Abstract
Institutional portals and Web sites are beginning to make use of third party sources in systematic ways. There are now an increasing number of ways in which this can be done including:
- Linking to external sites (or channels)
- Linking to external sites with customisation information in the link
- Linking to external sites using single sign-on techniques
- Embedding stand alone channels
- Embedding sites through the use of CSS
- Embedding sites through the use of HTML fragments
- SOAP / JSR168
- WSRP
The workshop will help you to explore the issues in using these, and other techniques, to include third party channels, exploring the advantages and disadvantages (for instance in the degree of customisation available) and the effort involved.
Connects, the Learning and Teaching Portal, will be used as a case study as it offers most of these techniques – see <http://www.connect.ac.uk/>
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the session participants will have gained an understanding of the wide variety of techniques which can be used to embed external sites and channels within their own Web sites or portals. They will also have an idea of the advantages and disadvantages of the various techniques and the skill and effort required to implement them, which can then be used to decide what channels and sites to include within their own portals or web sites, and where multiple methods are offered to choose the most suitable.