Respondr Theme Q and A

This Page

This page exists to capture, discuss, and debate the important details about how (exactly) Respondr will work, since many of the features present in Universality are not yet implemented in Respondr.

Is Respondr based Columns or Rows?

Both, really.

Bootstrap is based on rows (to a significant degree). Early builds of Respondr use rows instead of columns. This approach works really well for portlets of approximately uniform height; but the existing stable of Apereo portlets are not very uniform. Portlets of mixed heights lead to wasted screen real estate, in the form of large empty area beneath shorter portlets.

Respondr currently features one, "main" row which will contain columns of portlets (just like Universality). In the future, it may be possible for schools that implement Respondr to choose...

Rows of portlets
Columns of portlets in one row
Multiple rows containing columns of portlets

Or even make different choices on different pages/fragments/tabs.

How Will Personalization Work?

We're not entirely sure.

We'll probably look very closely at porting over the Customize drawer (from Universality) as-is (or nearly), since that approach may allow us to support the most features the fastest. But there could be aspects of how personalization was implemented in Universality that don't make complete sense in Respondr, so perhaps some or all of the Customize drawer will be re-designed... even before uP 4.1 is released.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is pursuing a pretty different idea of how personalization will work in their implementation of Respondr, adding a concept of Favorites that replaces the experience (and is under the hood built on) traditional Layout. Instead of "Add to Layout", with Favorites you "Add to Favorites". This isn't entirely baked yet.