Subject: [LON-CAPA-dev] Remotely interesting ...

From: Gerd Kortemeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 17:04:25 -0500

Hi,

We got the student reviews from two non-science courses now, and they 
are pretty bad. Apparently, there many students have problems with 
pop-up filters, and they do not understand or like the Remote - they 
are also very used to BlackBoard.

Anyway, I am far from changing the default mode just yet, but to give 
you an idea about what's going on, LON-CAPA now has three interfaces:

a) The good-ole Remote
b) The screen-reader accessibility/PDA interface. You get there when 
you log in with "Accessibility Options"
c) The inline-all-in-one-window "Remote." You get there by closing the 
Remote control window (which used to be equivalent to "logout"). You 
can relaunch the Remote by clicking "Launch Remote". The Remote also 
"auto-launches" if you enter Construction Space.

While b) should remain very plain-looking no-graphics, c) eventually 
needs to look and feel pretty, since it will likely become the default 
interface. LON-CAPA does remember your choice between a) and c) between 
logins, while b) always takes priority when chosen. If pop-up filters 
are active, the "Welcome" page should time out and go into c)-mode 
after 30 seconds.

There is still a long way to go,

* the c)-mode looks ugly and sometimes requires too many clicks,
* external pages, pages that have frames, standalone images and movies, 
etc - neither of that works exactly right in b) or c) mode yet.

The Remote was so nicely remote from all the messes that free-style 
content web pages can create ... other course management system get 
around that by only using templates which are under the control of the 
system ... try to tell that to our authors ...

- Gerd.