Collage Authoring Workbench 0.1.8

[Eryk Ciepiela (Collage Team)]

Dear Collage Users,

As mentioned before we've just upgraded the Collage Authoring Workbench - the current version is 0.1.8.

Among the new features of this version some are worth noting here:

• New user guide subpage.
  
• New tutorials subpage.
  
• FAQs subpage - including at the momemnt useful information on datasets, java interpreters, and openers, will be extended on demand systematically.
  
• Public releases - you can now release the experiment and share it with everybody (who is registered Collage user), which is useful when e.g. testing, demostrating or asking community for help or comments. For example try my 'Hello World' experiment here - it's available to all of you!
  
• Directory data items - you can now use directories as experiment data items, and to do so you just specify data item path with trailing slash character. Corresponding Collage Widget will display directory contents and will allow for opening individual files.
  
• Persisting workbench state - you can now log out from the workbench and persist its state so that the next time you log in to the workbench it will appear in exactly the same state as you left it.

All those changes shouldn't break backwards compatibility so your data and experiments you wrote before are still valid.

Hope you'll find all those improvements helpful,

The Collage Team

[Rafael Aroca]

Hi Eryk, great news!

We have done some tests with the Directory Data Items feature and it
worked nicely. However, we noticed a strange behavior that confused
us, so it might confuse other users:

- When you are using the released experiment, the Plain text editor
allows you to edit the source files. However, when you edit the
source, you are editing the original source, which won't be saved
neither used!

After editing the source, you can normally save it, and try to use it,
but the modifications are useless because you edited the original
source.

After several tests we noticed that you have to first click on the
button to switch to your copy, then edit and save. In that way, the
modified copy will be used in the experiment. Otherwise, all
modifications will not be used on the experiment.

We suggest disabling the edit possibility when original code is shown,
or to automatically switch to "your code" when the user types or
modifies anything. Thus users won't get confused as we did. They will
only have the option of editing their local copy, which will indeed be
used in the experiment.


Another observation that might (or not) be helpful, but I don't know
if this is specific to my machine:
Before the Collage update, we were normally using and playing with
released experiments on Google Chrome. After the update, none of the
released experiments neither newly released experiments works on
Google Chrome. They all appear as a blank page after the messages. If
we copy the URL and past on Mozilla Firefox, everything works fine.


--
[]s Rafael.
Linux User #56352

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[Eryk Ciepiela (Collage Team)]

Hello Rafaeal,

On Monday, September 24, 2012 10:09:04 PM UTC+2, Rafael Aroca wrote:

Hi Eryk, great news!

We have done some tests with the Directory Data Items feature and it
worked nicely. However, we noticed a strange behavior that confused
us, so it might confuse other users:

- When you are using the released experiment, the Plain text editor
allows you to edit the source files. However, when you edit the
source, you are editing the original source, which won't be saved
neither used!

After editing the source, you can normally save it, and try to use it,
but the modifications are useless because you edited the original
source.

After several tests we noticed that you have to first click on the
button to switch to your copy, then edit and save. In that way, the
modified copy will be used in the experiment. Otherwise, all
modifications will not be used on the experiment.

We suggest disabling the edit possibility when original code is shown,
or to automatically switch to "your code" when the user types or
modifies anything. Thus users won't get confused as we did. They will
only have the option of editing their local copy, which will indeed be
used in the experiment.

Yes, I also noticed this confusing behavior. It's exactly as you say and I agree with your suggestion. We are able to apply such change and upgrade Authoring Workbench tomorrow (Thursday).

 

Another observation that might (or not) be helpful, but I don't know
if this is specific to my machine:
Before the Collage update, we were normally using and playing with
released experiments on Google Chrome. After the update, none of the
released experiments neither newly released experiments works on
Google Chrome. They all appear as a blank page after the messages. If
we copy the URL and past on Mozilla Firefox, everything works fine.

I guess the reason is the same as in this case you reported previously. Try to force refresh. Shift+F5 should work in most browsers. We will patch Authoring Workbench so that forced refresh would be no longer needed - expect this fix tomorrow in version 0.1.9.

Thanks for valuable feedback!