New eLML 8 Release: Mobile Version of Lesson

michaelziege — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:50:29 -0000

I am happy to announce a new eLML 8 version today! The big new thing is that eLML offers now a mobile view of your lesson based on jQuery Mobile. Using the already existing eBook converter (based on ePub) and the new mobile view, you can now serve your clients with lessons optimized for both tablets like iPads and also Smartphones like iPhones or Android devices! To see the mobile version in action point your iPhone or Android phone to http://www.elml.org/website/en/ and you are automatically redirected to the mobile view! You can also use the mobile view link in the footer of the eLML website with any desktop browser.

Whats new in the eLML 8 release?
1.The Mobile View (based on jQuery Mobile): http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/output_mobile.html
2. New versions of firedocs and EasyELML available! http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/unit_tools.html (see comment below)
3. Many bugfixes, improvements and updates. Too much to list them all here :-)

Comments about eLML tools:
- EasyELML: The author Michael Ziege has released a new version a month ago and it should run stable on Windows and Mac OSX now.

- The latest firedocs 1.8 version runs on any Firefox above version 4. Be aware that on Firefox 10 (due to a caching problem) the eLML editor firedocs crashes at first. What you have to do is following:
1. Enter "about:config" in your address bar and continue after the warning.
2. In the configuration parameter list do a right click and choose "New... Boolean" to create a new parameter.
3. Now enter "nglayout.debug.disable_xul_cache" as parameter name and set it to "true".
After that restart Firefox and it should work again. Sorry about that complicated bugfix...

- Template Builder: Thomas Linowsky, the author of the Template Builder, has told me that he is working on a totally new release and will have a prototype running soon. He'll certainly announce the beta release via the eLML-Users list.

- Lenya CMS AddOn development has been terminated because the Lenya CMS project is not active anymore :-(

So much from me. After nearly 10 years this will be my last mail as eLML project leader (see my last posting). From now on Immo Wille and Alberto Sanz are running the show here at the University of Zurich :-)

eLML 7 stable released today!

michaelziege — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:46:00 -0000

After many months without an eLML-Newsletter its time for some important news about the eLesson Markup Language (eLML) project: Our latest major stable release eLML 7 is ready for download! Here are some of the key new features:

- Tool: A new tool for transforming eLML lessons is available: EasyELML
http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/tools_easyelml.html
- Tool: New version of eLML editor "Firedocs" available (supports Firefox 5, please read "System Requirements" carefully!):
http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/tools_editor.html
- Online: Create HTML5 code with eLML!
http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/output_xhtml.html (last chapter)
- Online: Navigate through your lesson using arrow keys and other keyboard shortcuts:
http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/unit_manual.html
- Online: New variable $glossaryMousoverWithHTML lets you include HTML-code in glossary-term-mouseovers
http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/output_configXML.html
- Print: Full support for Apache FOP 1.0 with hyphenation, SVG, MathML etc.
http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/output_xslfo.html
- Online: Better support for SVG and MathML in HTML output format
- Online: eLML core template "elml:page-of" lets you create navigation elements like "Page 4 of 18" in your lesson
- eBook: ePub converter updated to HTML5 and other updates/bugfixes (update to ePub 3 coming soon!)

And of course as always many, many bugfixes have been included in eLML 7. Some are listed in Sourceforge Bugtracker (#3019736, #2675042, #2897133, #2149353, #2039793) but most of them are only listed in the cvs history of the eLML core.

Firedocs 1.3b06 released

michaelziege — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:23:50 -0000

First release of 2011, yeah! So what have we changed? A quick overview:
- Multimedia elements (video, audio etc.) are now displayed using placeholders. This is faster and safer.
- Latest schema changes are reflected in this release
- Some minor layout changes
- Fixed many bugs

As always: This release is faster, better, nicer and much cooler than the one before. Use it! :-)

As always 2: If you have Firedocs already installed, go to the "AddOns" menu under "Extras" and search for updates.

eLML wins silver Award at IMS Learning Impact

michaelziege — Sat, 22 May 2010 19:21:31 -0000

The eLML team is very happy to announce another award for our project: The silver medal at the IMS Learning Impact Awards 2010 in Long Beach. eLML got invited to Long Beach because it was one of the 13 finalists in the category "New and Research & Development":
http://www.imsglobal.org/learningimpact2010/awards2010finalists.html

You can find a photo of the award on the eLML website entry page or here:
http://www.elml.org/website/en/image/imsaward2010_prize.jpg
http://www.elml.org/website/en/image/imsaward2010_fislerabel.jpg

The official announcement has not yet been published on the IMS website but should be online within the next days. Thanks a lot to the IMS team for organizing the conference and thanks to everyone in the eLML community for your contributions to the eLML projects. It is also YOUR prize!

New eLML 6 released

michaelziege — Tue, 04 May 2010 22:11:06 -0000

After one year of hard work, the eLML team is proud to present the new eLML 6 version! Here are the highlights:
1. Create eBooks directly from your lessons (for iPad etc.)
2. Create newer XHTML 1.1 Strict code
3. New and faster Firedocs 1.3 eLML Editor
4. New feature for referencing and highlighting content
5. Now supporting latest YAML 3.2 release
6. SCORM-transformation reworked and vastly improved

And to make it even easier for you we have released eLML now under the more liberal Apache 2 License (not GPL anymore)!

------------------------------------------------

Let me just briefly outline the new features.

1. eBooks:
With eLML you can now create the popular ePub-format for eBooks. This means you can view your lesson on your iPad or iPhone or any other popular eBook-reader. For more information check:
http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/output_epub.html

You can also download entire ELML website as an eBook (the link is in the footer of each page) and view it with your favorite eBook-Reader. This is the first release of the ePub-format converter for eLML and we will continue developing improvements of this converter. So please send us comments and feedback.

2. XHTML 1.1 Strict:
The ePub-standard is based on XHTML 1.1 Strict HTML code. Since eLML in the past was working with the more flexible XHTML 1.0 Transiational standard, we had to create a new converter for XHTML 1.1 Strict. So now you can choose if you want to create XHTML 1.0 Transitional or 1.1 Strict code in eLML. We took the advantage of including a lot of code improvements into this rebuild. To read more about this, point your browser to:
http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/output_xhtml.html

3. Firedocs 1.3 eLML Editor:
The faster and improved Firedocs 1.3 eLML Editor has already been released but we now officially included it into the eLML 6 download package. Check the older eLML news for more information about the new 1.3 series.

4. Referencing and highlighting parts of your lesson:
With the new labelRef-attribute you can reference other parts of your lesson. A language course at our university uses this feature for highlighting verbs, nouns, adjectives etc. If the students e.g. hoovers over the word "noun" then the nound in the foreign language sentence visually stands out. Read more about the new labelRef-attribute here:
http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/manual_attributes.html

5. YAML 3.2 Support
We are still very fond of the CSS framework YAML. The new eLML 6 release contains the latest updates and improvements to make eLML compatible with the YAML 3.2, the newest version currently out. Please note that we cannot include YAML into the eLML download package, so you have to download it yourself and included it into eLML. Check the readme.txt file that is included in the eLML package.
http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/output_yaml.html

6. SCORM Updated:
The eLML to SCORM converter has been totally rewritten and creates now SCORM 1.2 files that are compatible with all the major LMS. To read more about creating IMS or SCORM content packages or to download a demo package and test it with our LMS go to:
http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/output_cp.html

Finally: Bugfixes, improvements, and updated manual
During the last year many improvements and bugfixes have been included into the new eLML 6 release. If you are interested in details, please go to our Sourceforge project website and search the Bugtracker and Feature Tracker for more information. The JavaScripts for lightwindow, selfCheck and glossary terms have been improved, the print and other version were updated and last but not least the whole website and manual is now up-to-date containing all the information you need for working with eLML 6. Have fun!

We love to hear from you and get feedback! Contact us at elml@id.uzh.ch

eLML new released under the Apache 2 license!

michaelziege — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 23:27:23 -0000

Today the open source license of the eLML (eLesson Markup Language) project changed from the restrictive GPL to the more open Apache 2 license. This means that in future you will be able to use eLML also for commercial products without the need to contribute back your developments based on the eLML project. For us it means that we can start working on integrations of eLML into our open source learning management system OLAT (www.olat.org), also released under the open source Apache 2 license. Nevertheless I would like to stress that we are still happy to hear from you, are interested to see how you are using eLML and what you are developing with it. So the switch to the more liberal Apache license does not mean that we are not interested in cooperations, on the contrary. As you already know we can also list your project on the success stories page if you are interested:
http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/about_success_stories.html

The full license text for the Apache 2 license can be found here:
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html

eLML not part of Google Summer of Code

michaelziege — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 21:35:02 -0000

Unfortunatly Google did not choose the University of Zurich as a mentor organziation for the Google Summer of Code 2010 program and thus eLML will not be able to provide projects this year. We will still leave the project ideas listed under "About: Participating" and if you are looking for an interesting topic for your thesis or diploma work, consider one of the following projects:

http://www.elml.org/website/en/html/about_participating.html

Firedocs eLML Editor 1.3x released

michaelziege — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:23:05 -0000

I'm very happy to announce a brand new release of the Firedocs eLML Editor. We moved up from the 1.2x to the 1.3x Firedocs branch and offer exciting new features. This release brings some long awaited features such as Internationalization and Support for Java 6 as well as significant other improvements:

* Compatible with Firefox 3.6
* Support for Next-Generation Java Plug-In
* Internationalization (en, de, fr, it)
* Introduced extension system for remote authoring protocols
* Brand new Asset Dialog
* Improved table and list handling
* Better whitespace handling for (mixed) Xhtml documents
* Many small Bug Fixes
* Much improved code base
* Many eLML specific fixes and improvements (see Sourceforge for details)

To get the latest Firedocs eLML Editor either open Firefox browser and go to AddOns where you can click "update" or directly go to the eLML website and download the editor from there:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/elml/files/Firedocs%20eLML%20Editor/

Just a reminder: Dont download the editor from the Firedocs website because this release does not contain the eLML extenstions!

We would be interested to get feedback from you! If you find bugs, please submit them here:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id=123157&atid=695590

IMS Learning Impact Award 2010 Finalist!

michaelziege — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:11:02 -0000

We are happy to announce that eLML is an IMS Learning Impact Award finalist! The IMS Learning Impact Conference will be held in Los Angeles (Long Beach), California, from May 17th to May 20th 2010. The award ceremony will be held on Wednesday, May 19th 2010 at the Hilton Hotel in Long Beach. We'll keep you updated! For more information check the IMS website:
http://www.imsglobal.org/learningimpact2010/

News works again!

michaelziege — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:24:25 -0000

Sourceforge had some problems with their news feeds during the last weeks. So the last few eLML news have only been transmitted via our email newsletter. Sorry about that. One more reason to subscribe to the eLML newsletter :-)

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