Doug,
So Im looking for feedback and suggestions on either or both of
these approaches, OR if youve solved this problem in some other
way, Ill 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" <dmi...@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
dmi...@illinois.edu
(217) 244-5739
On 1/30/14, 10:57 AM, "Gerd Kortemeyer" <ko...@lite.msu.edu> wrote:
Hi,
On Jan 30, 2014, at 11:53 AM, Mills, Douglas G <dmi...@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,
Im 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. Youve 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 Ive 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 Ive
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. >>> Thats not a huge deal but ideally
Im 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 Im looking for feedback and suggestions on either or both of
these approaches, OR if youve solved this problem in some other
way, Ill be happy to hear about that as well. Again, Im 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, Ive 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. Im 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
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