HAX - Powered by NASA Image search
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I never imaged that HAX and NASA would get to work together. What a proud day for our project!.... Ok well sorta... At least our front-end is headlessly requesting stuff from their awesome JSON API (almost the same thing, right?). So HAX is moving along nicely. We're adding new elements every day, refining our data model and cleaning up issues here and there. One big thing that's been enhanced and started getting documentation is the hax-source tag. hax-source is a tag that helps HAX understand where it can get media and other information from.
Think of HAX and the hax-source tag as where the rubber meets the road on bridging the possible UX gaps in an NGDLE. The HAX Manager is a modal that pops up and helps people get information into and through HAX from other sources. So the user clicks to open HAX manager and then says they want to find something. The "find something" is actually like a meta search; like, I know I want to search for something, THEN selecting where it is that you want to search from. So for example; if you are looking for videos to express a concept, you go to the hax manager and search for videos on youtube.
You didn't leave HAX or whatever environment you are working in; Youtube came to you. That's the decentralized, NGDLE style relationship we're trying to establish with this technology. You don't go to places to get references to information to put it some place else; it comes to you.
Today I made a video talking through how we integrate with one of these sources of media in detail. In it I explain that it takes WAY more work to actually find and get the details of how to talk to the API in place then it does actually wiring it into HAX.
The plan for the next few months is to keep building momentum towards HAX. Refining it's capabilities, presenting on it, improving upon the webcomponents that we have currently in ELMS:LN core as well as expanding them. HAX is currently experimental in 0.10.x though upgrade routines at least make it visible to admin / staff members in certain places as an alternate UI. This is being developed in conjunction with the new content experience we've been working on and will be progressively phased in both internally and through 0.10.x and 0.11.x.
In a weird way, getting things to work in HAX, makes them better designed in ELMS:LN as a whole. So we're targetting HAX with new tags to try and headlessly present data from ELMS:LN; which we then could wire into the template engines of the media system (for example) in order to better present media from it. There's also efforts by Michael Potter to utilize the hax-source tag as a stand alone in our Media system to start headlessly presenting information from the various systems in ELMS:LN so that their UX patterns align with HAX (even when not delivered by it).