09 August 2011, 17:18

Hello,

I'm creating a document for my users that briefly describes each of the 20 content blocks that can be added when building Pages. I'm stuck on the "Some HTML" block, though. What is it for??

I've seen in other posts, that you cannot upload a webpage or collection of files that reference an index.html file, because Mahara won't let you select the index file in that way... which is the only idea that I had for the block.

Are you using it? If so, what for?

Thank you!

10 August 2011, 6:56

I was just wondering again about that yesterday, as I was leading a workshop.I did have one follow-on idea, somewhat geeky:

Let's say you've developed a nicely formatted table and want to re-use it for yourself or provide it for your students as a template block.

You can save that html by copying the code under the HTML button for the block and saving as something like "table.html", using Notepad.That's the geeky part.

Now you can upload that file to be re-used as a "Some HTML" block. You could upload it in the Group or Site folder for wider access. This is an alternative to providing an entire page as a copyable template, and may make more sense in some situations.

The disadvantage of this approach (vs reusable blocks) is that it's static, so if you alter anything (e.g. changing a column heading), changes aren't made globally, ie. students who've already used it will still have the old one; though you can replace the obsolete text block with the new one for ongoing improvement.

This is a nerdy workaround for something I'd like: reusable user-defined text (or other) blocks. I often find myself going back and forth, scraping text blocks and pasting them somewhere else.

10 August 2011, 8:02

Yeah - I'm liking the idea of that Don!

I too shall have a think of other ways it can be used and will post them here when I've done.

The mahara 1.4 cookbook also has uses for the HTML block 

10 August 2011, 8:10

Sorry, just checked and I'm wrong...that text is not editable as text, configuring the block just brings up the file dialogue again...oh well.

10 August 2011, 9:57

I had found another use for using the "some html" block.

I was struggling with embeddable objects inserting into the text blocks- with some embed code like prezi it just wouldn't work. So I created a textfile with the code, saved it as html file , uploaded t to the file area and the used it in the html block ... sounds complicated but isn't and has become mostly obsolete with the later version of Mahara as there you can embed directly in the text block. Here is an example:

Note: if you want to have your embedded object to have a specific size you will eed to do this in the textfile of the embed code before you create an HTML file no changes possible later- result: see my example- rather odd!

Just let me know if this works for you too.

Sigi

10 August 2011, 17:47

Reusable text blocks are coming soon!

11 August 2011, 6:34

Great, thanks for the update, Richard! So good to see feedback turning into reasoned action.

For Groups too?

12 August 2011, 20:00

Hello Sean,

I used the HTML block for displaying a bibliography which I had exported from Zotero (or it could be any other software). that allowed me to keep the proper HTML code. In contrast to exporting it as RTF or Word document, the formatting would not come out all weird in the text box.

You can use it to upload individual HTML pages, but not in order to upload a complete site. That was the problem that was noted in another discussion.

Cheers

Kristina