[LON-CAPA-users] Lon-Capa, PDFs and iOS

[Stuart Raeburn]

Doug,

>>> So I’m looking for feedback and suggestions on either or both of  
>>> these approaches, OR if you’ve solved this problem in some other  
>>> way, I’ll be happy to hear about that as well.

My recommendation to MSU Faculty who need LON-CAPA to support display  
of a multi-page PDF on a mobile device has been to recommend putting  
the content in Supplemental Documents.

Note: student access to Supplemental Content (renamed) is more  
intuitive in the forthcoming 2.11.0 than in earlier LON-CAPA releases.

I would also note the LON-CAPA 2.11.0 attempts to detect if the user  
is browsing from a mobile device, and tries to improve the user  
experience accordingly, e.g., by using jquery.nicescroll.

A potential downside to the use of Supplemental Content is that  
parameter settings to control access are unavailable.

Last summer I expended some effort in trying to address the general  
issue of scrolling for a PDF in an iframe on iOS (for LON-CAPA's main  
content area), without finding a resolution.  Perhaps, by now, there  
is a solution to this issue, but I've not revisited this recently.

Anyway, if there are mobile devices which your students and faculty  
use to access LON-CAPA, it would be helpful if you could test out  
LON-CAPA 2.11.0.RC2, currently running on the testdrive cluster (  
https://testdrive.loncapa.org ) using those devices, to see if you  
encounter any issues (e.g., with nicescroll), aside from the known  
scroll problem for PDFs in iframes on iOS.

Thanks,

Stuart

Stuart Raeburn
LON-CAPA Academic Consortium


Quoting "Mills, Douglas G" <dmills at illinois.edu>:

> Ahhh. But the Composite Page will not break? Thank you for the heads up on
> that!
>
> Doug
>
> Douglas Mills
> Director of Instructional Technologies
> Department of Chemistry
> University of Illinois
> dmills at illinois.edu
> (217) 244-5739
>
> On 1/30/14, 10:57 AM, "Gerd Kortemeyer" <korte at lite.msu.edu> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Jan 30, 2014, at 11:53 AM, Mills, Douglas G <dmills at illinois.edu>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> 2. It IS possible to determine the path to a file such as a PDF
>>> uploaded directly into a course site (as opposed to authoring space)  S
>>
>> That will break when the course is cloned between semesters.
>>
>> - Gerd.
>>>
>>>
>>> Hey All,
>>>
>>> I’m finally getting around to trying to address the problem iPad  
>>> and other iOS users have accessing PDFs embedded in a frame on a  
>>> web page — so for example any PDF uploaded by an instructor into a  
>>> folder in Lon-Capa. You’ve probably come across this — the iOS  
>>> Safari somehow does not allot the correct size frame to the PDF (I  
>>> think is the root issue), 1-finger scrolling moves the browser  
>>> around and 2-finger scrolling scrolls the page up and down — but >  
>>> NOT the PDF inside the frame, so all the student can see of a pdf  
>>> is what appears in the frame when it initially loads.
>>>
>>> A couple of solutions I’ve come up with to address this:
>>>
>>> 1. Use a Composite Page rather than a folder — uploading PDFs to a  
>>> Composite Page provides links directly to the PDF so that it opens  
>>> in the >>> full browser window rather than being embedded in the  
>>> Lon-Capa framework >>> and from there iOS users can scroll up and  
>>> down or if they prefer open it in a PDF app on their device for  
>>> annotation.  The downside of this approach is that the Composite  
>>> Page automatically adds a lot of verbiage and warnings to a  
>>> download file such as the PDF so, for example, when adding a PDF  
>>> entitled “Lecture 01” to the Composite page, I end up with all this:
>>> [cid:0ACFF5EA-5B62-444F-913F-7653280A7D7F]
>>>
>>> 2. It IS possible to determine the path to a file such as a PDF  
>>> uploaded directly into a course site (as opposed to authoring  
>>> space)  and from there to create your own HTML page with links  
>>> directly to the PDFs to accomplish the same as in approach 1 but  
>>> with full control over the look of the page linking to them. The  
>>> downside with this approach is that so far the only >>> way I’ve  
>>> found to find the path to the PDFs uploaded to the course is to  
>>> >>> upload them to a hidden folder then click on each and look at  
>>> the code for >>> the page they are embedded in to find the path  
>>> direct to the file itself. >>> That’s not a huge deal but ideally  
>>> I’m looking for a solution the instructors themselves will be  
>>> responsible for once they learn how to do >>> it, and this seems  
>>> like too much overhead for many of them.
>>>
>>> So I’m looking for feedback and suggestions on either or both of  
>>> these approaches, OR if you’ve solved this problem in some other  
>>> way, I’ll be happy to hear about that as well. Again, I’m looking  
>>> for ways that instructors developing their course sites can make  
>>> their PDFs available to >>> students in such a way that they can  
>>> access them and even make optimum use >>> of them on mobile  
>>> devices (should note here that while I know this is an >>> issue  
>>> on iOS devices, I’ve tested also on a Motorola Zoom I have access  
>>> to >>> and the pdf does not open in the Lon-Capa frame at all, but  
>>> does work as a >>> Composite page. I’m sure the version of Android  
>>> on the Zoom is outdated, >>> but do not have access to newer  
>>> Android devices right now for testing).
>>>
>>> Thanks as always for input and guidance!
>>>
>>> Doug
>>>
>>> Douglas Mills
>>> Director of Instructional Technologies
>>> Department of Chemistry
>>> University of Illinois