[Xerte] Re: xerte XOT HTML5 - graphical menu, connector pages

Fri Nov 8 01:36:48 GMT 2013

Thanks Julian and John for this info.and yes if I could detect the end of a
section using pageId's and trigger a dbase write event I think that would be
workable to do what I needed. Thanks for these suggestions, I will put some
more thought into how it might work from my end.

RonM2 

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Smith, John
Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2013 3:16 AM
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: xerte XOT HTML5 - graphical menu, connector pages

Hi,

As Julian says, all the presentation can be done in the attached html file.
And to address the other items:

As Jonathan states Unique IDs are generated for each page as they are
generated but these linkIDs remain with the page for its lifetime and can
only be changed by editing the xml (from what I've seen). They all look like
PGxxxxxxx where xxxxxx is numeric

Then you have the pageID (this is an optional property that can be added to
every page). This can be set to any key you wish (should probably avoid
spaces etc that get mangled in urls. so you can set it as Pg5Sec1

Then you also have deeplinking already available. any URL
play.php?template_id=1 can be changed to use either page/pageID/linkID to
deeplink to that page - thus play.php?template_id=14&pageID=Pg5Sec1 will go
directly to that page.

You can also use internal PageLinks to jump to specific pages, so not
requiring the whole LO to refresh.

The only bit that I see that might be 'difficult' is the database
connection. At present there is no way to do something when a page is left,
so when a section ends you cannot trigger some code to do something else.
the actual communication to the db is probably trivial via a custom php page
but it needs triggering to know when to write data back.

I plan to rewrite the HTML5 engine into more of an OO model and Tom has
requested some events to support SCORM and possibly TinCan later but I can
see that you might also need some custom events to be fired at the end of a
sections.

So for example you have a section called Section1 and page_end events are
fired when each page is left. You could listen for a page_end event and pass
the IDs/page number into the event handler and from there make a decision as
to whether it was a section, subsection etc.

I'm happy to work those events also into the rewrite (although it won't be
until Christmas period) and that should pretty much allow you to do what you
want..

Regards,

John Smith

Learning Technologist

School of Health & Life Sciences

Glasgow Caledonian University

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2013 10:36 AM
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: xerte XOT HTML5 - graphical menu, connector pages

Well, when you load up the html page, you have all the HTML / javascript /
css you need to do that. You have a problem that is going to need some
programming to resolve, one way or another,

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of KnowledgeWare
Sent: 07 November 2013 02:33
To: 'Xerte discussion list'
Subject: [Xerte] Re: xerte XOT HTML5 - graphical menu, connector pages

If possible I'd like to get to a parts/modules menu as below (in blue). This
is xerte desktop with a flash menu inserted (thanks Julian/Dave). John by
dbase reading I mean the ability to read/write/update a proprietary (non
scorm, my own) database. For example, the parts and modules in the blue menu
below are loaded from the database. At the end of a module I want to update
the database, when all modules in a part done update the part in the
database, etc.

The menu below (black) is in Authorware, it's just a 'parts' module and the
sections are linear. It's workable and probably much easier to do in XOT
than parts/modules. For this I need to 'insert' the menu, read the 'parts'
from the database when the LO starts, turn on checkmarks if the student has
completed the part, then jump to the first page for each part when clicked,
page through linear, and at the last page in the part update the database
and return to this menu.

In the blue menu I coded the xerte icons with a specific ID which then gets
parsed to build the menu/parts. For example the page ID for part 1 is
'p1id', and for the modules inside it is 'p1m1id', 'p1m2id' etc. It would be
very useful if XOT had a way to uniquely code each icon but I don't think it
does, or as Jonathan stated it does but it may change at runtime:

"If I remember correctly XOT assigns a unique identifier to each page
automatically.

You can use this by using the pagelink feature available in all text boxes.
However I think the assigned identifier changes each time you run the
project. What is constant is the page name this maps to which is what is
displayed in the pagelink control."

If a client builds a course they'd need some simple method of identifying a
page that wouldn't change, that would always remain the same in order that
the menu works. The page name wouldn't be good and it may be changed.

There's another reason I'd like a unique page identifier - I'm wondering if
I could send a student an email with a link with his login/password and a
set of pages somewhere in the piece to navigate to. For instance, on login
it would go to the part 3 summary pages, page through them, do the part 3
quiz, then go to an exit screen. 

That's really what I'd like to try to accomplish, some type of a menu like
above that my clients are used to, and if possible a way to jump into a
piece and navigate through a specific set of pages.

Are these things doable in HTML5 XOT? As many of you know I'm not in the
same league with many of you as a programmer so please bear that in mind if
replying, things like JSON etc. are beyond me at this point. If there is a
way to do this however I will work toward it.

Thanks

RonM2

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2013 1:49 AM
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: xerte XOT HTML5 - graphical menu, connector pages

You do it using media -> flash movie, and set an init object, then load an
.html file instead of a swf (the init object is what trips the code to
display this rather than the swf, so you need to sety one, even if just a
dummy - it also allows you to pass json into the html page for you to use in
the content):

Then you get your custom content loaded up:

Glasgow Caledonian University is a registered Scottish charity, number
SC021474

Winner: Times Higher Education's Widening Participation Initiative of the
Year 2009 and Herald Society's Education Initiative of the Year 2009.
http://www.gcu.ac.uk/newsevents/news/bycategory/theuniversity/1/name,6219,en
.html

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