I have been chained to a keyboard for most of December so I could finish the first draft of my AppEngine book before the next semester starts. So I left this on the back burner for a while. But now I am catching up.
I really like the Sakai 3 Proposal. The document does a good job of pointing out weaknesses in the current architecture and approach and lays out a good plan for addressing those weaknesses building out on the Kernel 1, Kernel 2, and the UX work to produce Sakai 3.
I also am really impressed as I played with the prototype server. The widget environment was quite nice and the new UX work is very solid – I particularly like the blend of the old and the new. I really liked how the “old tools” were given the entire width of the screen – this is something that I tried to introduce into 2.x but there was no interest. I think the future of LMS UI is to have the LMS take less and less of the screen when the students are doing their learning. We are at a point where folks *know* how to use an LMS so we don’t need to waste 1/3 of the pixels with the LMS UI drawing attention to itself and its features.
Just one funny example of how cool the UI is: I was not happy with the tool menu on the right side of the screen – I figured moving the menu from left to right was look/feel fluff that reduced usability – after using it for a while and grumping to myself – I just decided to see if I could drag it to the right – and of course I could!. I also was a bit concerned because the front page had a social gadget on it – while I like social features – it seemed that using 20% of the main dashboard for the social bits was too much – then I realized that this was just a sample – and poof! The social gadget was gone. Flexibility is *sooo nice*.
Technically – I love the switch to Jackrabbit as Content. I love rethinking Authorization influenced by Bodington. I love the notion that groups are a first class citizen and not part of a site. Sites are cool and need to be retained – but not as the container for everything else. It is better to think of pages and nodes and “nexuses” and let we teachers add site-semantics to those places we conceive as a site. Hierarchy from the get go is a big win.
The Sakai 3 Vision document clearly shows that it is based on a careful analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Sakai 2. It is not just complaining about the shortcomings of Sakai 2 – it is providing the solutions to those shortcomings.
So overall I love it and am very confident that it will be successful in time. As one of the folks who conceived and executed Sakai 2 – and then had to live with the consequences of early decisions for a long time – I do have a few comments and suggestions to the 3akai team in terms of approach.