[Using Sakai] Web page won't open in Sakai

Wed Jul 1 17:10:24 PDT 2009

Hi,

I'm having a problem opening a web page in Sakai. I used the method 
described on /Putting Sakai to Work/ 
<http://www.packtpub.com/article/putting-sakai-to-work> under "Customize 
the Home Page." However, when I click on the tab for the page, instead 
of  displaying it Firefox (both versions 3.0 and 3.5) pops open a dialog 
window asking whether to save the file or to open it in Firefox. If I 
open it in Firefox its starts a new tab but the file does not display 
properly, apparently since it left its support files on the Sakai 
server. Can anyone explain why this may be happening or suggest ways to 
correct Sakai's behavior?

Thanks.

    Marsh Feldman

      Additional Background

The page works fine when I load it on my local system, so the problem is 
the result of its interaction with Sakai.

The page sits in a subdirectory of the worksite's Resources. The 
subdirectory is called "Web" and itself contains five subdirectories: 
boilerplate (for standardized page content), code (for JavaScripts and 
other code), images (for graphics), styles (for css), and templates (for 
web page templates).

The page's Doctype is DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict, and its file type 
(extension) is xhtml.

In its <Head> section, the page loads five JavaScript libraries with 
paths in the form of 'src="code/FILENAME.js"' (uppercase denotes 
variable content):

    * Boutell.com's client-side include
      <http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/include.html.> JavaScript
      for including boilerplate on the web page.
    * The b9j JavaScript toolkit
      <http://appengine.bravo9.com/b9j/documentation/b9j.html> (for
      working with paths to make the page and its children portable)
    * jQuery <http://jquery.com/>(for the drop shadow plugin now and for
      customizing page behaviors later)
    * The jQuery drop shadow plugin
      <http://plugins.jquery.com/project/DropShadow> (for cosmetic purposes)
    * Simon Willison's JavaScript loading utilities
      <http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/onloads/> (to
      coordinate loading functions)

In addition, the page has some JavaScript embedded in the page. This 
script does a few things:

    * Create a new "global" object that will hold various global
      variables; it also initializes a few of these
    * Include one piece of boilerplate html (a standard page footer)
    * Add some code to the drop shadow plugin; the code rescales the
      drop shadows when the current window is resized; eventually, this
      code will be added to the plugin.
    * Applies the dropshadow method to add drop shadows to all images on
      the page with class="solidShadow"
    * Assigns two functions (init and resized) as methods to the window
      object (i.e., window.onload = init; and window.resize = resized;)

The last thing in the <Head> section is a <link> statement loading a css 
file. The link refers to 'src="styles/FILENAME.css" media="screen".' The 
css code uses a few unusual (but way cool) techniques. See:

    * Perfect fluid width layout
      <http://css-tricks.com/the-perfect-fluid-width-layout/>
    * 100% fluid full main column layout <http://layouts.ironmyers.com/>
    * Scalable figures with captions
      <http://rjohara.net/server/css-figures-captions/>

The <Body> section uses a liquid design 
<http://www.digital-web.com/articles/liquid_web_design/>. It uses lots 
of <div> and <span> elements with class and id selectors.

Other than this, the page is not unusual (unless Sakai has problems with 
JavaScript and/or CSS).

-- 
Dr. Marshall Feldman, PhD
Director of Research and Academic Affairs

Center for Urban Studies and Research
The University of Rhode Island
email: marsh @ uri .edu (remove spaces)

      Contact Information:

        Kingston:

202 Hart House
Charles T. Schmidt Labor Research Center
The University of Rhode Island
36 Upper College Road
Kingston, RI 02881-0815
tel. (401) 874-5953:
fax: (401) 874-5511

        Providence:

206E Shepard Building
URI Feinstein Providence Campus
80 Washington Street
Providence, RI 02903-1819
tel. (401) 277-5218
fax: (401) 277-5464
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