The responsification of the UI has made the instructor mode for editing assignments unusable. This should be urgently fixed.

Submitted by Eelco Visser on 9 February 2015 at 21:59

What is the actual issue? I have no issues editing a programming assignment?

• displaying the assignment text on top hides a large part of the editor
• the assignment question editor is too small
• when clicking in a code editor, the page is repositioned to align the editor with the top
• this is very annoying when trying to read the assignment text and then edit something
• the code editor window does not fit in the case of the Test Spec. tab, since it has the ‘Show Failure Details to Students’ text on top; this causes it reposition when editing at the bottom and then scrolling back to use the Compile button

That clarifies things. I’ll change the responsive design for editing programming question to keep the console output under the code editor and question text at the left.

The assignment text on top of the code editor is never a good idea. Big screens are typically wide screens these days. So there is plenty of horizontal space while vertical space is relatively scarce.

It is not always necessary to have the console always under the code editor. On a wide screen, I do want it on the right. However, there should be a good distribution between code editor and console. Currently the console is too narrow, hiding error messages.

Vertical scrolling should be avoided as much as possible since it interferes with vertical scrolling in the code editor. When vertical page scroll is enabled it is easy to trigger it when trying to scroll in the editor. That is extremely annoying. Therefore, the code editor should fill the remaining space. Thus, when viewing a page with code editor including the navigation chrome, the code editor should should be spaced such that there is no vertical scroll. This also holds for assignment editing mode, of course.

When in full screen mode, the code editor should use more of the available space. Try chrome in presentation mode + WebLab full screen mode on a 1024 or 1440 screen resolution.

Okay, where should the submission comments go? In a separate tab?

I am currently editing the assignments for A&D. In the editor for solution templates, test templates, etc., I have 9 lines of code on my MacBook. This is close to unusable.

75% of the vertical space is used for UI elements. The top 50% of the window is used for

1. the WebLab header,
2. the assignment navigation bar,
3. the title of the assignment,
4. the full path of the assignment,
5. the tabs for editing question and assignment settings,
6. another header saying Edit Question,
7. the tabs for editing a Java question.

The bottom 25% of the window is used for

1. A single tab Console,
2. the buttons for running the code,
3. the actual console.

I agree. The new mode is better on a Thunderbolt display, but it is not useable on a Macbook Pro.

There should be a full-screen mode for instructor mode that gets rid of all the navigation overhead and the question text and makes maximal use of the screen for editing and testing.

Will this be so much different for students? I see the main issue in the waste of screen estate by the various navigation elements.

for students there is a full-screen mode; which you can try out for yourself via ‘your submission’