Forum .LRN Q&A: FYI: .LRN control panel vs. Your Account

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1: FYI: .LRN control panel vs. Your Account
Posted by Lars Pind on 10/03/03 10:25 PM
I took the liberty of replacing the various links (edit my information, change password, etc.) in .LRN's control panel page, into a link to the normal OpenACS "Your Account" page.

I'm not sure everyone will agree on this change, which is why I post here, to solicit feedback. Thankfully, we have version control, so if there's opposition, we can easily revert.

The reason is that we've done quite a lot of work on the "Your Account" page recently, and I think it's wasteful to try and maintain and translate two versions of the same page.

Plus, portraits and who's online were missing from the dotlrn page.

So check it out on the test servers tomorrow, and let me know what the verdict is.

/Lars

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2: Re: FYI: .LRN control panel vs. Your Account (response to 1)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 10/04/03 09:44 AM
Shouldn't this be made a TIP? As long as we do not have a seperate OCT for dotLRN (and I'm not even thinking we need one), we should propose these changes as a TIP and let people know like you did.

I know this is process and I know that we are in finishing mode and you had an aweful lot of reasons to do this, but there was a reason behind establishing the TIPs, at least I thought so, and this change would be a perfect example for using a TIP.

Nevertheless, I completly agree in maintaining only the "Your Account" page (from personal experience....), so, without even looking at it, my verdict is "Thanks".

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3: Re: FYI: .LRN control panel vs. Your Account (response to 1)
Posted by Alfred Essa on 10/04/03 03:49 PM
Lars,

This makes a lot of sense but it also points to the urgency of getting the User Advisory Board constituted for .LRN. In the meantime I will ask DeeDee Kane, who would be a member from MIT Sloan, to look at this proposal. Thanks for working on this..

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4: Re: FYI: .LRN control panel vs. Your Account (response to 1)
Posted by Deirdre Kane on 10/06/03 08:05 PM
Lars,

I would like to take a look at this.  Can you give me the URL for the test server(s)?

I haven't seem the "Your Account" page in a while.  The last time I saw it, I didn't like what I saw and found the page diofficult to use and navigate to/from.

DeeDee

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5: Re: FYI: .LRN control panel vs. Your Account (response to 4)
Posted by Carl Robert Blesius on 10/14/03 01:23 AM
Sorry for the delay DeeDee. Lots going on as we finally approach launch in Heidelberg and push 2.0 forward (with Collaboraid's help).

You can see the changes Lars made by going to the testing servers

http://dotlrn.collaboraid.net/test/

and visiting the control panel

http://dotlrn20-pg-test.collaboraid.net/dotlrn/control-panel

Take a look at the "Your Account" link.

I am very much in favor of these kind of changes. We need to slim down .LRN and generally improve OpenACS, while retaining/improving functionality. Lars has my vote.

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6: Re: FYI: .LRN control panel vs. Your Account (response to 1)
Posted by Lars Pind on 10/14/03 07:51 AM
Damn, I was certain I posted the URL here immediately after DeeDee's post. Must be the evil "Confirm" page.
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7: Re: Your Account vs. My Account (response to 1)
Posted by Anja Wicht on 10/15/03 02:06 PM
For reasons of consistency and usability, please always stick to one solution in the English original of the program: My Space, My Calendar, My Files... My (!) Account. A change of perspective is unnecessary and confusing.

(Apart from that, the changes are good.)

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8: Re: Your Account vs. My Account (response to 7)
Posted by Carl Robert Blesius on 10/15/03 04:06 PM
Thanks for noticing and posting a bug report Anja.
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9: Re: Your Account vs. My Account (response to 8)
Posted by Matthias Melcher on 10/20/03 05:13 PM
I wonder if the problem that Anja discovered concerning "My" vs. "Your" is really just thoughtlessness or if the term has deliberately been chosen. In any case, the decision should consider the following problems of My vs. Your:

In distinguishing the confusion-prone concepts of
a) personalizing a portal for oneself, and
b) customizing a portal webpart for a targeted audience,
terminology emerges to use
- "MySite", "My links", etc. for case (a), while using
- "Links for you", "News for you" in case (b).
(Unfortunately, in dotLRN documentation the difference between personalizing and customizing is different). Mixing up My and You will completely confuse end users and, even more, course admins who sometimes take on both roles.