plugin for Elgg (1.8) released

[John Roy]

to be posted on elgg plugin dev forum (as soon as their website is online again)

===

Folks

A few weeks back I asked for input on integrating our virtual conferencing platform with elgg. For reference the thread is here: http://community.elgg.org/discussion/view/1307474/asking-for-feedback-on-potential-new-video-conferencing-plugin

Based on positive feedback we decided to move forward and we are now pleased to announce we've completed a first plugin version for release.

For those that expressed interest in this project - thank you. Please note that is a preliminary release with basic features and you should set your expectations accordingly. 

Notes:

===

 * This is a first (dev) release, and we are not elgg dev pros so we likely got a few things wrong -- feedback welcome, fixes more welcome

 * This is targetting elgg 1.8.x, we tested on 1.8.14 and 1.8.15. We think it should work on 1.8.0, we're not sure.  

 * Not interested in making this work on elgg <1.8 (should we be?)

 * source: https://github.com/babelroom/elgg-mod_babelroom

 * zipfile (unzip in elgg/mod/) http://sourceforge.net/projects/babelroom/files/elgg-babelroom-2.37dev.zip/download

 

 * pretty screenshots: https://github.com/babelroom/elgg-mod_babelroom/tree/master/screenshots

 * Consider this alpha quality. Though it's pretty solid. If there's not a lot to fix we'll stamp it an rc level with basic features.

 * Some of you expressed interest in advanced integration with groups, files and other features of elgg -- this doesn't do that (yet)

 * This allows a user to create, update, delete rooms via a widget. The widget has a "Join" button for participants to join the room

 

 * This is pretty much the same level of functionality as our moodle plugin.

 * Our platform supports slides, audio, video (via flash) and a bunch of other things. WebRTC is working in development but not yet released (soon).

 * There's a demo here: http://elgg.babelroom.com/profile/admin , you can join the room and play as Guest

 * Join our discussion group to participate: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/babelroom

[ura sol]

i have installed on my test site (1.8.15 elgg) and note the following comments/issues that you may be interested in:

elgg specific:

• clicking on the button in the widget that opens the babelroom page would be better to launch a new page rather than replacing the existing page since there is no link back to the elgg site that launched the page. (i have a plugin installed in elgg that is intended to launch all external links in a new window, though that did not function on this widget for some reason).
• while each user being able to create a chatspace/room via a widget on their profile may be useful for some situations, what may be as or more useful in other situations is to be able to create a global site chatroom that can be accessed via the main menu in elgg. ideally this would also have a list of the active rooms that each user can access (filtered by access privileges in elgg). (as was commented already in the elgg community - this type of coding may be achieved by elgg coders at some point, allowing you to focus more on the babelroom code rather than the elgg plugin code; though there is no guarantee).
• combining the previous 2 points - perhaps the most preferable solution is a complete integration into elgg where the babelroom page is completely embedded in elgg, possibly in an iframe, though ideally not.

non elgg-specific:

• a method of skinning the babelroom pages would be useful.. can this be done directly via css in some way already? without hosting our own babelroom server?
  
• adding a sound notification for new chats and connections (as with skype etc) would be helpful).
• as we found in the demo - the flash audio/video integration has a few remaining issues to fix.. i was unable to fully connect with audio/video after 10+ minutes of making changes (firefox - ubuntu 13.04).

[John Roy]

Thanks a lot for taking the time to test this and layout your feedback.

See responses inline

Thanks

-J

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On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 5:26 AM, ura sol <uras...@gmail.com> wrote:

i have installed on my test site (1.8.15 elgg) and note the following comments/issues that you may be interested in:

elgg specific:

• clicking on the button in the widget that opens the babelroom page would be better to launch a new page rather than replacing the existing page since there is no link back to the elgg site that launched the page. (i have a plugin installed in elgg that is intended to launch all external links in a new window, though that did not function on this widget for some reason).

Created this ticket: http://code.google.com/p/babelroom/issues/detail?id=18 feel free to add/comment on ticket

• while each user being able to create a chatspace/room via a widget on their profile may be useful for some situations, what may be as or more useful in other situations is to be able to create a global site chatroom that can be accessed via the main menu in elgg. ideally this would also have a list of the active rooms that each user can access (filtered by access privileges in elgg). (as was commented already in the elgg community - this type of coding may be achieved by elgg coders at some point, allowing you to focus more on the babelroom code rather than the elgg plugin code; though there is no guarantee).

That makes a lot of sense. While developing the plugin I noticed how rich the possibilities are for integration into elgg at multiple levels. The BR API and it's documentation are key to enabling this.

• combining the previous 2 points - perhaps the most preferable solution is a complete integration into elgg where the babelroom page is completely embedded in elgg, possibly in an iframe, though ideally not.

Since we use HTML/Javascript/AJAX our vision is being able to decomposed elements of our dashboard and place them in the pages of host websites as widgets. For example, you could place our chat in your desired location with your own CSS with slides appearing sized and located as per your page design. Conversely it will be possible to embed other sites & widgets (youtube video, web browser) into our dashboard (or even as one of the widgets just described). Pictured this way the integration becomes trully seamless. 

We are working to capture this and lay it out on design/roadmap.

As an aside the iframe approach you mention is almost possible today - I believe if ticket#18 (link above) were expanded so the "target" tag was specified as a parameter that would achieve exactly this result.

non elgg-specific:

• a method of skinning the babelroom pages would be useful.. can this be done directly via css in some way already? without hosting our own babelroom server?
  

Excellent point, there's isn't a mechanism which allows this today, however note the following...

There are 3 levels at which the UI could be customized:

1. The current dashboard (v1/c) is jQuery UI based. The plan is to integrate jQuery theme-roller: http://jqueryui.com/themeroller/ http://code.google.com/p/babelroom/issues/detail?id=21

2. In the dashboard, If you open up room settings (you'll need to be a host) you'll see a "Skin" tab. It's currently unused and we need to decide whether it stays or goes -- I mention it because it's quite related to this point.

3. Longer term the goal is to have the dashboard decomposable to widgets or html snippets which can be embedded in site page with that site's CSS etc. --

There is another possibility for the truly adventurous. It should be possible to take the dashboard https://github.com/babelroom/clouds/blob/master/gen/cdn_root/v1/c/index.html along with some associated files (or the entire cdn_root), customize that locally and still use the a the remote server ... Obviously you would then have carte blanche. The system has been designed to correctly handle all the cross-site scripting issues involved and in fact babelroom.com is partitioned across separate hosts. But I think you'd need to be pretty dedicated to try this approach today -- we don't have a lot of documentation written to guide you.

• adding a sound notification for new chats and connections (as with skype etc) would be helpful).

Good idea, http://code.google.com/p/babelroom/issues/detail?id=22 

• as we found in the demo - the flash audio/video integration has a few remaining issues to fix.. i was unable to fully connect with audio/video after 10+ minutes of making changes (firefox - ubuntu 13.04).

A critical important point and thank you for sticking with it!!. I believe audio/video needs to be as easy as breathing. Consider the following very common use case: you are host, 20 people need to get onto the call, slides still to upload, you're late and flustered. In this scenario audio and video really needs to work almost by magic. So if a relaxed 2 person call still encounters problems there's something broken. This was on our radar before and is probably the single most important feature to get right, I've logged the ticket below.

http://code.google.com/p/babelroom/issues/detail?id=23

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