Sakai 3 resources For the latest overviews, code, documentation and demo server offerings see the following: Overview: http://sakaiproject.org/future-directions Source code: http://github.com/ieb/open-experiments Latest binaries: http://groups.google.com/group/sakai-kernel Developer Documentation: http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/KERNDOC/ Demo server: http://3akai.sakaiproject.org/dev/

WARNING: 3akai milestone01 tag is obsolete The 3akai milestone release described below (sakai-3.0.0-milestone01) represents experimental work that has been superseded in its entirety by current Sakai 3 development efforts. Do not waste your time downloading and installing this tag; instead check out the latest Sakai 3 resources noted above.

3akai Milestone 1 Release (OBSOLETE)

3akai Milestone 1 is being released for demonstration and evaluation purposes only. It has not been subjected to any formal Quality Assurance (QA) testing, and should not be used in production. It offers an opportunity to experience some of the initial and exciting User Experience (UX) work targeted at Sakai 3. It does not yet fully illustrate the reorganization of content and tool functionality that realizes the "everything is content" vision for Sakai 3. Those capabilities will be furthered with the switch to using Kernel 2 as the basis for Sakai 3 in the coming weeks.

What you see in this milestone release will continue to evolve significantly as work progresses and feedback is provided. In its final form, targeted for release 2011?, Sakai 3 will end up significantly different from Sakai 2.

The main goals of this milestone release are to:

1. catalyze community discussion and interest in helping further the design and development of Sakai 3 capabilities, and
2. support user-testing of some of the initial Sakai 3 designs and conceptual approaches

For more information on Sakai 3 in general, a good starting place is the Sakai 3 page in the Building Sakai area of this wiki. (If you don't wish to build and run this milestone release yourself, then you can view a similar experience on the 3akai demo server.)

My Dashboard represents a re-conceptualization of the MyWorkspace page. It focuses on aggregating and navigating relevant content across your sites and groups, and communication with your fellow collaborators. Many of these capabilities are presented via widgets (e.g., Sites, My Profile, My Connections, Poll Tracker), or via ever-present links in page footers (e.g., My People, My Inbox, Online Connections).

Widgets can be added to your My Dashboard (or other appropriate pages) via the "Add Widgets" button, and removed by clicking on the close "X" in the widget's top-right corner. They can be easily reorganized on the screen via drag-and-drop, and you can also select a general layout for widgets on the dashboard via the Edit Layout button. The configuration of each widget is controlled by its "Settings" button near its top-right corner. There are a variety of example widgets included in this release: Personal Tools, Sites, My Profile, Google Docs, Hello World, My Connections, and Poll Tracker.

The concept of social networking is explored in this release though the notions of "Profiles" and "Connections". Much like Friends in Facebook, Connections are other Sakai users with whom you've mutually agreed to communicate and share your Profile information. Your Profile information is displayed in the "My Profile" widget on your My Dashboard. You can directly edit it from there – and example of in-line editing – or from the "My Profile" link in the footer of every page.

The "My Connections" widget on your My Dashboard presents a synoptic view of your Connections' profiles, including their online status (see also "Online Connections" in the page footer). You can get a more complete view of your Connections' profiles from the "My People" link in the footer of every page, which takes you to the "People" widget. From there you can browse your entire list of connections, search the community of users and send requests to people for permission to connect, or respond to connection requests from others.

Universal access to instant messaging and email-like messaging between fellow collaborators is being explored in Sakai 3. In this release the footer of each page has a "My Inbox" link that takes you to an internal messaging system. From there you can send and receive messages to and from your Sakai "connections". For instance, if someone requests that you become a "connection", then you would find a message containing the request (and a link to accept) in your Inbox. When you have new, unread messages, the number of messages is presented in parentheses next to the "My Inbox" text in the footer.

You can also instant message with your connections via the "Online connections" link in the footer of each page. It provides both a count of how many of your connections are currently on-line (the number in parentheses next to the text), and a pop-up list of their names. You can initiate an instant messaging conversation with any connection simply by clicking on their name. When you send your message, they will see your name appear in their page's footer, next to their "Online Connections" link, and they can click on your name to pop-up a window with your conversation.

The ability to author pages using a rich-text editor, and to be able to embed content from or links to other Sakai capabilities in such pages is one of the key capabilities being explored for Sakai 3. For example, embedding the contents of a file you've uploaded (i.e, a picture or graph) in the middle of the text you're composing, a forum thread at the bottom or on the side of a page of discussion materials, a set of self-study questions and the end of a reading, a Poll in the middle of your lecture materials, etc.

In this milestone release the options for what can be embedded in a page are limited: YouTube Video, Tangler Forum, Single File Reference (i.e., Resources), Comments, Poll, Navigation, and Form. More options will follow in future releases.

Navigation between authored pages has not yet been addressed, so this release includes only very rudimentary page navigation functionality. This will be improved upon in future designs and releases. Basically you have the ability to designate an authored page as a "Top page", which means it will be listed in the page menu on the right-hand side of a site's pages. Otherwise, it is presumed that the page is only reachable by clicking on a link in another page that leads to it; the authoring environment includes an "Insert Sakai Link" capability that lets you easily browse a site's set of pages and embed a link to one.