Forum .LRN Q&A: navigation changes in dotLRN: RFC

We are working on a couple of new themes, documentation and features that wil make it easier to customize the look and feel fo dotLRN.
Dorian Peters as 'Art Director' has done really nice graphics, and with Jeremy's Monnet programming is looking really good. Dorian has also identified a number of usability issues described below.

These are important changes on the portal navigation. I just thought it might be useful to explain the usability decisions regarding the tab rearrangement (since it's technically tricky to acheive, or at least that it compromises backwards compatibility).

After being in contact with non-technical users of .LRN for a while, we've been able to pick up on the many usability issues that are of particular difficulty for them. A lot of these are details that can
be dealt with with graphic design changes or technical tweaks. One issue, however, is the navigation and has to do with the fact that it suffers from a "false logic" in the tab structure.

It is assumed by common understanding that tabs are all on the same level. Like folders in a cabinet they're top level items that contain content within them. Therefore, the 4 common tabs in .LRN (eg. MySpace, MyCalendar, MyFiles, etc.) should all be on the same level.
But they're not. Calendar and files are not alternatives to MySpace, they are part of MySpace. They are located within this MySpace section and should therefore, logically, be subnavigation pertaining to that tab, not separate tabs themselves.

The tab logic is also comprimised when you click to go elsewhere, such as into a community. Suddenly all the tabs you had established as your primary navigation, dissappear and are replaced with all new ones. While they seem to mirror the old ones to some extent (eg. community, calendar, files, etc.) they're still not the same ones. So
the main navigation is, in essence continuatlly changing, which is generally regarded as a usability no no. Meanwhile, there's the repeated problem, that calendar, files and people are all part of this specific community, not separate from it and should therefore be subnavigation to a community tab. While community hompage is indeed
on the same level as community calendar and the rest, the
representation of this is awkward. We're meant to assume that because the first tab says community home, that for the other tabs community should be inferred.

I believe changing the tab structure to remove the false logic and make it more clear and intutive will greatly enhance usability, particularly for new users. The new structure I propose also makes it immediately clear what possibilities .LRN offers the user. A user can
easily see what they have access to with my proposed tabs: MySpace, Classes, Communities, Preferences and Tools. The .LRN offering and the structure of the entire system is suddenly obvious to the user from the very first page. This should improve users understanding of the system dramatically. Right now, when you first arrive in MySpace,
there are few clues to what you're doing there. You may not know there are classes or communities on offer unless you are already enrolled in them. If you're looking for a particular community it is often hard to find (since it's just a small link among others in one of many portlets, no more prominent than a news item). You are also
likely to have trouble finding personal preferences or tools like
help. All these problems have already been encountered repeatedly with users of .LRN. All these tasks would be greatly simplified for users with the new proposed tab structure.

I think these changes will make a huge usability improvement. Once it's implemented we plan to test it with users of .LRN to ensure that it is easier to use this way for them. I hope we can eventually establish the new strucutre as a default for .LRN.

Screenshots can be seen here: http://jmonnet80.free.fr/Selva/

cheers,

Rafael

That's nice you did the job to use selva theme for portal template, but do you think (as I do) that we should remove completely the choice for such a template (at least from the admin menu) ? I mean, with css and class tags, anyone is able to completely change the layout without changing the html code generated. Moreover, it will be more difficult to go closer to xhtml compliance (and full coherent theme) if every kind of package can change layout of its own parts.

Also, I would like to know how you did to move mt Files and and My Calendar to the submenu ? (I mean what manner did you choose to achieve this goal)

And my last thing : how would you implement the fact that a "top" menu (actually the tab) would be always the same tabs, and what would change really would be only the submenu. The result to achieve is the behaviour you can see in the MockUps pictures that I will add as soon as possible in the Selva directory on my web site ( http://jmonnet80.free.fr/Selva ). At the moment I have found several ways to do it (static menu, portal by default (with the current portal in the submenu) but there are always something worrying me : or it is not understandable choice from the developper point of view, or it is not from the user ....

Jeremy

Sorry for this late response 😊

I don't know if i am going totally wrong but i suspect an approach to get tabbed static menu in dotLRN is by means of new callbacks implemented for openacs HEAD. see https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=274647

I said i just suspect because i am still reading about callbacks. As i see the very goal of callbacks -
"to promote reuse of standard pages and functions by removing the need to create per-package versions of these" - fits well in the issues you are dealing. Indeed callbacks seems to be in the near future a simple, flexible alternative to service contracts. As we know tab structure (pages) in dotlrn is today provided by service contracts defined in portlets.

As i said i am not sure i am understood correctly callbacks but i saw examples from HEAD wich administrative links for certains packages were created with callbacks. see for example forums package code ( forums/tcl/forums-callback-procs.tcl)

ad_proc -public -callback navigation::package_admin -impl forums {} {
return the admin actions for the forum package.
} {

What do you think? Did you already explore this feature? Is it fits to what you are doing?

I see Dirk Gomes, Dave Bauer and DeeDee Kane are working in backporting callbacks from HEAD to 5.1 so we could use it with dotlrn 2.1. see https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message%5fid=305077

Maybe we could contact them to see if callbacks could help you deal with tab structure. I think Andrew Grumet
(https://openacs.org/forums/user-history?user_id=6611) could evaluate it too and dismiss or confirm this suspicion.

\Orzenil

In any case, if I understand Rafael's proposed navigation, it should be reasonably straightforward to implement it by remixing bits of existing code. I haven't seen a compelling case for callbacks yet, but there may be one.

The tabs are queried out of the portal_pages table. The proc responsible for this is dotlrn::portal_navbar in packages/dotlrn/tcl/navigation-procs.tcl. The My Space pages are part of the user's personal portal, whose id can be found from dotlrn::get_portal_id.

Putting the My Space etc. navigation on all pages would just mean querying out the pages for the user's personal portal in addition to the pages for whatever class portal the user happens to be visiting.

I will try to explain things in a different way.

What is now as tabs will be as submenu. What does not exist now will be the tabs. You should have a look at the pictures http://jmonnet80.free.fr/Selva/MockUps/ to understand what Rafael wants.

The future will be with tabs user can't change (or are unadvice to do so), while they can change the submenu (in fact this is part of the code that doesn't change : when they add a tab/page now, they will add a submenu item).

So I moved the information from portal_navbar to the submenu, and I am asking now what is the best way to create what will be a menu "above" what we know now.

Dorian found it difficult to navigate, because you never know where you are. The goal is the user always knows where he is.

Maybe now you understand better my questions ?

So I'm trying to figure out what is the best way not to compromise the logic of the dorlrn, and to create a functionnality that was not expected (a sort of main menu above the existing one). We should be able to remove the "where-we-are" section at top of the page with these features.

I will look to the callbacks, I don't know anything about it, so it may help ?

Question:
How would this work with subgroups and sub-subgroups?
I see the tab shows up on the upper left when you are in an actual course or community: http://jmonnet80.free.fr/Selva/MockUps/2a_Course.png
Would more tabs appear to the left as you go deeper into the hierarchy?

Those mockups are really great and are a great enhancement for the navigation through portals and portal pages. I've shown those to several users (profesors and students) here at UNED and it responds very well to the navigation scheme they expect. So we'll follow your steps and can help to work on it. We can start on august, 1st.

Jeremy, une question: I understand that the "where-we-are" section is the context bar, right? Do you want to remove it only from the main page of each portal or also from inside each aplication? I think these section is useful when you are, for example displaying a news item and want to go back to the news items list.

I discuss suggested tab structure and navigation with client we are going to do some dotlrn usability tests about september or october as i said before and they had a positive experience.

I could go into Andrew suggestions by i'm not sure i could offer a concrete agenda to you and community because for now i am very involved with a implementation of project-manager. Indeed i think a experienced Jedi Master like Malte could take this important implementation in a better way.

Malte, if you want you could coordinate changes with me. I could test your changes or make reviews. If Jeremy and you think it will be necessary i could take a person from my staff who has knowledge in css and xhtml compliance to help in graphic design of course respecting work done by Art Directors from WEG.

\Orzenil

That's exactly it ! I don't know how to implement this "super-portal" ... 😟 I thought I could create a new portal and use it to store my pages, but then I have no way then to go to this portal ... Or maybe if I would declare a new set of url's (I will have a closer look at the request processor tomorrow) ?

Today here is where I am :

-> I have written pure static links ("/pvt/home", "/dotlrn/", etc) for most things,
-> I have a link to a page of the default portal to use a portlet (the "Courses" tab, to display the "Groups" portlet), but BTW the same page appears also in the My Space links in the submenu (which may confuse both future developpers and users : 2 links to 2 identical pages, one in a tab, the other in the submenu ...).

To fix the second problem, I only thought of making conditionnals (if page "Courses" then do nothing) but I think it's dreadfull. Anyway, I think that now things are clear so you'll be able to give me nice advice 😉

As I said, I will post screenshots and (ugly) code tomorrow.

Jeremy

Others might be interested in her blog on Visual Design for eLearning:
http://designerelearning.blogspot.com/

cheers

rafael

You can find the clean source code for the results I posted above.

This is a service package so you can install it and uninstall it with the APM.

Jeremy

I don't think those were things in the design. They must be bugs in the implementation of the theme.

We are all in a conference this week, but I will ask Jeremy to have a look

cheers

Rafael

I think it's fine to have it in CVS so we can all work on it together.

There's an open question about where we should be putting these themes (this is the first instance I know of a dotlrn theme landing in its own package), and how to make sure that we don't unnecessarily duplicate code in them, but these are secondary IMO.

a) Blank Master from selva-theme is broken. Developer Support is screwed.

b) I know that people are highly fond of the name and the title, but the way it is solved in the theme (and in .LRN themes in general) is not good. That's why I moved it around a little bit / got rid altogether.

c) I have not found a place for "number people online", so I left it out as well.

I did not commit, You can view screenshots in the file-storage.

Be advised that the "contacts" tab is driven by a parameter in selma-theme (so you can decide what goes up there). If you look at the community view, you see that the Community name is written in it's own tab.

If you look at the integration e.g. of project manager and contacts, you will see that the navbar (in blue) can be either set (if not in .LRN like contacts) or extended if within (see the project manager screenshot).

I use the MIT Sloan new-portal theme.

Last but not least, if you are *outside* .LRN the title will show up in the top middle of the screen (see the contacts screenshot, there you see "contacts" in the middle).

Tell me if you like this.

Rafa

I am sorry for answering late, last week was a conference week in Sydney, so I didn't work for this ...

I think you're right, and the only way to have these static tabs is to have a static page behind (I mean as you wrote "standard OpenACS pages") so I'm going to look in this way.

As their link will be static (e.g. "/pvt/home") we can compare directly with "ad_conn url" I think ?

I would not like to send info back to master template. As you said it would mean modify some core pages, and I don't want to break everything 😉

For IE/Firefox/windows : I am sorry, I haven't tried this yet with windows (although I must say I was expecting trouble with this ...)

The protlet headings are inside because we must change the sloan-theme.adp file (new_portal/www/themes) for separate title and content, and use our tags by the way.

So I have two questions now :
-> I've seen that some files are available directly (/www and /packages/acs-subsite/www for example). Where part of the documentation decribes what pages are or aren't accessible ? Is it part of the request pre-processor, or something else ?
-> Is it possible to use a portlet in a "standard OpenACS pages" ?

Jeremy

Our changes which are not included as I did not commit until someone says I want them:

- Parameter driven subnavbars
- Show we are in a community in a prominent place.
- No more logo.
- Some color changes in the CSS.

The page courses has been added, the tabs are highlighted for their own url.

I have another question for the xml info file :
We can set parameters with it (the parameters are set for the installation of the package I think. What happens when we uninstall the package ? Should we take care of the parameters manually (in the sql drop file), or is there a sort of history, and the parameter falls back to its previous value ?

Jeremy

I did not expect you people to put your things in the cvs and modify what you wanted (each on your side, without knowing if someone else is doing it also : we call that communication. 3 or 4 persons on the same files : problems.).

I thought that I would do some stuff (maybe not the better, but I asked questions for which I have very few answers (thanks Andrew and myself). Then when the thing would be good enough (near version 1.0,or about) it would be september, and time for me to leave (unfortunately) Australia and the dotLRN.
I thought you would drive me to the bright side, by giving me advice, and not doing things instead of me.

I am not saying I am the best, and I am not saying your job is bad, and in general I am not saying anything bad about you and the dotLRN community in general.

I just say that the 2 first remarks and the last one may not make sense for a development and learning (I am learning) package. You probably noticed that it has moved from a service to an application : because a service (as far as I know, please correct me otherwise) is not mounted, and so I would have accessed the courses page through a long path. I am not sure you can update from a service to an application ?

And I say that I didn't know that I could achieve the url active in one line. I knew I did it wrong, but I hoped you would have given me a better way ...

BTW, you didn't answer (or give a link to the documentation) for my question about the paramters in the .info file. Although I am pretty sure you know perfectly well the answer ... 😉

For the community problem, 2 things :
- Yes, it is impossible now. This is part of the lots of questions I asked along this (very long) thread. I wanted to do something dynamic (like the navbar) but it seems it is not possible to do it the same way (portal problem). So I did it the way I could imagine (static links). It is not impossible at all to add a link, but I agree this is a very bad solution.
- I am planning to add in the next days a css selection, so as to change the color (as it is done now) when you enter a community.

Now, I am going to spend the next hours reading source code to learn .... 😟

Jeremy

Reason for me to do the things are plain and simple: Client needs. Your design was the best thing around for the client, so we took it and improved it everywhere. But instead of forking we tried to bring everything back.

As their link will be static (e.g. "/pvt/home") we can
compare directly with "ad_conn url" I think ?

Right. Note that /pvt/home is specified by the HomeURL kernel parameter. So the check could be done against the parameter value instead of the hardcoded string "/pvt/home". Email me if you have any question about how to do the lookup.

I've seen that some files are available directly (/www
and /packages/acs-subsite/www for example). Where part of
the documentation decribes what pages are or aren't
accessible ? Is it part of the request pre-processor,
or something else ?

It's part of the request processor (RP), and should be documented there. If not there's always the source code 😊 Here's how it works though:

a) The RP looks for a matching file under /www and will use it if it finds one.
b) If it doesn't find one, it climbs up the URL looking for a site node that matches. Then it looks in the www subdirectory for the package that is mounted there and tries to find a match.

There are some other tricks as well. For example URLs that start with /resources are treated specially for performance. /resources/package-key maps to package-key/www/resources. There are also "virtual url handler" or .vuh files that can process all URLs under their root. It's neat stuff!

-> Is it possible to use a portlet in a "standard OpenACS pages" ?

Sounds like it would be a bit of a hack, but it should be possible. One issue is how to get hold of the element_id. You might take a look at "magic objects", e.g. the acs__magic_object_id() database function.

Anyway, I would like to stop trolling now (and stop sarcasm by the way 😉 ) and concentrate on technical issues, if you don't mind ?

And by the way the header is missing, on the version that is commited on head (i dont see login information and .LRN logo)...

I18N : no, that's the opposite ! 😉 people are stuck if they non-I18N words ... I' m currently using catalog files not to require an extra version of other packages (OACS 5.2 in your case). I haven't find the solution now, but I would like not to rely on a package version, AND have the advantages of the ## words ... Furthermore, Rafael told me he had the 'missing keys' messages, but I couldn't find a computer when I saw it from my eyes (and be able to look at the code). Are you sure you restarted the server after install ? I think the catalog files are read only once at startup ...

login bar : yes, you are right ! The "your account" is already the same as the "preferences" tab anyway, and I can probably add the logout as the last tab ?

Blinking text : of course it was french humor, sorry 😊 It's not blinking anymore, but it's blue for My Space, and green for a community (that will be in the next release). As we have different opinion on that point, I would like other people (Vivian, Andrew, Rafael, ...) to give their opinion on that particular point. I disagree to display the title of the page if we are not in a community : this is just to have a very few values (My Space, and communities) to be a reference for people. The more different values, the more confusing it is ... Well, let's hear other opinions now.

Title : ok, I'll do it this way (if noone else express another constraint)

Breadcrumps, 2 lines : Be careful, you are going to have an argument with the designer 😉 Dorian did it this way, so I'll wait for her opinion on that. Even if I agree that in general "smaller is better", we must also think in term of "beautiful" and "space". A lot of people like when it is written large with lot of space, this is very subjective. On that also I would like to hear from other people !

CSS : yes for comments, and I'll also have to fix IE bugs BTW ... I am not using IE, so it is not my priority for the next week, but I hope to do that for the end of August.

blank-master : what kind of compatibility does it breaks ? Selva-blank-master is just a copy (I changed maybe the css links ?) of the /www/blank-master (from previous version of dotlrn, the one from debian package, I don't know if this code was modified in between ?)

Corner : see CSS.

Round edges : Dorian is working on another css without images at all (easier to change colors, lighter web page, etc). We can achieve the round edges without images only by using proprietary css extension (--moz-border-radius for mozilla and firefox for example) which is in my opinion not a good way as it is not standard. Otherwise a lot of ugly solution exist (like creating a lot of different areas inside a class, and move them from 1 px each. We have the result with the double html tags, and the page becomes unreadable ... 😟 ) At the end, I think we'll have 2 solutions : pictures, or blocks. I think we can propose both by default, and the user choose ?

Jeremy
PS : should we start a new thread now ? This one is becoming too long, and we can't find information in it anymore. I could start with a summup of what has been done ?