User:JimTittsler/Blog/2011

To subscribe to this blog with your news reader, subscribe to the parent blog page.

Open in a New Tab/Window
I've built a couple of templates (Template:NewWindowLinks and Template:NewWindow) that can be used to cause an external link to open in a new browser tab. Each of these special links will have a green external link icon and the hover text has (opens in a new window) appended to it. For example to make this external link to the I wrap the normal Mediawiki syntax for an external link   in the NewWindowLinks template:

--JimTittsler 05:21, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Page Status Indicator
Valerie Taylor suggested that we have a simpler alternative to the Status template, such as the Wikibooks simple completion box. I've implemented a simple Javascript-based StatusSquare template which provides similar functionality. You can display 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% completion by adding a template such as. A square completion icon ( 0%,  25%,   50%,  75%,  100%) is added to the first header on the page, with a title (hover) attribute indicating the percentage completion of the resource.

--JimTittsler 09:37, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Program Syntax Highlighting
WikiEducator now includes the GeSHi Syntax Highlighting extension. This can improve the display of code in programming resources.

-- JimTittsler 21:42, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Mindmaps
In response to user requests, we enabled uploads of  mindmap files. I've created a simple widget that can render a basic mindmap using only Javascript, such as in this quick example. You can drag nodes around the screen. It isn't intended as a mindmapping tool, but more as a placeholder for your files as an alternative to having to upload a static snapshot.

-- Jim Tittsler 09:25, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Identi.ca Widget
The Identi.ca widget has been expanded so that the 'tag' argument can refer to a @user in addition to a #tag. I've also added options that allow controlling the display of the picture of the poster and the poster's name/link on each message which may be useful if you are using it to display a personal feed.

-- JimTittsler 08:35, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Slide Presentations
I've adapted Google's html5slides template to display a single WikiEducator page as a slideshow presentation. Here is a simple example. By adding  to the URL, you can make the presentation start automatically ( example ). You can also append  to the URL to start at a slide other than the zeroth.

Authoring
Each slide must be wrapped in a  (or   to have an image fill the background). The entire group of slides must be wrapped in a. If a logo is desired on the bottom of each slide, it should be wrapped in a  outside the group of slides.

is used for a title slide,  is used for a slide with a large footer, and   used for a typical slide with a header. Bullet points can be incrementally displayed within a slide by wrapping them in a.

Displaying
-- JimTittsler 09:45, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

jQuery Extension
I've written a trivial jQuery Extension that adds jQuery to every page in WikiEducator (and WikiResearcher). This allows you to start using jQuery in your custom Javascript (i.e. the  or old   files depending on which skin you use).

-- JimTittsler 04:58, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

LicenseByCategory Extension
I have written a LicenseByCategory Extension which will change license information in the HTML header and the page footer (text and copyright icon) when it detects a category named after one of the non-default WikiEducator-approved licenses. To specify the license, just add a 'Category:' tag for your preferred license: By using the appropriate license in the HTML header and the  microformat in the footer, web spiders will be better able to classify your content.
 * (note that categories like CC-BY-2.5 and CC-BY-3.0 are also recognized)

Rather than using a generic public domain declaration, please consider using the CC0 Public Domain Declaration since it has a bit of a "standard" behind it that may be more widely understood by web indexers.

This extension does not solve all cases of multiple licenses appearing in a single wiki. In particular, the Book/Collection extension only looks for a single license when preparing a printed copy of a collection.

-- JimTittsler 02:21, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Squid Accelerator Installed
I have installed Squid as a caching reverse proxy in front of the WikiEducator/WikiResearcher web server. Its operation should be transparent to users and hopefully will improve performance during times of peak load. One side effect is that it will make the displayed page access counts of even more dubious value than before.

-- JimTittsler 02:06, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Monitor WikiEducator OER Use
http://live.oer.me/ allows you to get a quick feel for the worldwide reach of the resources that WikiEducator is making available. This is an experimental (i.e. toy) service that I am providing for a short term.

-- JimTittsler 00:52, 4 January 2011 (UTC)