University Virtual Learning Environment 3.0: November 2005

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

UVLEWiki

Visit UVLEWiki at http://ardz.hypermediasoft.com/uvlewiki. Developers, sign up now!

What is the purpose of UvleWiki?

The UvleWiki serves as a knowledge and technology repository of the developers of the UVLE 3.0. The implementation of UVLE 3.0 will necessitate many different technologies, and thus a single UVLE developer might be overwhelmed by the development learning curve the project imposes. By centralizing tutorials, how-to's, installation instructions, and external web references, among others into one convenient page, at the same time decentralizing content source and control by giving each developer the power to contribute and modify such tutorials, UvleWiki aims to lower the learning curve, and to encourage sharing of knowledge among developers to speed up the development.

WikiWiki!!!

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Dear Blog

JSF back button problem solved

I was using an old version of JSF. Download the latest version to solve this problem(see jsf homepage)

MyFaces

Apache MyFaces (see myfaces.apache.org) is a very useful tool. It has some new and extended components, which can make the development of UVLe easier.

example components:

dataScroller - useful for dataTable paging (for forums)
calendar - easy implementation for UVLe calendar
file upload - nuf said
tree - for files
RSS ticker - im not yet familiar with RSS, but this sounds useful

MyFaces + JSF Standard

However, i suggest that we combine some standard JSF components with MyFaces components instead of using MyFaces only. For example, the standard JSF dataTable can handle back button problems while MyFaces cannot.

UVLe Forums Progress

forums addition
1. add / delete posts
2. has paging support (yipee)

im currently refining and testing these features before proceeding to the next ones
which are
- role sensitivity (instructor / student)
- hardcore validation (hmm)
- aesthetics
- RSS

Monday, November 21, 2005

JSF Back Button Problem

I think every JSF application developer is familiar with this problem.

JSF saves the state of every page loaded in a browser. Therefore, everytime a user clicks the browser back button, JSF loads the saved state of the target page.

So, what's the problem?

1.) Data tables / Navigation using actions. For example. We have a datatable that lists certain information from a database (like a list of the class members). When a class member is clicked, JSF loads new page (let's say, displayInfo.jsf) and displays the info about that member. When the user clicks the browser back button, JSF loads the saved state of the previous page. And when the user clicks another class member, he / she may not receive the correct info, depending on the position of the class member on the datatable.
2.) Security. Logging in / out

Solutions (but not sound):
- a user must click refresh every after he / she clicks the back button
(no way)

- equip our pages with our own back button
(users are accustomed to the browser's back button)

- implement certain navigation smart handlers that involves a bunch of weird and long java codes
(for us developers, we don't want to have a bulky app; for users, they don't want slow loading pages. JSP is slow in the first place)

- use Sun Java Studio Creator
(vicky sez, no way!)

After more than two weeks of researching since the first time I encountered this problem, i found the ultimate solution - Use JSF version 1.2

Problem: JSF v1.2 is not yet available. Only the proposed final draft specifications.