11 April 2013, 1:14

Hello

I'm using Mahara 1.6 at my institution and have two questions about sorting:

First: I did some testing along the cookbook and have now quite some pages and collections. I understand it's sorted from A-Z but this is not very handy because so f.e. the sub-pages from my collections are spread over two pages and I'd like to arrange them in a better way. For now I did add numbers at the beginning of the title (1.0, 1.1, 1.2 ...) but maybe there's a better solution?

Second: I did tag my collections and pages I use for examples with 'Muster' (sample) and set them free for everybody who's logged in. When I now do the search with the search-parameter 'Muster', then it's a big mess with the pages. I don't understand the logic. It's not from A-Z. I did a small test on this platform and found out that first the collection is showed and then the pages like they are fit-in in the collection. But at my institution there's no logic at all. As for the exacly identic collection there's first the first sub-view, then the third, then the second and at least the collection. Can please somebody explain me what logic is used?

Thanks a lot!

Greetings

Kathrin

11 April 2013, 10:47

Hi all,

I also have a lot of pages now, and finding them by name in a multi-page list view is quite time consuming. I wonder if we could think about bringing other approaches to Mahara for displaying portfolios pages to their owners. In addition our audiences could benefit from more graphical and easily navigable views of our shared pages and collections.

I am drawing inspiration from Googles Blogger, here is my blog as an example of what it can do: http://shanenuessler.blogspot.com.au/?view=flipcard

In this case it's easy to think of each card as a portfolio, and each card could link to the portfolio as usual in Mahara, rather than a popup. It's a very graphical and interesting way to see your portfolios, and given portfolios can be visually rich just the image of one would serve as a unique identifier. Being able to rank and sort by useful metrics such as A-Z, most viewed, most edited, etc would also be useful and make bringing 'the one you want' to the top a simple task. (along these lines the community would have input into what criteria they want to use to sort). 

As with the Google Blogger approach, perhaps it would be useful to provide a range of display options, allowing the portfolio account holder to stipulate the default viewing method across Mahara for their own viewing preferences and also what they think is a good default for their portfolios and their audiences.

11 April 2013, 11:00

That flipcard view is pretty cool.

I definitely feel like the Mahara UI could use some improvements in helping users find their way around, and find content. So any concrete suggestions towards that end are greatly appreciated. They may have better visibility if you post them as "wishlist" bugs on the bug tracker: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+filebug

Searching in particular is pretty broken at the moment, but we're currently working on a project to improve it. ( https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Developer_Area/Specifications_in_Development/Search_2.0 ). On the other hand, the improvement we're working is a plugin to support "elasticsearch", an open-source search engine server written in Java. That won't necessarily help out people with smaller sites, who don't want to run an elasticsearch instance... we'll need to find some time and funding to port over the UI fixes to work with the existing PHP-based search.

Cheers,
Aaron

11 April 2013, 23:21

Hello Shane,

I had a look at your blogspot blog to play with the interface. I must say that all these little images on the screen are confusing me and it was difficult to find and search information that way.

On the other hand, I found the way your blog let sort information by date, subject, etc. very interesting and useful.

Regards,

-dajan

12 April 2013, 0:35

Have to disagree with Dajan :O(  but I love the layout and the different ways you can group the tasks.

I have moved some of my posts on wordpress across to blogger to test it out.

It does need careful planning in terms of tags, images, titles etc if it is to be effective. The "flipped" feature is a little unpredictable though.

As a visual piece and one that could be used to encourage staff to look further i think it has lots of mileage.

12 April 2013, 1:35

Hi,

Please, disagree with me and don't be sorry.

"De gustibus and coloribus non est disputandum."

And I agree with you that the way you can sort the information is great on blogster.

-dajan

;-)