Status Report - September 18, 2007

From ComPADRE Wiki

Contents 1 Collaborations 1.1 AAPT/APS/AIP 1.2 ADS/ABS 1.3 NSBP 1.4 SERC 1.5 Merlot 1.6 NSDL 1.7 Modeling Wiki 2 Collections 2.1 ComPADRE Wide 2.2 Astronomy Center 2.3 Nucleus 2.4 PER-Central 2.5 Physics to Go 2.6 Physics Front 2.7 AdvLabs 2.8 PTEC 2.9 Physics Source 2.10 Quantum Exchange 3 Bugs 3.1 Resolved 3.2 New 3.3 Outstanding 4 Experimentations 4.1 Outstanding Experimentations We Didn't Work On

Collaborations

AAPT/APS/AIP

• Adopt a Physicist - This project has traveled with Kendra Rand to the AIP. This year's changes include:
  • Major changes so that in the future major changes between processes (registration, adoption, and opened forums) can be handled with only a numeric state change. This should reduce the workload for each state change to only a few hours.
  • Each teacher may register more than 1 class
  • Each class may adopt up to 5 rather than 3 physicists
  • WYSIWIG functionality in the posts with a corresponding raising of the text limit to 7,500 characters. These changes have been extended to other collections.
  • Physicists may now attach files to their posts.
  • Physicists and teachers may now see each other's contact information

ADS/ABS

• ADS/ABS linking is complete on PER-Central. We are considering implementing this feature on other collections: http://www.compadre.org/PER/items/detail.cfm?ID=3515
• Besides extending it, we will be looking at a way to cache this information so that it isn't looked up with each page load.

NSBP

• The NSBP is currently in the process of changing to a new Technical provider. Once this process is complete, we will be finishing up transparent login between the NSBP and comPADRE.

SERC

• Improvements were made to the Preliminary interface for the workshop.
• Contact with Sean Fox has set up a plan so that updates can occur automatically. Additional discussions for convenient linking are also being discussed.
• A SERC-related workshop was held at the Summer AAPT meeting.

Merlot

• Created an interface to link up Merlot and ComPADRE items. We'll be standardizing this process and creating a way to give Merlot ComPADRE items over the coming month.

NSDL

• Created database users and roles to protect data integrity for Shibboleth and opened up access to the development database from idp.compadre.org for the NSDL team
• We have provided feedback on some of the vocabularies which will be changing in the upcoming month.

Modeling Wiki

• I have worked on importing the TinyMCE Editor into the Modeling Wiki. There are multiple issues with the extended interface that will have to be resolved first though.

Collections

ComPADRE Wide

• Released the new cataloging/editing interface
  • We have also fixed 2-3 errors that have come up with Thesis and Conference Proceeding entries
  • We have added the ability for taggers to clone VCards
• Improved our password security to meet the the level
• Added the new 3rd Level Vocabulary to all of the collections
• Made improvements to the Link Checker that reduced the number of 12002 errors significantly
• Installation of the newest version of CF (8) onto Development. You should see significant performance gains when we roll it out to production in approximately a month.
• In the bulletinboard code, we added
  • A WYSIWYG editing option
  • The ability to view an RSS Feeds of the forum. I haven't activated this across all of the collections yet as I want to receive a bit more feedback before I do.
• We have been working with an OU graduate student on the new Small Content Sharing Interface that will hold questions, problems, etc. for classes.

Astronomy Center

Nucleus

• We have been working on a new student interface and the backend is now on production for the new sections:
  • Top Physics Blogs
  • Top Physics Videos
  • Editor's corner
• Additionally, we will be changing up the Lounge design

PER-Central

• Currently in the process of assigning DOIs to journals that have come online.
• We're ready to create or update a "Solo-PER" forum.
• We have imported all of the articles from the PRST Special Topics Journal and have set it up so that automatic imports of future articles can be activated.
• Created a new design and rolled it out. This new design includes:
  • A new bibliography search page.
  • The top navigation has changed:
    • New design doesn't include images
    • The PER groups and people tab has been renamed to PER programs
    • By default, the Thesis tab now orders by most recent publication date and outputs the Author
    • By default, the Curriculum tab now orders by subject and outputs them
    • The Bibliography tab now goes to a page that allows for result narrowing before going into the search.
  • The front page news and events are now ordered as Vince requested.
  • The search result format for journal articles has been changed. This is a major change and one that I hope you find (relatively) exciting. [1]
  • The left navigation has changed as requested by Shawn and Vince (with Suggest a Resource always being available). Additionally, where some of the links go has changed, including the "browse resources" link.
  • As requested by Sam, refinements of searches now keep you in the 'appropriate tab'

Physics to Go

• Reworked the detail page to display newly featured materials.

Physics Front

• Redesigned and rolled out the new Physics Front interface [2]
• Redesigned the Units interface including:
  • New interface for editing
  • New navigational structure
• We have created a new access method for the Physics Front to allow the setting of National Standards on materials. We are working with an NSDL workgroup on issues of K-12 standards in the libraries.

AdvLabs

• We have received the disclaimer from Ramon and are reworking the login and search interface as requested. I'm hoping for a backend rollout by the end of next week so that content loading may begin.

PTEC

• Created a new interface for documents to be uploaded for the North Carolina workshop. This interface can be seen at [3]
• Worked with John on the new design on staging.ptec.org
  • Decided to have weekly calls as we content for the newer PTEC sections is loaded
  • Fixed various permission issues for the content loading
• Trained Ed on how to alter attached documents

Physics Source

• Rolled out the Physics Source collection backend
• Fixed a few issues with the modules that were not included with the default ComPADRE collection installation

Quantum Exchange

• We have been working on creating the new upper-division template that will also be used for the Relativity collection. New design comps have been created and revised that incorporate tools from other collections.

Bugs

Resolved

• Various issues with the new cataloging interface have been corrected
• Issues with the Adopt-a-Physicist registration and reply viewing were corrected as they came up
• Feedback Email issues that arose were corrected

New

Outstanding

Experimentations

Outstanding Experimentations We Didn't Work On

• Google Analytics
• A script for making posts that have links without anchors auto-create the appropriate html.
• The help files
• Discussions with Erwin regarding the ZipEnable module. This module would improve initial load times of some pages substantially.