Daily Archives: December 26, 2007

Programming the Frame Set Portal

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.

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