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At the moment most of the UI work and testing is done at the institutional level and doesn't make it back into the community. Also there are problems with porting mods and changes across versions of uPortal.
Objectives:
- Default presentation layer using css and standards compliance.
- Minimise difference in terms of output to the browser so that we really can share skins across institutions. For example using consistent way of handling channels, widgets, images, conventions and standards for naming. Most of the customisation takes place at the CSS level presently - if we had some standardisation in terms of usage and ids, we could potentially share more.
- Need to genericise a standardised layout as far as possible thought and leave flexibility with the end using institution to customise to suit their own visual style.
- Try move away from rework upon upgrades and towards some sharing
Suggestions:
Channels could have some intelligence about the amount of screen-space that they need in terms of column widths, rather than leaving this to the user to deal with.
Would like to see a requirements document for the UI for uPortal's Layout Manager. Put on the wiki and get feedback and debate on proposed requirements.
Need to 'unit-ise' UI customisations so that they can be easily deployed at other institutions easily. Would be great if you get stuff from the Clearinghouse with a clear set of instructions on downloading and installing it. Need a fairly standardised mechanism for sharing our stuff.
Abstracting the customisation api that controls how folders are created so that the api can be customised at a local level e.g. to customise what happens when a user adds a tab
Adding a tab - need to add a tab, then a column, then a channel - if we could slim this down that would be a huge improvement in and of itself.
Customisation
- Not happy with the current customisation options - need improvements to ease of use, accessibility and end-user discovery.
- Consensus that we are turning it off or end-users are not using it - quite a lot of users don't use because it's not that important to them
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