UI: Explorer

1 Description and Screenshots

1.1 ILIAS 4.4

1.2 ILIAS 5.0.0 beta 1

2 Status

• Scheduled for: Not scheduled yet (will be set by Jour Fixe)
• Funding: Required / Partly funded by / Funded by ... (please indicate if you have funding for feature)
• Maintainer: (will be set by Jour Fixe)
• Implementation of the feature is done by (company, developer)
• Contract settled: (fill in "Yes" if a contract is already settled, otherwise "No" )
• Tested by / status: (name, e-mail), (status information set after implementation)

3 Additional Information

Contact the following persons if you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding:

• Information about concept: (name, e-mail)
• Information about funding: (name, e-mail)
• Information about implementation: (name, e-mail)

4 Discussion

AT 2014-11-03: the tree is self-defeating: next to a l-o-t of grey space the tree is elapsing, yet it is elapsing behind the main screen. Deep nestings will be unreadable as will be long titles. Deep nestings and long titles are very common. I would love to have the option to read want I am offered, if ILIAS would only let me.
 
Get rid of the vast grey space on the left to allow for a tree that is deeply nested and titles of mor than 25 letters.

Aus meiner Sicht ist die Darstellung des Magazinbaumes in der jetzigen Form
unschön und in der Handhabung nicht besonders smart.

Es geht um die beschränkte Breite des dem Magazinbaum gewährten Platzes
(Breite). Auf meinem Bildschirmfoto könnt Ihr sehen, dass die Titel von
Untereinträgen (hier: Sitzungstitel eines Kurses) zu sehr abgeschnitten werden.
Die Anwendung der horizontalen Skrollleiste ist zwar möglich, aber in der
optischen Anmutung u. im Anwendungsfeeling merkwürdig.

Ich würde daher empfehlen,

1) dass sich der Maganzinbaum nach links ausdehnt, wenn man ein Untereintrag mit
langer Beschriftung auftaucht und abgeschnitten würde. Die Ausdehnung soll so
dynamisch erfolgen, wie es die Lesbarkeit der Baumeinträge nötig macht.

Ferner habe ich zum Magazinbaum folgende Anregungen:

2) Das Icon zum Aufklappen des Magazinbaumes gerät bei breiten Bildschirmen aus
dem Blick. Aus meiner Sicht könnte die Schaltfläche zum Öffnen des
Magazinbaumes unterhalb des ersten Begriffs ("Magazin") des Brotkrumenpfades
aufgenommen werden. Alternativ könnte man das Schaltfläche-Icon links neben
dem "Magazin"-Eintrag der Brotkrumenliste andocken.

3) Ich würde das Icon zum Aufklappen des Magazinbaumes etwas ändern. Ich
schlage folgendes vor:

|---|
| --|
| -|

Das Icon soll also eine Hierarchie von Strichen darstellen, wie sie im
Magazinbaum ja vorkommen kann. Das jetzige Icon finde ich in der Bedeutung zu
unklar.

Beste Grüße
Volker

HJL., 13.1.2015: See also the Mantis-Entry, where I wrote some comments about the left navigation (Explorer), when long course titles are used:
http://www.ilias.de/mantis/view.php?id=15183

Matthias Kunkel, 15 Jan 2015: We need a setting in Administration » Repository to disable the tree in general. You can do this already using CSS. But such a general feature should be supported by a setting in ILIAS itself. And I would either use "Repository Tree" or "Sidebar" to describe the explorer. On the screen below it is not obvious that the first two settings mean the same UI element.

Jour Fixe 02 Feb 2015: We try to have the explorer as usable as in 4.4.

• Additional improvements like customizing the width of the explorer have to be tackled as feature requests for 5.1.
• The icon to open the explorer has been substituted in the meantime.
• The administration setting should not use „Sidebar“ as term for the explorer view but „Repository Tree“.
• Disabling the explorer in general has to be made a proper feature request.

HJL., 3.2.2015 @JF
JF wrote on 2.3.2015: "We try to have the explorer as usable as in 4.4. Additional improvements like customizing the width of the explorer have to be tackled as feature requests for 5.1."
 
I see that the behavior of the explorer changed from 4.3 to 4.4. Since 4.4, the explorer-navigation is now part of the content-width.
First questions: Why did you change the behavior from 4.3 to 4.4? I do not find a documentation in the feature-wiki.
 
With this new behavior (since 4.4), our customer will have problems to distinguish between the different courses when they use the left navigation frame. I vote to add an additional solution for 5.0

Alexander Follert, 31.03.2015: I solved the problem of truncated text and horizontal scrolling  by a tooltip on mouseover like in Windows Exporer.

Winfried Kock, Nov. 18th 2015:

We have compared the ILIAS and moodle navigation concept. From my point of view the tree navigation of moodle is a reference for usability - this is what our students were asking for. We (Jochen Erkens) changed settings to reduce the repository tree to the course level – only the actual course content is displayed. We are very happy with this first workaround – but to get better usability all over, the ILIAS repository tree should be available for all objects - e.g.: forum, wiki, exercise tool ...

Approach – I suggest a Repository Tree like this:

Desctop
   Repository (link to repository page)
 –––––––––––
  > chosen course
     course content

The Repository Tree should be available on every ILIAS page (forum, wiki, exercise tool ...).

FYI: FH Aachen | Pilot sheme regarding peer-learning (peer-assessment, peer-review) | ILIAS vs. moodle

The pilot sheme is executed in two main groups (each with about 50 participants). Both had to solve peer review tasks, one works on ILIAS, the other on a moodle test installation. The aim is to learn about best practice and to complement the ILIAS feature request list ;-)

5 Implementation

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