UI Resources API Some context for a discussion.

What Resources? What API?

Server-centric approach Traditional uPortal The browser is pretty simple. Maybe a Netscape 4.7 The uPortal server proxies the web content, aggregates, applies styles.

What is a portal? This group sees an institutional portal as an abridged and customized version of the institutional Web presence... a "pocket- sized" version of the campus Web.

Each channel Outputs HTML. Preferably XHTML to a ContentHandler. Conforming to a uPortal-wide single stylesheet. Consists of Java classes, image resources, and often XSLTs, all deployed into uPortal. –Maybe neatly packaged into a.car

What is a portal? This group sees an institutional portal as an abridged and customized version of the institutional Web presence... a "pocket- sized" version of the campus Web. But the web changed. –Delivers services. Web applications, not just web sites. –Web content richer, web browsers smarter.

Portlet-centric, browser-centric approach Browsers are really smart –Apply CSS styles, do JavaScript, even Ajax- style callbacks to get/refresh data. Portlets are real web applications –Taking advantage of smart browsers CSS styles and stylesheets are commonplace –And very powerful.

CSS, JavaScript, Ajax What can uPortal do to make it easier to use these technologies in channel / portlet implementations?

CSS uPortal CSS class names –non-standard JSR-168 CSS class names –Standard but limiting. A reasonably complex portlet will want to define and use custom CSS classes and stylesheets.

Aside: CSS is really cool! A decent way to position icons. An alternative to nested tables.

Some solutions Existing work in this space –Rutgers webmail channel custom CSSs Declared as a supplemental CSS across the uPortal –“PWebProxy” Wisc Supports honoring css of proxied applications –Others? VT icon positioning for tabs ?

One approach Web mail portlet Simple portlet Bus schedule portlet Another portlet Bookmark portlet CSS Bus CSS Web mail CSS framework CSS JSR-168 CSS Page headers

JavaScript Namespacing issue –Potentially, need to namespace JavaScript function names and calls to be specific to the particular subscribed instance of the portlet. At portlet authoring time? As a re-writing feature provided by uPortal?

AJAX, etc. XMLHttp JavaScript callback from the web browser back to the portal (elsewhere?) to get updated information. Pervasive – a new way to render channels Channels can already do this? Sakai-Courier-style “service”?

Super Channels / Portlets Now channels / portlets aren’t just Java classes, images, XSLT. They’re also JavaScript, CSS stylesheets, and XML-callbacks to services. So the API and metadata around channels / portlets needs to grow to accommodate these resources.

Discussion?