[10:18:18 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> you there athena?
[10:20:08 CST(-0600)] <athena> yep
[10:20:48 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> oh hey
[10:21:01 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> so the CoursesPortlet
[10:21:40 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> there are some schools that can't get at updates or books for the details screen, or both
[10:21:59 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> in their integration i mean... they can't get at the data
[10:22:17 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> naturally, they want to hide those areas in the display
[10:22:32 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> i would like to offer them a standard way to do that
[10:22:45 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> rather than just commenting-out those areas in the JSP
[10:23:32 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> i originally thought we could just set the list to null, but the classes generated by jaxb don't seem to support that
[10:24:05 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> so i have 2 other ideas, and i like to see if you fancy one of them 
[10:24:36 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> (1) we could use a PortletPreference (e.g. showUpdates, default true)
[10:25:11 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> (2) we could add a method to the CourseWrapper like isShowUpdates()
[10:27:19 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> do either of those grab you? #1 is similar to how we do lots of things, and offers free UI support; #2 is perhaps more flexible since you could make the choice DAO by DAO or even Course by Course
[10:35:14 CST(-0600)] <athena> sorry, got pulled off on something, reading
[10:36:07 CST(-0600)] <athena> can't we just not display those areas if no announcements or books exist?
[10:37:07 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> we can... but then a course the doesn't currently have an announcement looks the same as one that never will
[10:37:41 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> in that case we won't be signaling the user that this is a place where you might find announcements in the future
[10:37:53 CST(-0600)] <drewwills> or books for other courses, etc