Release 8.2.0 -- pls add critical features (Greg Smith)

[S Page]

Bryan Berry wrote:

> URI's are what we
> use to link to different resources.
> ...
> We may end up hacking Browse esp. to allow this because of the immense
> demand.

It's still unclear whether you want kids to start an activity "from 
scratch" or download a "starter" object for a particular activity.

If you just want the kids to start an activity from scratch, and the 
lesson plan web page says
   "Start Etoys [icon for Etoys]"
can children really not follow the instruction?  Starting an activity is 
basic, and if their XO is already running the activity they probably 
shouldn't start another instance.

Anyway, if kids can't figure this out, in Mozilla it should be possible 
to register a new protocol handler for activity://foo or etoys://bar 
that starts an external application.  In about:config set 
network.protocol-handler.app.activity=/usr/bin/mystartactivity , where 
/usr/bin/mystartactivity starts the activity (using 
/usr/bin/sugar-activity ?).  If it worked, this script could evolve into 
the sugar "launching service" that Eben Eliason described earlier in the 
thread.  FWIW I tried this in build 708 and couldn't get it to work, I 
either get a failure to load a garbled local URL or a PyXPCOM LoadURI 
error in the log.


If by "link to a different resource" you mean download a starter object, 
then as bemasc commented in your bug http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6958 , 
just link to a file with the right mimetype for that activity.  (A small 
file would even act as a simple activator).  FWIW I tried this for an 
Etoys application/x-squeak-project mime type and it didn't work.

Realize that every time the kid clicks the link to the starter file, 
Browse downloads another copy of it into the Journal (viz. e-mail thread 
"downloaded files and the Journal"), which isn't ideal for a big object. 
  So the lesson plan web page might say something like:
   "Open your Journal and find the 'Science Acoustics Lab 2' Etoys 
activity and run this (in Etoys).  If you haven't already downloaded 
'Science Acoustics Lab 2', _click here_."

If you want to play along, my notes and links for both failed approaches 
are at 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Browse#Launching_activities_from_Browse , 
anyone please update.


I would think any Web-based learning plan that involves launching apps 
and downloading files has similar issues jumping out of the web page.  I 
wonder how they solve them.

Respectfully yours,
--
=S Page