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

Fri Nov 8 13:09:19 GMT 2013

If you were coding up a custom solution, then it's easy enough to create links to pages based on whatever you want to use: page number, page title etc?

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Smith, John
Sent: 08 November 2013 12:58
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: xerte XOT HTML5 - graphical menu, connector pages

No I understand that but I'm keen to see if what he needs can be incorporated into Xenith in my rewrite "easily" and actually benefit us all going ahead. If (when) I make Xenith Event driven and more OO, firing events at different foints in the page cycle (before load, after load, before unload, after unload, etc) won't incur any overheads when not used but will allow us to hook things into the LO which we can't easily do just now with the plugins in the core server side code...

I think the thing is whether pageIDs going into the connectors  to standardize things is ok... you can label every other page and deeplink to them using a pageID so why shouldn't you be able to do it with a connector page but still be able to do it with linkID=PG=xxxx or page=x... seems more nonintuitive to have pages where things aren't allowed if its an easy add...

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> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: Friday, November 08, 2013 12:49 PM
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: xerte XOT HTML5 - graphical menu, connector pages

My feeling is the connectors stuff could get too complicated, as you know we have had this discussion before, and my position hasn't changed. Ron's problem needs a programmer to solve it.

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Smith, John
Sent: 08 November 2013 12:29
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: xerte XOT HTML5 - graphical menu, connector pages

I completely understand, things have changed a lot recently and I've just learned enough about Github to be able to do what I want to do. I'm using a GUI to manage the changes to the repository, commits, gitflow etc which actually makes it really simple to do and track your changes and would be more than happy to show you that way when you feel you have more space to become involved again - you have so much knowledge of the internal workings of a lot of the system and its development that it would be a shame for you to be locked out due to limited documentation we have of how to do certain things - I'm sure there are others out there who would become involved too (even if just to correct spelling, do some  more internationalization, documentation etc) if only they had a step by step guide...

As for the pageIDs, I can get them added in again or ask Tom (I wasn't even aware of their omission from the XOT connectors) if it is agreed to be a 'good' idea - I know having several ways could confuse but it does/could add to the flexibility.

I'd also love for you to be involved in the migration of the last page model, the scenario one, as it has an amazing amount of potential but no-one (including me) really understands it... and it has been asked for by several people...

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> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Kemp Johnathan
Sent: Friday, November 08, 2013 12:04 PM
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: xerte XOT HTML5 - graphical menu, connector pages

I can't help wondering if the different ways of connecting to a page could not get rather confusing.
There is nothing to prevent the adding back in to the XOT connector xwds the pageID attributes.
Unfortunately I am no longer in a position to do this as I have been sitting on the sidelines whilst the XOT developments continue apace. My thinking was that I would look at XOT once things had settled down. But at present other aspects of life are limiting any time I could put into XOT. With the changes from svn to github I no longer have access to the source files or an understanding of how to go about editing them.
Kind regards

Johnathan

On 8 November 2013 11:53, Smith, John <J.J.Smith at gcu.ac.uk<mailto:J.J.Smith at gcu.ac.uk>> wrote:
Hi Jonathan,

Yes, thank you for that, this is an important thing to remember that we couldn't easily end a section on a Connector page since we wouldn't have a pageID... but I don't think that would be a good idea in this situation anyway...

Perhaps though we should add the pageID into those connector pages also, as I can see a situation where you have sections with a MCQ connector for example (I know you can now do this using links in any text page, but for completeness) and you want to deeplink straight to the section. I know you would still have the option of linkID and page number but number can change and linkID is harder to get at...

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> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>] On Behalf Of Kemp Johnathan
Sent: Friday, November 08, 2013 11:40 AM

To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: xerte XOT HTML5 - graphical menu, connector pages

The pageID optional attribute was originally included in xwd files to enable the project author to give a page an identifier that could then be used in a connector page to reference that page.

pageID became redundant in XOT when Julian enabled the pagelink attribute, which collected the page information from the projects xml file, so as to provide the author with a list of pages to select from.

In a Xerte project each page has its own separate xml file and so the pagelist feature could not function in Xerte. Two versions of the xwd file were therefore created one for use in Xerte and one for use in XOT.

As an example the multiple choice connector page had a single model file used by Xerte and XOT but xerte used the xwd file cMcq.xwd whilst XOT used the file cMcq_XOT.xwd. In Xerte the form prompts the user with "Go to Page ID" and the user inputs a page id into a text field. In the XOT version the form prompts the user with "Destination Page" and the user is able to select a page from the list of pages.
Which xwd file to use when building the master xwd file for XOT is identified by a parameter called "restrict" in the first line of the xwd file. restrict="template" results in the xwd file being used for XOT and restrict="develop" indicates the file is for Xerte.
The key thing here with respect to your considerations is that unless this has changed since I last worked with the xwds the XOT versions of the connector pages no longer have an optional "pageID" attribute. The none connector pages retained their pageID attribute just to retain compatibility with Xerte rather than to create two xwd files for every page.
Kind regards

Johnathan

On 8 November 2013 01:36, KnowledgeWare <knowledgeware at kccsoft.com<mailto:knowledgeware at kccsoft.com>> wrote:
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> [mailto: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> [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> [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> [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:

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Winner: Times Higher Education's Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers of the Year 2010, GCU as a lead with Universities Scotland partners.
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Winner: Times Higher Education's Widening Participation Initiative of the Year 2009 and Herald Society's Education Initiative of the Year 2009.
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Winner: Times Higher Education's Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers of the Year 2010, GCU as a lead with Universities Scotland partners.
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This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it.   Please do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any attachment.  Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham.

This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses which could damage your computer system, you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.

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.
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