[Building Sakai] New Sakai 2.9 Portal Trial Run - Video / Demo Server

[csev]

On Mar 13, 2011, at 3:01 PM, Nate Angell wrote:

> While I'm not in love with the "My Workspace" term either, changing it
> would possibly impact everyone's documentation, as well as existing
> user practices. So I would suggest it's not a step to be taken
> lightly.
> 
> - Nate


Excellent point Nate.  Couple of thoughts

(a) The old UI and skin continue to work unchanged - switching between the old and new portals will be a property - so folks can just stay with an unchanged portal design - we are not editing the 2.7/2.8 portal velocity code - we are making an alternate portal with an easy way to switch between them.  The names of the old files and their locations will not even be changed so folks who have extensively patched the old portal are *not* forced to the new portal because of the 2.9 upgrade.   Also the new (neoskin) portal code is essentially structured the same as the old files - velocity files, CSS, and Javascript.   The extensions to the underlying Java code (SkinnableCharonPortal.java and friends) are tiny and the same Java code will support both the old and new portals.  We want to make it so schools can go to the new portal at 2.9, or later - perhaps 6 months after they go to 2.9, or even in some later release.   We do think new installs will want the new portal right away.

(b) Even in the new portal, something dramatic like hiding My Workspace would also likely be something we would provide a property to control so as not to jar existing user patterns.    Thanks.

We might have the defaults for these properties in such a way that it looks the "prettiest" - but with a few easy properties available to revert bits of the new approach or even revert completely back to the 2.7/2.8 portal.

Once this becomes more solid, we can make sure to visit these important issues of chunking UI changes.   And none of any of this should be considered solid until after we meet ant talk about it at the June meeting.  SO we can have a long time for review and reflection.

/Chuck