[sakai2-tcc] Mobile browser support for CLE

[Matthew Jones]

I think your answer about Mobile is good. The problem(?) with the mobile
device is that it has been such an incredibly fast moving target over the
last 2-3 years and Sakai architecturally wasn't written to handle
interfacing with anything external. New mobile hardware that is twice as
fast with twice the resolution has been coming out almost every year which
essentially would have made anything we wrote a few years prior (if we
didn't have the developers to write something then) obsolete now.

There was this article published in Alertbox around a year ago saying that
there would eventually be a strategy shift from Mobile apps back to Native
browsers, this feels like it's getting closer and closer (
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/mobile-sites-vs-apps-strategy-shift/).

The biggest problem(?) with mobile browsers really is the lack of flash
support and possibly difficulty with copy and paste. And in Sakai's case,
the unpredictability of the back button. ;)

(Question marks after problem because it's debatable if they're really a
problem or not).

I'd agree with the second student that the website should be completely
functional, you can save your username/password and even click a button to
make an app icon on both Android and iOS. Everything should work pretty
good except for the WYSIWYG editor which (I believe) is still diabled on
mobile, but in 2.9+ we made it so that tablets don't use the mobile display
so it works there (confirmed on a Nexus 7). Though with so many tiny
buttons it's quite hard to use without zooming around. Someone needs to
look at presenting a simplified toolbar for these devices. Maybe in 2.10
when we upgrade to CKEditor 4 (http://ckeditor.com/demo#toolbar)

As for QA, it certainly would be nice to know at least every major release
how it well Sakai works on the latest devices (iPad/iPhone) and probably
for Android on Nexus 7 (or Kindle Fire) and Galaxy S3/S4 (when it comes
out) If you find volunteers seems like a great deal.

I think the use for Keitai won't be about writing a full mobile app, but
being able to more easily plug additional functionality into an existing
mobile app, or have a simple "quick view" app and then a link to the full
site. Too late to rewrite every UI.

Looking from Summer 2009 (Around when Sakai 2.6 was released) to today. The
resolutions of phones today is almost as high as desktops.
iPhone
3GS 2009 480x320  600 MHz cpu
4   2010 960x640  800 MHz CPU (A4)
4S  2011 960x640  800 MHz Dual CPU (A5)
5   2012 1136x640 1.3 Ghz Dual CPU (A6)



On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:05 AM, Neal Caidin <nealcaidin at sakaifoundation.org
> wrote:

> A positive response from the student, who attends NWU in South Africa:
>
> "I have no dufficulties accessing any and all information on the above
> said website using my Galaxy tab and or my HTC which is both as you
> probably know android powered devices."
>
> FYI.
>
> On Mar 21, 2013, at 8:31 AM, Neal Caidin <nealcaidin at sakaifoundation.org>
> wrote:
>
> Hi TCC,
>
> We recently got in a question from a student about why doesn't Sakai have
> a mobile app? I answered the question like this:
>
> "Thank you for your feedback! Mobile is certainly an important platform.
>
> There is a mobile effort underway, which if you are interested you can
> read about it here -
> https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/MOBILE/Home
>
> Now what this mobile effort does, is creates the infrastructure within
> Sakai CLE to allow institutions to create their own mobile-friendly
> applications, it does not, in and of itself create any apps. The reason for
> this is that Sakai is open source, there is no paid development staff to
> respond to requests, it depends upon volunteer efforts, so the question is,
> if a mobile app is made, who will fix it when it breaks? To-date it seems
> most institutions want to incorporate software like Sakai CLE within the
> context of their own mobile efforts, and this mobile effort is being led by
> a consortium of institutions who believe that is the best model to meet
> their needs. I hope that makes sense.
>
> Have you tried using Sakai CLE on a mobile web browser? What is your
> experience with that, if you don't mind sharing?
> "
>
>
> Do you think my response was about on target?
>
> Also, it got me thinking that we do not have ANY QA effort targeted for
> support of mobile browsers. Should we (assuming we could find the
> resources)?
>
> Cheers,
>
>  Neal Caidin
>
> Sakai CLE Community Coordinator
> nealcaidin at sakaifoundation.org
> Skype: nealkdin
> AIM: ncaidin at aol.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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