip for the download. Let me know if that's not correct...

...and please build a zip!

From: Julian Tenney [mailto:Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk]
Sent: 25 April 2013 15:06
To: Alistair McNaught; Julian Tenney; For Xerte technical developers (xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>)
Cc: Inge Donkervoort 12Change (i.donkervoort at 12change.eu<mailto:i.donkervoort at 12change.eu>); 'Fay Cross' (Fay.Cross at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Fay.Cross at nottingham.ac.uk>); Nuno Jorge (Nuno.Jorge at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Nuno.Jorge at nottingham.ac.uk>)
Subject: RE: Community Website

I have got time next week and the week after to work on the community site if you want. I'd like to go through it and try and get all the typography consistent at least.

I have made the 2.0 branch now, so you can check out https://xerteonlinetoolkits.googlecode.com/svn/branches/2.0 for any further changes / fixes etc to that. Keep working in the trunk for new stuff.

I have zipped up the files and put them on the web site as before, and made a few amendments to the text and so on there, and have referenced the community site on the community page. It's still publishing so you might not see the changes just yet.

Regarding the zip, I'm happy to point the link on the Xerte web site to the community site to pick up Tom's automated builds: should the link be http://www.xerte.org.uk/jdownloads/Xerte%20Online%20Toolkits/xertetoolkits_2.0.zip? At the moment, it points directly to the zip, rather than the 'create account to download' stuff we talked about.

I would prefer to direct people to both http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte and the community site in information about the release to the lists. There isn't much on the community site about the new release at the moment? I can do this now (I've got about 90 minutes of today left) or can wait until Monday if you don't want me to steal your thunder before tomorrow. I need to write some copy to post anyway, so I'll crack on with that.

Next week I can help with the community site - I'm out of the office tomorrow.

From: Alistair McNaught [mailto:Alistair.McNaught at HEAcademy.ac.uk]
Sent: 25 April 2013 13:57
To: Julian Tenney; For Xerte technical developers (xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>)
Cc: Inge Donkervoort 12Change (i.donkervoort at 12change.eu<mailto:i.donkervoort at 12change.eu>); 'Fay Cross' (Fay.Cross at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Fay.Cross at nottingham.ac.uk>); Nuno Jorge (Nuno.Jorge at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Nuno.Jorge at nottingham.ac.uk>)
Subject: RE: Community Website

That's very odd - I can't replicate those issues (except the typography styles - that's a consequence of things being written by different people at different times and not yet having evolved a style guide).

The whole point - to me - about a community site is that it will evolve. If we're encouraging community wider contribution we'll need to accept a level of stylistic difference. I'm not getting any jumping around of panels etc and I'm finding all the resources I expected to on the Resources page.

I think the question of whether a community site is ready to be launched is a question for the community to decide and this little bit of the community in southern England feels the benefits of the site for new users far outweigh any current problems. What does the rest of the community feel?

We were planning on launching the site to the public tomorrow so a consensus (or at least a quorum) view would be welcome sooner rather than later!

Alistair

From: Julian Tenney [mailto:Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk]
Sent: 25 April 2013 13:41
To: For Xerte technical developers (xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>)
Cc: Alistair McNaught; Inge Donkervoort 12Change (i.donkervoort at 12change.eu<mailto:i.donkervoort at 12change.eu>); 'Fay Cross' (Fay.Cross at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Fay.Cross at nottingham.ac.uk>); Nuno Jorge (Nuno.Jorge at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Nuno.Jorge at nottingham.ac.uk>)
Subject: Community Website

I have to say, I'm not sure the community web site is ready for public consumption. If I go there now, the links are all inconsistent and wrap badly, the login box isn't aligned, I couldn't find the downloads, and I'm just not very happy with the way it looks. When you navigate around the pages, the panels jump about. There is inconsistent typography in headings, margins, line breaks and font sizes, the resources page doesn't contain any resources, the resource panel is repeated on both the showcases and resources page, the FAQ page has styles all of its own and there's a ton other stuff: it's all just a bit of a mess if you ask me.

I'm not putting down the work that has gone into it, but I know we can do a lot better than this: it just doesn't feel finished, and it doesn't inspire me with confidence in the tools.

At the moment I would prefer to put v2.0 on the main Xerte web site and direct people there, and we can continue working on the community site now we've got this tranche of development work out of the way. We can re-visit the styling of the application as well at the same time, and make the two work together: Nuno applied the same set of styles to toolkits this week, and it didn't work very well.

So here's my recommendation: we put v2.0 on the Xerte site as we always have done (or link directly from there to Tom's zip, without letting the user see the community site if they follow the link from www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte<http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte>: they just get the downloaded zip). Then we properly finish the community site, and re-skin toolkits in the next batch of work.

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Tom Reijnders

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