Forum .LRN Q&A: Help Section in .LRN

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1: Help Section in .LRN
Posted by Emmanuelle Raffenne on 03/24/08 10:45 AM
Hi all,

The aDeNu group (UNED) is working on a Help Section for .LRN. Ludivine Martin, our usability specialist, is carrying out this task and she's doing a great job (kudos to Ludi :).

The first step has been to investigate how other LMSes implement the help and which type is the most convenient. The outcomes have been put together in 2 documents which I've uploaded to the file-storage:

- LMS Help Sections - Comparison (http://www.openacs.org/storage/file?file%5fid=1475548)
- Introduction to Embedded Help and Examples for .LRN (http://www.openacs.org/storage/file?file%5fid=1475551)

We hope you'll find them interesting.

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2: Re: Help Section in .LRN (response to 1)
Posted by Dave Bauer on 03/24/08 04:08 PM
Thanks! This looks great. Very comprehensive.

I think these items can be easily implemented with the new template procedures that allow adding headers and footers to a page, along with the existing user message feature, and current embedded form help. We just need someone to write the help text!

Also for a "help" section, I have been thinking that using the existing /doc/ directory makes the most sense. It is already there and allows a consistent place to store package specific documentation.

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3: Re: Help Section in .LRN (response to 2)
Posted by Emmanuelle Raffenne on 03/24/08 05:29 PM
Hi Dave,

I think these items can be easily implemented with the new template procedures that allow adding headers and footers to a page, along with the existing user message feature, and current embedded form help.

Exactly. That's what we want to use :).

We just need someone to write the help text!

This study was the first step. Next ones will be:

- Choose a HTML implementation for embedded form help that's compliant with WCAG
- Identify forms, pages and portlets that need help
- Write the help (in english first)
- Implement it
- Translations

For the help section, we'd rather put it in "/help", sounds more intuitive. The other reason is that despite that the official doc will be now in the wiki, IMO the "/doc" location should be reserved for the package technical documentation. I wouldn't put user help and tech doc in the same place.

And speaking of help, any help would be appreciate when the implementation step comes :).

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4: Re: Help Section in .LRN (response to 1)
Posted by Dave Bauer on 03/24/08 05:33 PM
Yes I think /help is correct because of that. I think there is some ancient feature where you can have an adp with a specified locale

something like filename.en_US.adp ? We'll have to use someting like that.

I am very impressed with these reports. I am hopeful we will have a good comprehensive way to do help finally.

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5: Re: Res: Re: Help Section in .LRN (response to 3)
Posted by Raúl Morales Hidalgo on 03/24/08 05:41 PM
I'm willing to help in anything, this will be a great addition to .lrn :)
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6: Re: Help Section in .LRN (response to 1)
Posted by Nima Mazloumi on 03/24/08 06:03 PM
You might find the below link useful. the actual implementation is lost. but the idea was using acs-lang foe localized and context sensitive help in combination with something similar like the translation toggle. you could turn on and off help anytime and it would depending on the message keys used in the page lookup for existing help messages. with this solution several help system are possible:

- inplace
- separete area in the browser
- pop up window
- tooltip (with/without ajax)
- util_message_bar based solution
...

With page_order I defined the order of help messages. And you can use the translation toggle to display and translate help messages as well.

see here: https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=420951

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7: Re: Help Section in .LRN (response to 1)
Posted by Nima Mazloumi on 03/24/08 06:05 PM
I forgot to mention: using the translation mode it was also possible to add new help messages for message keys on the fly.
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8: Re: Help Section in .LRN (response to 6)
Posted by Emmanuelle Raffenne on 03/24/08 06:48 PM
Hi Nima,

Thanks for the reference

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9: Re: Res: Help Section in .LRN (response to 1)
Posted by Luis Ig. Bacas on 09/05/08 11:13 AM
Hi Emmanuele.

I'm a new worker in Innova group (UNED). Firstly, congratulation for the document about concepts and different types of helps. I think that it's a great idea.

This morning we were talking about a help section and Raul Morales showed us about this thread. Can you or any other member of aDeNu tell us the current status of this project?

Thanks.

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10: Re: Res: Help Section in .LRN (response to 9)
Posted by Emmanuelle Raffenne on 09/05/08 01:02 PM
Hi Luis,

Thanks for the congrats, I'll transmit to Ludivine Martin who's the author of those documents.

To answer your question, unfortunately this "Help section" project is on hold and we don't have a schedule yet for it.