Forum .LRN Q&A: Demo, new theme, SCORM

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Posted by Giancarlo Luxardo on
We have set up a .LRN demo server with a new portal theme.

You can access it at:
http://samoa.sii.it
email: mailto:dotlrn@test.sii.it
password: 1

We can release this theme to the community, but first we'd like to have some feedback.

This demo also includes an extended version of LORS with support for SCORM RTE. One the ADL sample packages with a SCO has been uploaded.

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2: Re: Demo, new theme, SCORM (response to 1)
Posted by Alfred Essa on
Giancarlo, The new theme is fabulous! Also, thank you for making available the LORS extensions!
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3: Re: Demo, new theme, SCORM (response to 1)
Posted by Matthew Geddert on
The theme is GREAT! It looks great in Firefox 1.0.1 on Mac OS X. I went into the ADL sample section with Firefox and got a java error saying it couldn't communicate with the server. Safari didn't work at all - the theme didn't show up correctly and the ADL section didn't work.
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4: Re: Demo, new theme, SCORM (response to 1)
Posted by Luis Alberto Climent on
Hi,

I have developed this new graphic interface. It has been tested with Firefox 1.0 and IE 6.0. I've not tried with SAFARI. It doesn't work well with Opera 7.5. A successive step will be to validate CSS according to the standard and to check the compatibility across browsers.

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5: Re: Demo, new theme, SCORM (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on
I love the theme, and we want a library of themes, and in (I hope) 5.3, when the theme-manager for openacs becomes available, we'll have a common set of css definitions for packages so we can apply themes to the toolkit at large that will work with .LRN, too (or vice-versa).

My only negative comment about the page isn't the theme, but rather the large size of the header, which requires me to scroll to see my stuff. The pencil graphic and name and logo don't really add anything for the user that makes it worth forcing them to scroll ...

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Posted by Luis Alberto Climent on
Hi,
It is true... in this case the header has been thought to promotional aims... in any case is possible to reduce the header height to the indispensable to give minimum space to customized logos and imagenes...
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7: Re: Demo, new theme, SCORM (response to 1)
Posted by Giancarlo Luxardo on
Matthew, Have you enabled Java and Javascript on your browser? If you still have an error, you can send me details off list.
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8: Re: Demo, new theme, SCORM (response to 1)
Posted by phillip sparks on
Nice Theme. I really like the tab layout to make easy for learners to keep focus. I am interested in the SCORM integration. The standard sample from ADL is fairly disjointed with navigation in upper left in green, then content in the main blue frame. Any way to put the entire SCORM content inside a theme based container?

I will need to integrate some of the eCourses supporting SCORM packages but have looked most at the Moodle and just setup the OpenACS/dotLRN today. I can share some examples for testing (Flash and HTML based) or test here if you give some guide to getting the LORS and SCORM installed.

Phillip

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9: Re: Demo, new theme, SCORM (response to 1)
Posted by Giancarlo Luxardo on
Philip, In this demo we have kept the default LORS presentation. We generally start SCORM courses from a custom portlet opening a pop-up window (with Javascript).

A work to improve LORS presentation is described in this thread:
https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message%5fid=268480

You can test your SCORM examples on this demo server:
http://samoa.sii.it/dotlrn/clubs/moresamples/lorsm//course-add

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Posted by Nima Mazloumi on
This is the best I have seen so far. How did you enable this new theme? Did you simply replace an existing or how did you add the theme to the list of available themes?

Will you commit your SCORM RTE work to CVS? What does that already support? Have you implemented the server-side part for the LMSXyz-Methods?

Greetings,
Nima

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Posted by Nima Mazloumi on
Don, who is working oh the theme manager?
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Posted by Jeff Davis on
We have something in london to do this although its more ad-hoc than I would like. see also tip 78 and this thread Torben started. I have definite opinions about how all this should be done and I wrote the tip (abiguous though it may be) so I guess I am on the hook for theme manager :)
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Posted by Jeff Davis on
Btw, the markup at http://samoa.sii.it/ is a good indication of why a <box> tag will be useful. This:
   <div id="container-00-gen"> 
      <div id="container-gen">
         <div id="container-top-gen">
            <div id="container-puls-home"><a href="#">
               <img border=0 src="/resources/01_cont_puls_kelp.png"></a></div>
            <div id="container-valori-gen">
	           <div class="user-greeting">
		          Welcome, dot LRN
	           </div> <!-- user-greeting -->
            </div> <!-- container-valori-gen -->
         </div> <!-- container-top-gen -->  
      </div> <!-- container-gen -->

   </div> <!-- container-00-gen -->	   
and a bunch more similiar "box" things exist throughout the design with all the extra divs there to hang background images off. Using a <box> tag would make it possible to make the template code be something like:
<box id="container">
   <div class="user-greeting">
	Welcome, dot LRN
   </div> <!-- user-greeting -->
</box>
and have all the supporting div's be generated both consistently and programatically.
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Posted by Rafael Calvo on
Gianccarlo
Thaks for that! it looks great.
Once is well tested, could we use it for openacs.org? I mean, people is talking about changing the look and feel of the site and this is the best dotLRN site I have seen

cheers

Rafael

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Posted by Rosario Sica on
Rafael,
We can realize and release some dedicate theme to the community .LRN for openacs.org site.
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Posted by Giancarlo Luxardo on
Nima,

You can add a new theme modifying defaults.sql under new-portal.

But we had to work also on the dotlrn-master and site-master templates. We can commit this to CVS or give some instruction about changing the look and feel. The question is how to integrate it with the official release, on which branch: 5.1, 5.2 or 5.3? Btw, I think we can provide one or two additional themes: having a better usage of CSS since .LRN 2.1 makes this easier.

As for SCORM RTE, we can also commit it to CVS. This is an implementation of the RTE API Adapter, derived from the Java applet sample published by ADL. But I'd rather discuss it in another thread. I've added it to this demo to allow more testing: everyone can add a SCORM package.

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Posted by Nima Mazloumi on
Giancarlo,

I don't see any reason why it should be possible to commit your work to the next release. If you don't have commit rights you can send me the work and I will commit your stuff. Regarding the master template my suggestion would be to allow switching by using the parameter "DefaultMaster" which is now set to "/packages/dotlrn/www/dotlrn-master".

It would be wonderful if your SCORM RTE implementation would be committed as well. Do you have any plans to support SCORM 2004 as well?

Greetings,
Nima

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Posted by Jeff Davis on
Before it gets committed I would like to see a diff -u
on the changes.
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Posted by Giancarlo Luxardo on
Well, if I committed all this right away, it would break the default presentation for .LRN and plain OACS. I think we need: "Coordinating .LRN Releases - UI".
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Posted by Dave Bauer on
I don't think this should be the default theme for .LRN or OpenACS. It includes a large amount of graphics that take up too much screen space. It is pretty, that is for sure. I just want to make sure folks don't make a judgement without considering the usability of the design.
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Posted by Nima Mazloumi on
That's why I said, the portlet stuff should be added using the new-portal and the master template by changing the DefaultMaster parameter "manually".
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Posted by Luis Alberto Climent on
Dave:
You are right. We do not think either that it is the subject of LRN and less still of OpenAcs. The idea is to demonstrate that it is possible to be d personalize in radical way the UI on the basis of the necessities and specific requirements of the company that makes use of the .LRN platform .
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Posted by Alfred Werner on
Lovely indeed. Minor suggestion - replace the shade and hide functions with a snippet of javascript and CSS trickery so you don't have a page refresh.

The technique is described in a variety of places - http://www.aglasshalffull.org/css-resources/Change-Div-Size-Color-and-Location-with-the-W3C-DOM.htm seems to have a pretty clear explanation of the technique.

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Posted by Andrew Grumet on
Minor suggestion - replace the shade and hide functions
with a snippet of javascript and CSS trickery so you don't
have a page refresh.

In banging this out for Sloan I came across some architectural issues in the portal system. The details are here:

https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=284093

I propose a few approaches to tracking the client side shade state and am trying to determine the impact on existing installations.

I'd like to make these changes before rolling the Sloan code up to production, in other words ASAP, and would greatly appreciate your feedback.

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Posted by Dario Roig on
Hi!

I'm testing the delivery-scorm in the branch oacs_5_2

I upload in my system upload one course SCORM for test.

http://pizarra3.uv.es:8080/dotlrn/classes/$c076/$c076./pruebasenaulavirtualsiuvi/lorsm/delivery-scorm/?man%5fid=47765
user:mailto:test@pizarra3.uv.es
pw:test

I have one problem when the course send data to the LMS.

Somebody that understands like SCORM works he/she can help me to solve the problem, please?

Thanks.

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Posted by Rocael Hernández Rizzardini on
Dario,

probably is the course looking for the RTE (javascript calls to the server). The SCORM compliant RTE is not included in lors AFAIK.

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Posted by Dario Roig on
Hi Rocael!

Giancarlo uploaded to branch CVS HEAD the SCORM RTE in the lorms 0.6d. This code was merged in the branch oacs-5-2 and in the branch oacs-5-1 release the same version lorms 0.6d.

The doc is in:
http://cvs.openacs.org/cvs/*checkout*/openacs-4/packages/lorsm/www/doc/lorsm-rte.html

I'm testing this feature for include in the branch oacs-5-1, is a good idea?

Thanks for your fast response