19 January 2017, 12:10

Dear forum members,

Inside another post,  the "Stop Mp3s from being Downloaded" one, I saw a short exchange about the 'Details' link.

I received some feedbacks of users that don't like to see it under some images. (Using Mahara 16.10.2Testing).

I could suggest to those users to use the trick Kevin suggested about the CSS instruction, and make use of personals skins to hide that link on the pages where it is disturbing for us.

.detail-link {
    display: none;
}

On another hand, I wonder if it could thinkable to had an option in the Edit file forms so that users could control the behavior at the source instead? Actually, we can find in that form the Comments option which when is set to Off hide the Add comment link. A similar option on the appearance of the 'Details' link could be appreciated by users; unless that you think that a such option could distort the fundamentals of the portfolio? 

Best regards,

Stéphanie

19 January 2017, 16:24

Hello Stéphanie,

Thanks for taking up this discussion again. It's a tricky one as images can behave differently from other artefact types. Testing on Mahara 17.04 just now I noticed the following:

• Clicking on an image in the "Image" block takes you to the "Details" page.
• The same is true for files listed in the "Files to download" block.
• "Image gallery" does not have a "Details" link. I guess we treat it differently to a "Folder". Clicking on an image in the image gallery does not take you to the details page for the image, but opens it in a lightbox at maximum (Thumbnail view).
• Clicking on files in a "Folder" block takes you to the details page. And on there you can navigate to the folder itself via the small breadcrumbs above the file name.
• Embedded PDFs have the "Details" link so you can get to the page to download the file. You can also download the file directly from within the PDF viewer though.
• "Embedded media" have the download link and the "Details" link. This could be combined in one, e.g. that leads to the "Details" page because you can't use the functionality to click on the video as that is used for stopping and starting.

So the majority of the artefacts can be reached by clicking on them already though they also display the "Details" link. That does seem to make it superfluous. We would need to fix the image gallery and find a solution for embedded PDFs and media.

If an artefact has comments, they can be viewed directly on the page and when commenting is enabled, you can reach that easily as well and don't need the "Details" link for it.

Rather than adding another setting, I think it would be better if we found a solution for the couple of options that are the odd ones out. :-)

Cheers

Kristina

30 January 2017, 14:22

Hello,

We've had a closer look at the artefacts and whether they require the "Details" (or some sort of "Details" link) or not. Previously, I had only looked at the files, but not the other artefact types that we have.

The "Details" link takes you to the details page for an artefact where metadata is displayed and comments can be made if allowed. The metadata includes download links where appropriate and also license information when "License metadata" is turned on for the site.

So while in many cases it wouldn't be necessary to show the "Details" link or we can get there through a different way, we can't get rid of it for some artefacts and also can't not show it entirely through the suggested method as users wouldn't have the opportunity to find out about the license that is attached to an artefact if licenses are available to be chosen. This makes things a bit more complicated.

Some artefact types do not display anything different on the "Details" page as they do on the page itself besides the license and comments if turned on. So unless license information is turned on, they wouldn't require the "Details" page and could suppress the link to it. These artefacts are:

• journal
• journal entry
• resume
• note
• plans
• image
• PDF (can be downloaded within the embedded file)

If "License metadata" is not allowed on a site, the "Details" link can be hidden for these artefacts.

If "License metadata" is allowed, the idea is to have an additional setting in the block configuration where users can decide to show the license name and license icon (similarly to "Show description" for images) above the "Add comment" line, but the default is "No". That way, they can decide whether they want to take people to the separate page or not. The license would be displayed directly on the page and linked through to the Details page where more information can be found. The display would be in a font size slightly smaller than regular text as it would be secondary information.

That helps for images as the description doesn't have to be used to manually add the license, but students can choose the license more easily through the license drop-down and fields.

We don't need to make any change to the "Recent journal entries" and "Tagged journal entries" blocks as they don't have a "Details" link and when a journal entry is clicked you are transferred there immediately. They shouldn't be changed for license information because every journal entry could have a different license attached to it. So looking at the individual journal entry would be necessary to show the license.

"Files to download" does not need a change either as the license is on the actual files and when they are clicked, you are taken to the details page for the respective file.

We can remove the "Details" link from "Folder" because clicking on an individual file or a subfolder takes you directly to the details page of that file or the folder for further navigation.

"HTML" and "Embedded media" would need to keep the "Details" link as it's the only way to get to the metadata for these artefacts since there is no possibility to click on the actual artefact and they contain the "Download" link for that artefact. "Embedded media" could retain its "Download" link on the page, but it would be another link that may not be used so much.

"Image gallery" does not allow you to go to any metadata information right now. We propose to:

• Link to the "Details" page for image that are displayed in slideshow mode so that comments can be left on the image.
• Provide the link to the "Details" page in the lightroom display at the bottom when thumbnails are used so that someone could get to that page and also comment on the image.

I think we can remove the license fields on plan tasks as plans can already have a license and tasks are part of a plan.

What do you think?

Cheers

Kristina

01 February 2017, 4:45

Hi Kristina,

I think that anything that simplifies page layout and reduces clutter can only be good. I've requested the details link is hidden via the css hack on my institution site - still waiting on IT making a final decision on the request, but if it could be stripped out from source anywhere it isn't actually needed that would be a better option.

Regards, Gordon.

28 February 2017, 11:26

Hi Kristina,

As Gordon as already said, I feel that anything that can light the display without information lost is welcome.

In the meantime, I asked myself if the presence of the "Details" link could have been related to any ADA-compliant consideration, in which case its hiding could be consider as delicate.

Best regards,

Stéphanie