WebDAV - New Mount Instructions Page

1 Initial Problem

At the moment there are 3 sources where the Mount Instruction page for WebDAV gets its text from:

• Standard instructions: The entire text for this instructions is saved in the language file
• Customized instructions: A text field, in which an administrator can write his/her own mount instructions. It was also possible (and for a good-looking page needed) to write HTML in this text field. For the latest ILIAS versions, the html tags will be escaped and writing to this editor is therefore useless
• Instruction from an HTML file: It is possible to save a file located at: “./Customizing/clients/<client_id>/webdavtemplate.htm”. This template file can be customized with additional CSS and JavaScript. But it does not support multiple languages, since all the text is directly written into the html file.

In the Admin Settings -> File -> WebDAV, it is possible to select between the standard instructions and the customized instructions. If WebDAV finds the HTML instructions file (Option 3), it will always  use this file as source.

The Mount Instructions Page has its own format of placeholders. They are placed inside of square brackets “[]” and replaced with a defined value.

The following screenshot shows the Standard instruction page as it is now:

As this screenshot shows, the user will only get the instruction for one operating system. The used operating system is extracted from the user agent in the request header. This makes it impossible for a normal user to look at the mount instructions for another operating system.

2 Conceptual Summary

For the next ILIAS version, we would like to revise the mount instruction page. The revision encompasses on the one hand the GUI for the Instructions Page and on the other hand we want to change the source of the data for the Instructions Page.

3 User Interface Modifications

3.1 List of Affected Views

• WebDAV settings page in general
  • The WebDAV settings page will be split into 2 subpages. One for general settings and one to upload new mount instructions
• New subpage in WebDAV settings to upload customized Mount Instructions
  • On this page, an administrator of the system can upload mount instruction templates for different languages as html- or text-files
  • This page is very similar to the new upload of the "Terms of Services"-upload page. Contrary to the "Terms of Services"-upload page, the mount instructions page only has "language" as a criterion.
• The display of Mount Instructions as a modal
  • Instead of a separated page, the mount instructions will be shown in a modal
  • It will be possible to look at the instructions for the different operating systems. The user can switch with the buttons of a "ViewControl"-component

3.2 User Interface Details

3.2.1 Divide WebDAV settings into two subpages

Because of the file for different mount instructions, we suggest to divide the WebDAV settings page into two subpages. One page is called “General Settings” and contains all existing settings for WebDAV + new settings from other feature requests. The other page contains the table with the file upload for the mount instructions.

3.2.2 Upload custom mount instructions

We want to make it possible to upload custom mount instructions over a file upload. The system behind this looks and works similar to the upload “Terms of Service” documents. However, in contrary to the “Terms of Service”, the only criteria that a file can have is the language. Following screenshot shows, how this could look like:

3.2.3 Presentation of the instructions page

As mentioned is the mount instructions page at the moment a completely separated page outside of the ILIAS-GUI. The goal for the new mount instructions page is to create a GUI inside of ILIAS with the help of kitchen sink. Or more precisely, a modal component.

One difficulty is to present the instructions for the different operating systems. There are different types of modals and different ways to use them to tackle this problem. We decided to show the instructions inside of a Lightbox Text Modal. To split up the instructions for the different operating system, we use a ViewControl-Component. Each button of the ViewControl represents the instructions for an operating system or the “Tipps & Support” page.

3.3 New User Interface Concepts

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4 Technical Information

We suggest following changes for the technical background of the mound instructions:

• Split the WebDAV-Settings page (Administration -> File -> WebDAV) into two pages, linked by subtabs. Each page has its own GUI classes
  • General Settings -> All existing WebDAV settings + new settings from other feature requests. Even the option to choose where to get the mount instructions from
  • Upload Mount Instructions -> A page to upload custom mount instructions, similar to the “Terms of Service” page
• Abandon the feature to create customized instruction over the GUI. HTML-Tags will be escaped anyway
  • Only offer the default instructions and the options to upload files
• Use Kitchen Sink for GUI elements (Modal, ViewControl etc.)
• Show instructions for all operating systems instead of just the one which is written in the User-Agent
• Mount Instructions in the uploaded file are still divided with square brackets “[ ]” for the different operating systems (like it is now)

5 Contact

• Author of the Request: Heer, Raphael [rheer]
• Maintainer: Kergomard, Stephan [skergomard], Heer, Raphael [rheer]
• Implementation of the feature is done by: Heer, Raphael [rheer]

6 Funding

If you are interest in funding this feature, please add your name and institution to this list.

• …

7 Discussion

Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel], 25 APR 2019 : Thank you very much for this feature request. This is a big step forward for WebDAV support in ILIAS. The screen you are presenting in chap. 3.2.3 looks new to me. You re-use the KS element View Control. But the page itself seems to be neither a legacy UI element nor a KS element, right? I guess it wouldn't be too much effort to suggest a related KS element. You only need to distinguish it clearly from already existing elements and give it a clear scope, e.g. for presenting instructions.

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], 07 MAY 2019 : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for 6.0. Mount instruction should be presented as modal. Therefore, no new KS element is necessary here.

8 Implementation

The implementation is as described in 3.2, screenshots are identical, with one very small exception: The instructions are not shown centered in the modal.

Test Cases

Test cases completed at {date} by Kergomard, Stephan [skergomard]

• #25051 : Open course containing multiple folders and files with the same title

Approval

Approved at 6.12.2019 by Kergomard, Stephan [skergomard].