[Xerte] FW: Two small niggles with Xerte Online Toolkit

[Alistair McNaught]

Slightly more technical question forwarded from Teachers list

From: A list to facilitate and support teachers using Xerte Online Toolkits [mailto:XERTEFORTEACHERS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Ed I Bremner
Sent: 17 August 2011 11:11
To: XERTEFORTEACHERS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Two small niggles with Xerte Online Toolkit

Dear Xerte users,

I have two questions regarding niggles that I have with XOT.

There may well be easy answers to these....that have so far alluded me....so here goes:


1)      A normal web-link from within a XOT resource opens the URL in the same window that the Xerte Resource was in.  This means that you have no easy way to return to the XOT resource, there is no page navigation or 'back' button.  This means that you have to use the menu>history>back to return.  This isn't great, but worse still, when you do this, it returns you to the first page of your Xerte resource, which means you have to find your place again.  Our resources are quite heavy in external links and this is making them quite hard to use.
Questions:  Is there a way of making web-links open into a new window?  or a window with navigation?  If not, is there any way of making it return to the correct page?  Are there better ways of handling external links?

2)      Some templates seem to automatically have scrollbars (especially vertical).....whereas others don't (notably the accordion view). My preference is to adjust text to make them unnecessary.....however sometimes this is not possible and a scrollbar would really help.  I think there can also be problems about changing the size of text and therefore running out of space.
Questions:  Is there any way to ask XOT to always use scrollbars if they are necessary?  Can they be manually added?

I am sure both of these have simple answers.....which you may well of answered before....and if so...sorry.

I normally use Firefox on Mac to develop these resources, but could also use any other browser/platform if it would help.

Best Wishes

eib


*********************************
Ed I Bremner
Research Officer
IMPACT - Improving Access to Text
UKOLN - University of Bath
e-mail:  e.bremner at ukoln.ac.uk
skype:   ed.bremner
twitter:  impactocr
*********************************


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