[sakai2-tcc] Another Agenda Item - Re: TCC - CLE Community Coordinator, Thurs. Aug 23, 4 pm EDT, 8 pm GMT

[Matthew Jones]

I believe there are a lot of problems with getting good mobile development
going in Sakai. There was an phonegap app that seemed to have been created
from the Google Summer of Code last year with Steve as mentor (
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/CLEMBL/Home ) but there's not a
whole lot of information or followup since last summer about it. Here are
the problems I can see.

1) In order to use any app, you'd essentially have to be on the newest
version of Sakai. Much less /direct feeds exist for tools in 2.7 and 2.8,
and probably many more would need to be developed for 2.10, so anyone
really not in 2.10 would get a less useful mobile app. Porting these back
to old versions has seemed to be pretty time consuming (I tried with the
Assignment feeds that are in 2.9 and gave up). All of the feeds are in the
tools for those feeds and they aren't very backward compatible.

Sakai 2.10 is at *least* a year away, and likely 2 years until most places
are running it.

2) After something like this is developed, who is responsible for
maintaining it? Will it be like this GSoC, that's worked on for a few
months and everyone forgets about? Mobile development (even with phone gap)
is different from web development.

3) Tablets and phones are getting seriously better every year, and most
people don't keep a phone longer than 2 years. The Chrome browser available
on newer Android Tablets and iOS 4.3+ is essentially nearly as capable as
the one on a desktop. There's really no reason to use mobile view anymore
on these devices. (And nightly doesn't even detect it as a mobile browser)
 In 2 years will a special tablet app really even matter? Can't we just
keep improving neoportal and testing on tablet devices? Jakob Nielson
agrees that the strategy shift is coming soon [1] from apps to sites again
(if it's not already here) and I agree. At least it will happen before 2.10
is widely in use. ;)

4) LTI Integration - I believe that a big part of the future of Sakai and
LMS will be integration with more external LTI apps. There are well over 50
sites now LTI enabled and more to come. These don't translate to a native
mobile experience but work great as a standard website. This will lower the
value of any native app.

I'd basically like to see the positives for creating a standalone app over
doing testing and usability studies on the current sites on recent
tablets/smart phones. Of course anyone is free to work on what they want
but I wouldn't consider it a valuable use of time anymore, not as much as
even a few years ago.

[1]  http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-sites-apps.html

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 1:37 PM, Neal Caidin <nealcaidin at sakaifoundation.org
> wrote:

> * University of Florida wants to spearhead an effort on Mobile development
> for CLE. Seems like at least worth mentioning. Desired timeline is to have
> updates made to CLE by December.
>
> - Neal
>
>
> On Aug 21, 2012, at 4:08 PM, Neal Caidin <nealcaidin at sakaifoundation.org>
> wrote:
>
>
> Calliflower reservationless meeting :
>
> Default Dial-in Number:+1-734-418-9028
>
> Your Conference Code: 8373263
>
> Join Online:
> https://apps.calliflower.com/myconference/8373263
>
> Find a Dial in number in your city:
> https://apps.calliflower.com/account/call_in_numbers?organizer=328940
>
>
> Proposed Agenda
> ---------------------------------
> * I'll go through the checklist of items for the on boarding and give an
> update where I'm at
> * Can discuss progress on Jira and QA
> * Other?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Neal Caidin
>
> Sakai CLE Community Coordinator
> nealcaidin at sakaifoundation.org
> Skype: nealkdin
> AIM: ncaidin at aol.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
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