How do you feel about deprecating "File" resource in favour of "Page" and "Label"?

How do you feel about deprecating "File" resource in favour of "Page" and "Label"?

by Marina Glancy -
Number of replies: 11
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This is inspired by issue MDL-47495 where reporter asks to apply filters to the way the "File" resource is displayed. In his case I suggested to use "Page" but it also made me think:

What can "File" resource do that "Page" or "Label" can not?

Is it there just because it is easier for teachers to upload just one file instead of thinking how to embed it in the text? Does anybody actually use the feature of uploading html file and images?

I would like to suggest to disable the "File" resource by default (this will apply to new installations only) but wanted to ask community if I might be missing something

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In reply to Marina Glancy

Re: How do you feel about deprecating "File" resource in favour of "Page" and "Label"?

by Derek Chirnside -

Marina:

In your scenario, how would you deploy a PDF file in a Moodle section?

At present it is drag and drop, done.

-Derek


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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: How do you feel about deprecating "File" resource in favour of "Page" and "Label"?

by Marina Glancy -
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We obviously will need to enhance drag&drop upload handlers in folder, page and label resources so they can all accept different file types.
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In reply to Marina Glancy

Re: How do you feel about deprecating "File" resource in favour of "Page" and "Label"?

by Derek Chirnside -

Marina, This seems to be like adding extra clicks to do simple and com,on task, ie upload a file.

If you drag and drop an image, you then have the choice of it being displayed in a label (and therefore visible as an imge) etc.

In your new scenario, I am not supportive of it if it adds in extra clicks.  ie add label, then add file.

I am of course very happy if there as this option as well:

  1. Add label
  2. Drag and drop to add images, files etc.
  3. Add text, headings etc
  4. save

This will make setting up nice pages very quick, you can add titles, scaffolding etc much quicker than anything now.

But please, don 't take away the drag and drop for files onto a section.  I know you need to be organised (since you can only add the files in at the bottom)  (Or have I misunderstood)

-Derek

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In reply to Marina Glancy

Re: How do you feel about deprecating "File" resource in favour of "Page" and "Label"?

by Tim Hunt -
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I think it should stay just from a usability point of view.

Teachers want to add files to their moodle website. Moodle's internal model should match that part of teacher's mental model.

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In reply to Marina Glancy

Re: How do you feel about deprecating "File" resource in favour of "Page" and "Label"?

by Douglas Broad -

I agree with the others.  The page resource is a poor sister to the file resource.  You could practically create a whole website on a file resource.  The page resource ties one to the built-in editor, is limited to a single page, and has no opening options.

I use the file resource for 1)downloadable files, 2)complex lessons and exercises that require javascript, css, and html files, and 3)Camtasia videos that have multiple components, just to mention a few.

File resources can also be used to automatically launch desktop applications.

The label is even worse than the file resource, since all the content must be on the main page.

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In reply to Marina Glancy

Re: How do you feel about deprecating "File" resource in favour of "Page" and "Label"?

by Dave Balch -
Hi,

My group currently uses File to upload course materials as mini HTML sites. This appears to be a model that Moodle doesn't really support any more (and there are usability problems that make that a sensible position). Between the File API and various embedding changes, it has become quite awkward to use this approach, so I am changing our tools to output Book activities, rather than HTML.

Even though File has become less useful for my original use, it is still useful to be able to upload groups of interdependent files - removing it would be a very surprising omission (especially for new users).

Perhaps File could be dropped if Book were enhanced with HTML upload, and allowing JS and extra CSS, but that'd be a lot of effort to replace something that's already working.

NB: It might be good if there was a way to import IMS-CP (and maybe SCORM?), converting them into actual Moodle Pages/Books and activities, as the current IMS-CP resource doesn't really provide smooth integration with Moodle's other activities.

Dave.
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In reply to Dave Balch

Re: How do you feel about deprecating "File" resource in favour of "Page" and "Label"?

by Marina Glancy -
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Thanks a lot Douglas and Dave, this information is really useful

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In reply to Marina Glancy

Re: How do you feel about deprecating "File" resource in favour of "Page" and "Label"?

by Mark Andrews -

Hi Marina,

Great to have these questions being asked - always good to be thinking about what's needed and what's not. However in this case I would not see the 'page' or 'label' as viable alternatives. 

The page tool we hardly ever use but labels we do - You could add files into them but how would this effect the logging and activity completion stuff?

What would be great is if the 'resource' tool could be beefed up to offer in browser rendering/previewing of common files much like you get when you click on an attachment in gmail or outlook.com would something like pdf.js be a possible starter for this?

All the best

Mark

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In reply to Mark Andrews

Re: How do you feel about deprecating "File" resource in favour of "Page" and "Label"?

by Marina Glancy -
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I'm quite convinced now that we should not deprecate "File", so no functionality will be taken away. smile

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In reply to Marina Glancy

Re: How do you feel about deprecating "File" resource in favour of "Page" and "Label"?

by Derek Chirnside -

smile

Thanks.

We need to have moire conversations like this.

-Derek

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In reply to Dave Balch

Re: How do you feel about deprecating "File" resource in favour of "Page" and "Label"?

by Derek Chirnside -

Dave, I have just posted over in the formats forum, I'm looking at a way to have some simple navigation within a section.

Does your uploading HTML have any of these navigation aspects?

-Derek

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