Microviews

The OneShare family of projects has grown again, this time through the Microviews project, one of the new JISC Raid Innovation Projects.

The Microviews project aims to develop a JavaScript library that is capable of rendering a preview of an EPrint page that can be used as a tooltip and also as a specialised interface for mobile devices. The preview will show selected EPrints fields with the aim of providing enough information for users to choose whether to follow the link to the full EPrint page.

The library will include a simple JavaScript hook that can be included on any page containing links to an EPrint. The hook will display the preview as a graphical tooltip when users hover over the link. The JavaScript will also detect mobile devices and rather than a tooltip will insert a mobile-friendly gateway page when users select the link.

Microviews will be useable without modifying the EPrints installations themselves, and the scripts will be referenced from a central Microviews server for easy maintainability.

The project will run for the rest of this year, and we’ll post updates on this blog under the Microviews category.