Roadmap Discussions

From Dokeos

(Redirected from Roadmap)
Jump to: navigation, search

This is an overview page that links to our various roadmaps. Usually, each Dokeos version has its own roadmap.

You probably want to go to

Contents

Bugfixing process

This means testing of code, reporting bugs, then fixing them. Since the users of Dokeos report many bugs, this process is largely user-driven: they report bugs, and the developers try to locate and fix them. Our bugfixing process is obviously still in need for improvement, since there are quite a lot of bugs in both old and new tools.

We currently use a forum for reporting on bugs and bugfixes, but to optimise bugfixing we will switch to a more professional bug tracker soon, very probably Bugzilla.

Refactoring

See here for a list of Refactoring tips. There is an agressive refactoring effort busy to clean up the Dokeos code. This should result in scripts that are more consistently organised, more code organised in functions, more API libraries, and less duplication of code. This will lead in the long term to code that contains less bugs and is easier to maintain.

We're also looking into redesigning the database, see Database refactoring. There is a list of all the changes that have to made to the Dokeos databases: Database changes Dokeos 1.6

Consistency improvements

The goal is to make the behavior of Dokeos predictable, and make tools consistent so they all works in the same way.

  • Group comments

the info about a group (group comment) is shown below the group entry in the group list, this is consistent with the comments below items in the documents, links, learning path,... tools.
status: completed, not in CVS yet
author: Patrick Cool, ICT&O UGent
forum : view forum thread

  • Sorting

more lists are now sorted alphabetically, e.g. in auth/courses and index.php the course lmiosts are now sorted alphabetically on course title, not course code as before.

  • hiding/activating tools

hiding or activating a tool should result in the display of the yellow box stating: "have have activated, hidden the tool: toolname"

  • deleting

When you want to delete something a 'are you sure you want to delete this (yes/no)' message should appear

  • Status

When adding, editing, removing, hiding, ... a course resource you should see a yellow result box stating that which action has been done.

  • tool introduction

The course manager has the possibility to write some comment on the course homepage. We will extend this to some other tools (the introduction-feature is rather well written so in fact nothing has to be changed). The only thing that has to be done is put the following two lines of code in the tool page where you want the introduction field to appear 

$moduleId = 3; 
include($includePath."/introductionSection.inc.php");

We will give each tool a unique number (probably through constants in the main_api.lib.php).

  • creation process

This problem is related to the following development: http://www.dokeos.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10477#10477 but it also applies to different areas in Dokeos. This development is an attempt at extending the group creation process so that one can determine all the group options upon the creation of the group. With this development you can determine the tutor and the number of seats upon the creation of the groups (which is not a bad thing!!), but it feels a bit awkward that you added (moved) some -but not all- options to the creation process (options that otherwise had to be changed through a edit process) but not all (for instance comment, the users that are member of the group in the group). The general aim of this development is to allow to determine all the properties upon creation (which is not a bad thing I think, but it also has some drawbacks). Now we have two processes: creation and finetuning. Your tools tries to reduce this to one action.

Advantages
+ Editing the properties will have the same options as creating it => no more hidden options
+ one process
+ faster if you want to tweak many group properties
+ consistency is improved: creation process can look identical to the edit process

Drawback
- creation becomes more complex
- creation won't be as fast as more forms have to be filled (especially where some forms are required)
- big page will be be needed in some cases

Other examples (where the same problem occurs):
- do we allow users to note comments upon the uploading of the file.
- course creation: we show some option that are needed for the course creation process but not all the course properties are mentioned here.

Improvements

  • Improved quota system
  • Standards support
  • CSS support
  • Documents
  • Forum
  • Database refactoring
  • Installation
  • Alternating table row colors
    The idea is that tables (documents, users, ... )have an alternating table color (white - very light grey - white - ...) so that you can easily click the correct edit/delete button. There is however already a table row hover functionality implemented (though I do not know if this is already in the CVS) but unfortunately IE users will not see this functionality and we cannot leave those poor users in the cold ;-). The ideal solution might be to combine the alternating table colors AND the hover functionality
  • Links
  • Dropbox feedback (not yet in CVS)
  • Math (LaTeX)
  • Dokeos Language Translation Tool
  • documents upload: no upload should be done when no document has been selected. Now you get a warning error if you click the upload button without selecting a document. The error should be: please select a document by using the browse button.
  • Add user: when adding a user to a course there should be a check (on the email address!?) to prevent a user having two different accounts on the same server. Before the user is created the email address should be checked. If the email address already exists a notic should be displayed: "There is already an account with this email adres: email@address.net - FirstName - LastName. Do you want to use this user instead? yes/no"
  • update htmlarea
  • Groups refactoring
  • Resource linker
    • allow the user to add student publications. By doing so the students can upload documents to the student publications and then add these uploaded documents in the forum for instance. This is a basic student upload mechanism (waiting for a portfolio system where students can store their own documents). (working, not in CVS yet)
    • when someone wants to add a resource to a group forum, then it should be possible to link to a group documents. This should only be possible when the user wants to do this in a group forum because this is the only place where we can be sure that everyone who is accessing it is also allowed to view the document (since group documents are private and accessible for group members only
  • comments: limiting allowed tags in descriptions to a reasonable set (cfr. BBcode)
  • e-portfolio

Completely new features

Not even started features

These are not implemented at the moment, but they might be in the future

Organisation

In order to improve Dokeos, we are experimenting with new organisational methods. This is necessary because we need improvement in many areas.

  • We've started to use a Wiki, to hold all the texts we write and allow us to work together
  • Bugtracker for bug reporting and follow-up, we will use Bugzilla.
  • Community building
Retrieved from "http://www.dokeos.com/wiki/index.php/Roadmap_Discussions"
Personal tools