The Sferyx Software Components for Sakai Academic Users
1. SFERYX SOFTWARE COMPONENTS FOR SAKAI ACADEMIC USERS
Presentation of Sferyx Ltd and its Products at the AuSakai 09 Conference - Charles Sturt
University, Bathurst Campus – 16 – 18 September 2009
First of all thank you Charles Sturt University for organising and hosting AuSakai 09 Conference
and for giving Sferyx the opportunity to become one of its Sponsors. At this presentation I will talk
about:
• Sferyx as a company
• Sferyx Portfolio of Products
• Melete and Sakai collaboration
• Benefits for Sakai
• Sferyx new Academic Licences
Sferyx as a company
Registered in Milan /Italy/ in 2001 Sferyx Ltd is a software development company. It creates
multiplatform JAVA based software components and applications for Internet based systems.
Sferyx innovation and production objectives are to develop a family of compatible products,
permitting the developers to achieve high productivity and quality of work in their projects, and
offering the end users the best possible experience in their editing/publishing activities. On the
software components global market Sferyx Ltd is present with products with the registered
trademarks Sferyx and JSyndrome. Sferyx Editors are used by software companies, universities,
colleges, schools, many leading publishing companies, government, military and civil
organizations and developers in more than 40 countries. This is the best guarantee for the high
quality level and the versatility of Sferyx products.
Sferyx Portfolio of Products
Sferyx JSyndrome Family is the flagship product of the Company since 2001. Its latest version
8.0 is available in two forms – Applet and Component Editions. Sferyx Math Editor is another
product, specifically developed for the scientific organizations and specialists. It is an important
instrument in editing scientific content. Our portfolio includes also PDFExport product.
Melete and Sakai collaboration
Our collaboration with the creators of the Melete lesson builder, led by Vivian Sinou, Dean of
Foothill College in California /USA/, has began In 2004. Thanks to this collaboration now the
Melete Lesson Builder and Sakai have a stable editing system, with very high productivity ration,
thanks to the powerful pasting and uploading/publishing capabilities. These features, virtually
using a single click, permit instant availability of the published content on-line, saving a lot of time
and efforts.
Sferyx HTML Editor and the technology behind it have been proven to be very efficient and easy
to use. They drastically increase the productivity of the users, by allowing them to publish
complex content with many graphic media and other externally linked resources within seconds,
with few clicks and at the same time preserving the entire formatting.
In the years after 2004 Sferyx began collaboration with the Sakai community for the integration of
Sferyx Editor within the entire Sakai system. Sferyx has always appreciated the role of the
universities and colleges for the development of the editing and publishing technologies that are
the base of the E-Learning. In the last several years the number of the universities that develop
proper E-learning systems, offering new possibilities for lecturers and students, has increased
significantly. To contribute to the acceleration of this process, and following feedbacks from the
2. Sakai developers, Sferyx has introduced specific Sakai related features and different integration
modules in order to provide instant embedding of the Sferyx products inside the Sakai system.
There are various tutorials and manuals already available on the company’s web site at
http://www.sferyx.com.
Benefits for Sakai
What advantages could bring the integration of the Sferyx HTMLEditor Applet, Equation Editor
and PDFExport into the SAKAI system?
• In first place they deliver out of the box both advanced HTML and Equation editing
capabilities for the entire system, combined with instant PDF generation capability.
• Sferyx HTMLEditor is capable of publishing many files simultaneously. This is very useful
when a Word document, containing many images and other external linked files is pasted.
This way by submitting the form only everything is sent to the server and the entire
document is published within seconds. There is no need for the user to upload all files
separately, renaming them and linking them back to the document. All this is done
automatically by the Sferyx editor.
• It is also capable of generating unique image filenames in order to avoid name collisions.
This saves a lot of efforts for both the users and the developers and gets the work done
within seconds.
• PDFExport can generate on-the-fly PDF files from the documents and publish them
together with the HTML to the server.
Powerful publishing solutions for SAKAI and Melete - increased productivity
Instant content publishing from MS Word/Office, OpenOffice and others
Automatic upload of multiple images, files and resources
MathML / Equation support generating content viewable anywhere
Convenient Academic licensing with continuous free updates and support
Immediate integration - no additional programming required
Academic Licences
To reduce the costs of using Sferyx products by the educational institutions, our Company has
launched new Academic licenses for universities and colleges. These licenses permit the use of
Sferyx software in all structures of the university and allow receiving continuous updates without
additional payments. They offer very convenient and competitive conditions for the use of Sferyx
Editors. The ratio between quality/price of our products is one of the highest on the market.
Our intention is to further empower the academic community and stimulate the use of Sferyx
products in the Sakai software system by proposing new products from our portfolio mainly based
on content and document management in various formats and media options, using cutting edge
technology. Naturally these new products will be offered with convenient academic licenses.
We are convinced that our collaboration with Sakai /Melete projects will continue in the future.
That will allow us to offer to the academic community new powerful instruments and systems that
increase the productivity of the lesson builders, improve the quality of the E-learning systems and
the efficiency of the teaching process.
Conclusion
3. In conclusion our Sferyx Team would welcome any kind of collaboration with the University and
College teams in order to meet their requirements for customization, new features and other
developments including related projects. If you need any kind of additional information do not
hesitate to contact our local representative office or directly our customer support at
support@sferyx.com.
Oggie Kolev
Sferyx Australia