Popups in folders and decent file manager

Popups in folders and decent file manager

by Arne Pursell -
Number of replies: 4

I have a pretty long thread here https://moodle.org/mod/forum/user.php?id=2074405 where I detail my struggles with organizing course structure while enabling say pdf popups.  

The gist of it is, why on earth?!!! can we not enable popups for e.g. pdfs, docx, images etc in anything other than main topics pages? 

The second whinge if you like, it really would be ideal if we could change file behavior from withing a file manager. Migrating from a 10+ year old platform, which although has a really diabolically ugly GUI, actually does all of the aforementioned pretty competently. 

Have had a look at plugins for enabling web-viewing of pdfs and word within the browser, as far as I can tell there are only a couple, which are reliant on third-party cloud hosting of files. Word is less important (and guess licensing issues apply), but pdf's are nearly universally viewable on most browsers regardless of platform (win, android, mapple, etc)...why is this such a problem for developers to address?

At present, it looks as though you need a separate 'topic' for each subject where you want to enable pdf popups or on a separate browser tab. 

Thus instead of a course structure where you have say..main subject/theme/topic/subtopic (with pdfs, quizzes, external links, media etc), you end up with 100+ Topic/(activities, quizzes, documents, media etc).  

This structure may well work for 'week to week' course structures, but is far from ideal when you want the whole course accessible and navigable for students.

Any ideas? Is it just me or do others find this laughable? How hard can it be to implement pop-up functionality of items within a folder/subfolder?

Otherwise am really impressed with the platform...have used Blackboard and It's Learning way back when in undergrad and grad school (10+ years ago). Just not looking forward to having to restructuring the course into one 50+ topic long mess just to enable pop-ups. 

Doing this for a friend/client who doesn't want to deal with pages/atto editor...and with a lot of mathematical symbols, copying from word, can understand why. Copy/paste is not an option for maritime navigation course with associated charts etc! Would take months...

Any plugins or suggestions very welcome! Just need students to be able to view pdfs in pop-ups, and have quizzes linked or in same secton.  Of course caveat being...around 5-7 'chapters', with 3-10 subtopics. 50+ topics with no organization seems pretty messy.

Thanks appreciate feedback.

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In reply to Arne Pursell

Re: Popups in folders and decent file manager

by Arne Pursell -

Addendun: for me at least, (and would think for many others), this limitation is almost a deal-breaker. Guess will have to make some calls to blackboard, it's learning etc to see what they want in licensing fees (which my clients really can't afford most likely!)...but as they say, money talks and bs walks!

A shame as it seems this is pretty much one of the few limitations which prevents moodle from eclipsing aforementioned altogether.  The rest of the platform is really solid, and well thought out. But this (idiotic!) oversight is really holding it back...

Essentially it limits moodle to short courses organized week-by-week, or where there just isn't that much content to be distributed. Am well aware it's free! and kudos to developers! Not all of us have access to institutional MS and Adobe licences tho.....!! Would be nice if the developer community could fix this...

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In reply to Arne Pursell

Re: Popups in folders and decent file manager

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Arne, I think you need to be more concise and specific as I have read through several of your posts and I understand very little of what you are asking. I understood the item "decent file manager" in your title, but then you didn't expand on that but I have no idea at all what popups in folders means. 


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In reply to Arne Pursell

Re: Popups in folders and decent file manager

by Derek Chirnside -

Welcome to Moodle.org Arne.

Your posts come across as a little breathless, I can tell you are frustrated, comments about Blackboard and calling people 'idiotic' (and appearing snarky) will not really win people's attention in the right way here on this forum where we are almost all volunteers.

Be that as it may, I think I get your point, poorly expressed maybe, but I hear you saying Moodle is flat (sections and no subsections), you just want to upload PDF's (none of the interaction Moodle is capable of)

  1. Have you looked at The Moodle Book resource?
  2. Have you seen Frankie's work?  https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=322118 and http://moodurian.blogspot.co.nz/2015/11/view-pdf-files-in-pop-up-window-in.html
  3. Have you looked at the tabbed "One topic" format?
  4. Do you know what a course format is?
  5. Have you checked out navigation options like course menu plugin?  Or contents plugin?
  6. Do you know what a plugin is?

I also am interested in within section navigation: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=316278

These are a few questions more or less at random, but you will get the point.  You do not indicate if you are skilled as a designer, coder, teacher or bits of each.

Regards, and good luck.

-Derek


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In reply to Arne Pursell

Re: Popups in folders and decent file manager

by Richard Oelmann -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

If you can put your requirements into a reasonable structure, then I would suggest adding a Tracker improvement item.

Other than that, I would suggest taking a look at some of the many repository plugins for your folder/subfolder/file structure as the folder resource is certainly not the only way to manage your large scale file resources for your course and may not be the most appropriate either.

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