Hi Jen, > do you have any input about how the WURFL library might fit into the above? > I'm not familiar enough to understand quite how it would prevent us from > wanting to maintain mappings between browsers and profiles.
I was thinking the WURFL library would simply replace the browser.mappings and associated logic (step 3). It's quite comprehensive and can provide a lot of other device information, so it can just be a dependency and not one that needs to be maintained internally. The rest would all stay the same. The user switch behaviour would possibly be a link/button maybe in the portal footer, which could update the UA mapping table appropriately. cheers, Steve On 09/11/2010, at 2:35 PM, Jen Bourey wrote: > I'd like to chime in with some information about uPortal's process for > selecting a theme based on the browser user agent. uPortal actually does > have internal support for allowing a user to override the default assignment > (in effect, allowing users to choose to use a desktop theme from a mobile > device). The functionality doesn't have a user interface anymore though, as > it was removed due to a community request (from Rutgers actually, I think?) > > Here's an outline of what happens to select the theme: > > 1. The code checks to see if the user has an individual record in the > UP_USER_UA_MAP table mapping the browser's user agent string to a specific > user profile. If it does, just go ahead and use that profile (and the > associated theme). This is the step the user-facing profile selection tool > used to take advantage of. > > 2. Next uPortal checks to see if the user's default user has an individual > record. Same scenario as described above, except with the default user > account. > > 3. If no exact matches were found for the browser, fall back to the > browser.mappings file and attempt to match the user agent against the listed > regexes, trying regexes in the order listed in the file. > > Once a profile is matched, uPortal uses that profile to determine the > structure, theme, and default skin. uPortal out of the box currently offers > a desktop profile, an iPhone profile, and an Android profile. The iPhone and > Android profiles both use the same themes, but use different skins. This > lets us use offer mobile experiences that feel more native on each mobile > device. > > Once upon a time, uPortal offered a channel that let users select the profile > they'd like to use for a given user agent. This dates back to the very > beginning of my involvement with uPortal so I'm not 100% clear on all the > details, but my (potentially flawed) understanding is it was removed because > it was let the first user of a particular user agent pick the default profile > for that user agent for all users. As browsers like Firefox started doing > frequent updates, this became problematic and the UP_USER_UA_MAP table became > completely cluttered with entries for minor releases of browsers. > > SO. We could absolutely create a way for users to select whether they should > get the mobile or desktop experience when they're on a mobile device. And we > should! We could implement it now using the existing UP_USER_UA_MAP table > and functionality, though I'd suggest that we might want an improved process > that allows us a bit more control. We'd want to offer mobile users a link to > switch back and forth between the mobile and desktop versions, but we might > not want to display that link to desktop users. We also might not want to > offer iPhone users the Android site and vice versa (not because it would be > bad, but maybe just because we want to keep the interface simple). We might > also decide that we don't actually need this selection to persist between > user sessions. I suppose a non-session-based selection would be particularly > important for mobile access to guest portal views. > > The other issue we need to consider is the mobile portlet experience. We > have a few portlets (such as the calendar portlet) that currently offer a > different user interface to mobile users. Right now this functionality is > mostly implemented by the portlet itself re-inspecting the user agent. We > did this largely to make sure that Jasig portlets continue to be compatible > with other portals, but also because it's not quite clear what the best way > to tell portlets that they should provide a mobile experience would be. I'd > argue that we don't really want to pass in the theme or profile name, since > those could vary between portals (and both Android and iPhone devices get > different profiles, but probably actually want the same portlet markup), but > we don't currently really have a way to mark profiles/themes as "mobile" or > "desktop". > > Community input about the desired way to handle profile selection and portlet > markup selection in the next release would be quite welcome. Steve, do you > have any input about how the WURFL library might fit into the above? I'm not > familiar enough to understand quite how it would prevent us from wanting to > maintain mappings between browsers and profiles. > > A final note about the portlet dragging issue: I think it would be super > cool to someday have a mobile theme that allows layout editing and > customization via mobile idioms (like the little red dash things that you can > click to drag something on the iPhone). I don't think this would be > impossible technically, but it would require us to actually support more than > one layout per user. Maybe we can think at some point about how to at least > improve the customization experience on the iPad. > > - Jen > > > On Nov 8, 2010, at 2:24 AM, Steve Swinsburg wrote: > >> There is a current JIRA ticket to address this via WURFL which is both a >> capabilities list and an API. >> https://issues.jasig.org/browse/UP-2778 >> >> In Sakai we implemented a 'switch to classic' link when taken to the mobile >> version. We can use similar code for uPortal. >> >> cheers, >> Steve >> >> >> >> On 05/11/2010, at 4:03 AM, Bruce Tong wrote: >> >>> On a related note, I noticed that if you go to ESPN's web site with an >>> iPad, it asks you if you want the regular site or their mobile site. >>> >>> I've noticed an iPad poses some problems with the regular non-mobile >>> interface, such as you cannot drag portlets around and tab menu's act >>> funny. The mobile interface might work better on an iPad, but the iPad >>> certainly has the display room for the regular site. The ability to >>> switch between the two interfaces might be rather handy. >>> >>> On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 10:46 AM, Tuyhang Ly <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> At Rutgers, we would like to have a feature in uP3.2.x that allows a user >>>> with a mobile device an option to switch between the mobile theme and the >>>> default theme instead of forcing them to use the mobile theme as in the >>>> current implementation. I would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions >>>> on >>>> how to best implement this feature. >>>> >>>> Thanks, >>>> Tuy. >>>> >>>> -- >>>> You are currently subscribed to [email protected] as: >>>> [email protected] >>>> To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives, see >>>> http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/uportal-dev >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Bruce Tong >>> Software Engineer >>> Office of Information Technology >>> Ohio University >>> >>> -- >>> You are currently subscribed to [email protected] as: >>> [email protected] >>> To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives, see >>> http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/uportal-dev >>> >> >> >> -- >> You are currently subscribed to [email protected] as: >> [email protected] >> To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives, see >> http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/uportal-dev >> > > > -- > You are currently subscribed to [email protected] as: > [email protected] > To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives, see > http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/uportal-dev > -- You are currently subscribed to [email protected] as: [email protected] To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives, see http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/uportal-dev
