12. Mobile Mahara¶
You can user Mahara to a certain degree from a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet that has internet browser capabilities. Depending on the device, not all functions may be available to you.
When you have an Android device or an iPhone, you can use an application to upload files directly from your device to Mahara.
12.1. Mobile browsing¶
Mahara comes with a responsive design. The purpose is to provide the best viewing experience on any device, but in particular mobile devices. Furthermore, certain functionality is not available on a mobile device if it does not allow for it, e.g. the use of the visual editor.
Currently, the responsive design is only implemented for the default theme of Mahara. However, the device detection works across all themes.
That’s what the default theme looks like on an Android smartphone 2.3 (screen size 320 x 480) with device detection turned on.
3 different screens of Mahara with the default theme on an Android phone with device detection turned on
- There is only one column. Everything is pushed to it, but as soon as the screen is big enough, the content moves back to its original columns.
- A mobile friendly menu that can be unfolded to reach all navigation items.
- Since blocks cannot be dragged over the screen, radio buttons below them allow them to be selected.
- Once a block icon has been selected via its radio button, place it into the page by clicking the Add new block here button.
- Text and Note blocks are shown without the visual editor as that does not work on an Android smartphone (2.3).
The following table captures features of Mahara and how they are represented on various mobile devices when device detection (dd) is turned on or off. Users can decide in which mode they want to browse if the site administrator allowed it in the user settings.
| Feature | Android smartphone dd on | Android smartphone dd off | Android 10” tablet dd on | Android 10” tablet dd off | iPhone / iPad dd on | iPhone / iPad dd off |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Place page edit blocks via radio buttons instead of drag & drop |  |
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| Regular drag & drop interface in page editor | - but cannot be used |
- but cannot be used |
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| Visual editor (WYSIWYG editor) | - but cannot be used |
- difficult |
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| Plain text editor | |
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| Print link | |
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| Report objectionable content link | |
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| Add to watchlist link | |
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12.2. MaharaDroid¶
The open source software MaharaDroid enables Android devices to share / upload content to a Mahara instance. This can basically be any content that you can share on your Android mobile phone or tablet.
You do not have to install any additional software for Mahara in order to use this functionality. Follow the instructions on the MaharaDroid site for more information on how to set up the application and link it to your Mahara.
12.3. PortfolioUp¶
PortfolioUp is an image uploader for Mahara that can be used on the iPhone. You need to install an additional plugin on your Mahara instance in order to use this app.