Interpretation of http URLs

1 Description

Today, people are used to get an active link when entering a valid URL in a page editor. But the ILIAS page editor still requires to add the xln tags around an URL to make it clickable.
 
I suggest to improve the usability of the page editor and to support also a simple http://www.ilias.de link as a clickable link without adding xln tags.
 
We can discuss if ILIAS always adds the xln-tags around such a link when saving the form or if we keep the text as it is and handle the URL interpretation only in the presentation mode.
 
It would be sufficient if the following types of links are interpreted:

• http://
• https://
• www.

1.1 Using Libs/Plugins (Alex 23 Dec 2014)

Since processing URLs is not that trivial a library like http://soapbox.github.io/jQuery-linkify/ could be used to help us.

2 Additional Information

• Idea / concept: Matthias Kunkel
• Funding: ILIAS-Verein
• Development: Feature is to be developed by Alex Killing, Leifos
• Testing: Matthias Kunkel

3 Discussion

JF 20 Sep 2010: The feature is highly appreciated. Alex has to check, whether there are any technical difficulties. If not, implementation for 4.2 will be possible.

Matthias Kunkel, 20 Jan 2013: I recently noticed that users that are new to ILIAS often do not realise that they need to set xln tags around a http link to make it clickable. They are used from Facebook and other tools that this is done by the programme they use. To extend the number of happy ILIAS users worldwide I therefore suggest to implement the suggested behaviour for the upcoming 4.4 version and offer the funding.

JF 21 Jan 2013: We re-schedule the feature for 4.4.

Matthias Kunkel, 18 Oct 2013: Postponed to 4.5 due to missing resources.

Matthias Kunkel, 26 Oct 2014: Postponed due to missing ressources.

Matthias Kunkel, March 18, 2015: This feature was already scheduled for 5.0 but not implemented due to missing funding / time. There is still a need for this feature. Therefore I have re-scheduled it for 5.1 to save time for discussing new feature requests.

4 Implementation

Administration > Editing: Activation of the feature:

Links are automatically set in presentation mode (content is unchanged, no external links are entered):

Testcases

• http://testrail.ilias.de/index.php?/cases/view/5096 : Automatische Verlinkung von URLs in Administration aktivieren
• http://testrail.ilias.de/index.php?/cases/view/5097 : Klickbare URLs im Text eingeben

Approval

Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel], May 15, 2015: Feature successfully tested and approved.