I am working on what I call the frameset portal
http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-12402
This allows a JSR-168 portlet in Sakai to request to be shown with no left navigation. This has applications for externally hosted tools and content - like the iframe tool and the IMS Tool Interoperability tool.
The way most LMS's do this is by using a frame set. The LMS puts a little tiny nav bar in a frame at the top so the user can get back to the LMS and puts the content in a second frame that gets the rest of the screen. This uses a frameset instead of iFrames - so the usability is not too bad - of course the accessibility is not so good. But for content that lives in a URL - this is the only choice other than a popup. This is better then a popup in many people's opinion (and mine as well).
I think that this will allow publisher content to look really nice in Sakai.
I started working this morning at about 8 AM and have the first version working at 11PM. I really like working on holiday breaks.
I started with Ian's portal refactor branch(SAK-12350). to make things easier to join back up with Ian as he completes his work.
It is really cool - screenshots soon in the Jira Entry. Now I want to rest, eat, and watch some Rock Band - now that the whole neighborhood has had 12 hours of solid practice.
Tomorrow I have a few things to clean up. I probably need to make my own branch which is a branch of Ian's branch to check this stuff in so folks can look at it.
I also need to try to get a SiteMaker development environment up and running so I can work on adding IMS tool interop to site maker - which is another of my holiday tasks.
To do list:
- Decide if we really want to pre-buffer content - or should we make a property to control this - so we only pre-load content when we are dealing with one of these "maximize requesting" portlets.
- Tighten down when we will do this - must be one tool and a JSR168 tool on the page.
- Clean things up - remove prints and debugging.
- Talk to Ian to get his blessing on this :)
Posted by csev at December 26, 2007 11:07 PM