Moodle in English: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Monday, 16 January 2006, 6:43 AM

Chameleon allows almost complete control over styling elements in Moodle - interactively while working in the browser with the displayed Moodle page.

You may go to http://chameleon-theme.unodo.de/and log in as user: "chameleon" with the password: "chameleon" and try how it works. And have fun

Chameleon makes use of Ajax technologies.

Saving your changes

As you work, you have the option to save changes in a temporary file, or save them to the theme CSS file on the server. All temporarily saved changes may be reverted.

It makes working with themes easier for theme designers and opens up a wide range of experimental uses for interface designers. Just change and work with the changed page and go on optimizing your theme whilst you work with Moodle.

Chameleon is in beta - please test and give your feedback here.

Chameleon development

Andrew Walker, from Alton College in the UK, is programming the interface for this innovative Moodle theme and brings many valuable ideas and solutions.

Average of ratings: Useful (4)

Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Jeffery Watkins - Monday, 16 January 2006, 9:40 AM

Very nice work Urs and Andrew!!!

This should help solve a lot of people's problems.

Jeff

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by frank weissman - Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 1:27 AM

Great tool

cannot wait till it will be available

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Dale Jones - Monday, 16 January 2006, 10:49 AM

This is awesome. Congratulations on a superb piece of work.

Just an idea - is it possible to allow changes on a by-user basis? This would make it such an asset to those wanting to allow users personalisation of the environment.

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 4:28 PM

A by-user version is on the ToDo list, but not at top

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Peter DeBruyn - Monday, 16 January 2006, 1:46 PM

Very impressive contribution. It will flatten my learning curve with CSS considerably. Is this available for download?

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 4:33 PM

You will be able to download Chameleon. First we want to get it mostly bug free. To be sure not to mix some installation issues with bugs we beg you to test Chameleon on the site intensively in the first step.

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Just Dave - Monday, 16 January 2006, 5:00 PM

Wow!!!! Brialliant work guys! I'll definately keep my eyes on this one

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Jens Gammelgaard - Monday, 16 January 2006, 5:10 PM

Hi Urs & Andrew,

This is really fabulous and great work and colaboration.

Thanks for showing how themes can be designed and now adjusted too

Kind Regards
Jens

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Art Lader - Monday, 16 January 2006, 5:43 PM

Wow, guess which amazing theme I want for my Internet Applications course!

-- Art

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Helen Foster - Monday, 16 January 2006, 6:59 PM

Yes, the overview and free edit tabs are great for learning CSS! tongueout

Congratulations Urs and Andy! approve

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Richard Treves - Monday, 16 January 2006, 6:13 PM

Helen just pointed me at this, great stuff and right on time for me just getting into theme design

Is there any way to make it even more distant from .css, as in having a dialogue box that says 'background colour' with no mention of the code at all? that would make it even more usable for us mass of great unwashed who are .css illiterate.

Rich

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 4:45 PM

Richard, your proposal is quite tempting. I am not sure if this approach can work due to the character of XHTML and CSS web pages?

On the Chameleon ToDo list we have a "Hotspot" version which goes in the direction of your proposal to make working with Chameleon more easy.

Would you find the time to outline some scenarios how you would want to work with your proposed Chameleon. This would help us a lot to go on.

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Richard Treves - Wednesday, 18 January 2006, 6:12 PM

Urs,

Had another play to make me think this out for you more clearly. I take it from what has been said that the tool actually looks to see what .css is doing the work at any given point and brings that up in an editable way? What I was origonally thinking was that you could have the shift click leading to a dialogue box avoiding some of the nastier looking code (e.g I have very little idea what "div#header-home-piccont" means, I need a translation). However, thinking about it, it may just be easier to have context help buttons in the edit boxes explaining what things are. I'd offer to help with this but I don't think I know enough about .css.

Maybe the bigger point I'm making is that I think any documentation would be best done in a contextual help format rather than a whole document, its really neat that you can just click and edit so you don't need a big supporting document to explain what is going on. Interesting discussion

As for contexts, I am interested in themes because I would like my site to conform to the ideas that Edward Tufte has written about http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/, ie. I don't like the double line effect you get on the standard moodle theme, martin's white-orange theme is much better.

Hope that helps, great work

Rich

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Wednesday, 18 January 2006, 8:42 PM

Rich, thank you for your interesting proposal. Contextual help would be really great. We will consider this approach and see if we can implement it.

Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Ray Lawrence - Monday, 16 January 2006, 9:13 PM

Hi Andy and Urs,

My views haven't changed since the first time I saw this. Simply brilliant!

Ray

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Andrea Bicciolo - Monday, 16 January 2006, 10:04 PM

Urs, it is a very interesting improvement over the theme customization. I tested it briefly and I has been very impressed: great power at your fingertips!

Would it be a bad idea to add a "preview" of some kind so people can view edit's results prior to commit them to the server?

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Peter DeBruyn - Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 1:45 AM

When I was using the demo it seemed that edit made and saved as temporary were showing up immediately - I didn't even have to refresh my browser.

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 4:54 PM

Andrea, the preview button is not necessary because every change is written to the open webpage in the browser and you will see the changed view directly.

It is possible that you do not see any changes because you tried to change an page element with a CSS specifier which is overwritten somewhere in the CSS files with a more specific specifier.

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Wednesday, 18 January 2006, 8:49 PM

Andrea, some browsers have problems to immediately show the changes made to borders. This could be a rendering problem. I help myself by turning the "Outline" command of the FF "Web Developer" on and of.

Perhaps this helps Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Anil Sharma - Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 4:22 PM

truly amazing.. can we help in development ? also, will this effect the speed of loading of pages ?

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 6:16 PM

Anil, you and everybody interested can help with

working/playing with Chameleon to find possible bugs
work on the Chameleon documentation on http://docs.moodle.org/en/Chameleon. Especially HowTos and use scenarios would be great.

@will this effect the speed of loading of pages ?
Chameleon will load some additional JavaScript files which increase load time when the files are not cached and the Chameleon interface is calculated in the background. You can turn of Chameleon editing in the theme config file to avoid loading these JavaScript files.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)

Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Ray Lawrence - Sunday, 22 January 2006, 11:59 PM

I was on site with a client recently and tried to demonstrate Chameleon using a computer running on the Client's network. On shift-click in IE a series of windows popped up with "script debugging" type names, in Firefox shift click did not produce the the Chameleon pop-up.

I was able to ask the network manager about the network set up: Windows 2000 with all service packs installed. I was advised that there were no special browser settings on the computer I was using.

Unfortunately, I didn't check the version if IE. Firefox was fresh install of 1.06. It may help to know that it was not possible to set up CSS Inspector, following the installation of GreaseMonkey.

I suspect that the computer had been configured in a particular way to deal with scripts, but have no evidence to back this up.

Apologies that this report is rather short on detail. sad

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Josep M. Fontana - Wednesday, 18 January 2006, 11:38 PM

Well, Urs, what can I say? This is GREAT.

Josep M.

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Peter DeBruyn - Wednesday, 25 January 2006, 3:10 PM

When using the color selector chart the drop-down boxes on the underlying window show through and hide portions of the chart. This can be dealt with by dragging the color chart away from the underlying drop-downs - but it would be nice if they didn't come through or when that chart pops up maybe its original position could be off to the left. Not a big deal and not something that should get in the way of a beta release - nudge.

The system is great - but I still struggle with tracking down the operative element. Feels like an easter egg hunt trying to find which tag is making 'that line' yellow? My dream solution would be to shift-right-click on a line, which would bring up a menu where I could select which attribute I wanted to know 'about (size, color, etc.) and then be taken to the css text making 'that line' yellow.

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Andrew Walker - Wednesday, 25 January 2006, 5:13 PM

Hi Peter,

The select boxes appearing through the colour picker are a result of how Internet Explorer currently draws select boxes - they can't have other elements layered over the top of them. This doesn't happen in Firefox or Opera. It also looks like Microsoft have fixed this behaviour in IE 7,

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/01/17/514076.aspx

I think we can move the colour picker over to the side to move it away from the select boxes to help ease the problem.

There are some more features coming that will hopefully help with finding where styles are coming from and with debugging specificity conflicts

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Re: Chameleon Possible problems accessing Chameleon on MacOS

by Steve Richards - Saturday, 28 January 2006, 7:37 AM

Hi Urs and Andrew

I have just come across this theme and get a pretty jumbled web page when I go to http://chameleon-theme.unodo.de/

I am using an iBook running MacOS 10.4.4. I have tried using Safari, Firefox and the old Internet Explorer but without sucess. The page is too jumbled with coloured boxes over the login boxes and in other place.

Am I missing something or doing somthing wrong?

Any thoughts?

Steve

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Re: Chameleon Possible problems accessing Chameleon on MacOS

by Peter DeBruyn - Saturday, 28 January 2006, 2:46 PM

I think you're doing everything right - the site page has just been heavily modified in a nonsensical way. If you scroll down the page you can still login with chameleon / chameleon on the right side. Then on the left hand side is a link to a course "About Moodle" and the course styles are in good form to give yourself a test drive. There was also something about the site reverting to its original state periodically but I don't know how often that is.

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Re: Chameleon Possible problems accessing Chameleon on MacOS

by Urs Hunkler - Saturday, 28 January 2006, 5:34 PM

Hi Steve,

Peter explained already what happened - a deconstructionist design approach led to a huge usability lag

The site is reset once a day in the moment. And I keep an eye on it, so when I discover changes that make the site unusable I reset it more often.

This beta version of Chameleon will not work with Safari, please work with Chameleon in your Firefox browser.

Urs

Average of ratings: Useful (1)

Re: Chameleon Possible problems accessing Chameleon on MacOS

by John Hobson - Friday, 3 February 2006, 8:21 PM

Amazing!

When are you going to release this Urs?

Regards

John

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Re: Chameleon - and rights management

by Ralf Hilgenstock - Sunday, 5 February 2006, 8:51 PM

Hi Urs and Andrew,

your new theme developments are great.

My question is the following:
Where are the changes of the css-files stored? I think they are stored in the moodle/theme/mytheme folder.
Who as the right to make changes in the theme? Admin, trainer and in future perhaps users.

If I see it right, this is the fiorst stuation, that trainer and perhaps user can make changes to files in the moodle-folder. Didn't we get problems with the folder rights management.

In 1.6 we move the lang folder in the moodledata/lang folder. What do you think about moving the themes folders in a new moodledata/theme folder? Then we can add a function to upload new themes in a moodle meu like we do it in 1.6 with the lang files. If we do this we have no problems with the folder rights management.

Ralf

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Re: Chameleon - and rights management

by Urs Hunkler - Monday, 6 February 2006, 3:55 PM

Hi Ralf,

thank you very much for your nice words.

Chameleon comes with two new CSS files for the fixed and the temporary changes. They are in the Chameleon theme folder and the write permission of these two files has to be set by the admin who installs Chameleon.

Chameleon itself gives trainers and editing teachers the permission to work with Chameleon. And perhaps in the future users, right

The changes for the file writing rights are the same as now with the lang files. In a basic installation you can not change lang files with Moodle's interface. When the server admin sets write permissions for the lang files you can change them. With Chameleon it's exactly the same.

@"In 1.6 we move the lang folder in the moodledata/lang folder. What do you think about moving the themes folders in a new moodledata/theme folder? Then we can add a function to upload new themes in a moodle meu like we do it in 1.6 with the lang files."

Ralp, this is a great idea. We will look if this way of theme handling is possible and what will be involved in a change.

Thanks for your great proposal.
Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by werner mülders - Tuesday, 21 February 2006, 6:28 AM

Hi Urs!

I tried your "chameleon" on an experimental server and I think it's a beautiful piece of work.
It's an easy way of changing the point of view from the overwhelming options of moodle to arrange and organize individualized or/ and cooperative learning to a more aesthetic point of view. So the point of view, especially: changing the point of view, helps to change the perspective. It is a lot of fun to experiment with this theme and the technique behind.
There's one question:
In 1.6 the changes, that have applied to the server, worked with administrators account, but didn't work when I changed to the users-mode. Perhaps I did not find the right option within the css-tool. any idea? errötend

All the best to You

Felix ( werner)

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Tuesday, 21 February 2006, 4:19 PM

Hi Felix,

Thank you very much for your nice words.

Chameleon for now allows admins and teachers with edit rights to make changes. In config.php against the end of the file you can set two options:

chameleonenabled (switch Chameleon on/off)
chameleonteachereditenabled (switch teacher edit on/off)

In this version of Chameleon you can change Moodle styling completely. This can lead to big usability problems. The Chameleon site has been deconstructed some times already Therefore it is important to restrict usage. What do you think?

Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by werner mülders - Wednesday, 22 February 2006, 4:50 AM

HI Urs,

I will try and misshape and destroy one of my testsites as good as possible breites Grinsen

So I will see, at what point, stage .. it would be a good idea to establish different roles with managable rights.

Felix

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Athail Pulino - Sunday, 5 March 2006, 5:58 AM

Hi, there.

Trying to use Chameleon on 1.5.3+. Receive the following error message:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: page_doc_link() in /var/www/html/moodle/theme/chameleon/footer.html on line 8

Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance.

Athail.

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Sunday, 5 March 2006, 4:34 PM

Hi Athail, great that you are going to try Chameleon.

The function page_doc_link() is new in Moodle 1.6 and creates a link to the Moodle Docs page corresponding to the open Moodle page.

I added a check for this function to the footer to avoid the error in Moodle 1.5. You can get the updated version from the Moodle 1.6 CVS.

Your feedback about your experiences with Chameleon are very welcome.

Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Athail Pulino - Sunday, 5 March 2006, 7:11 PM

Urs:

Thanks for your feedback.
Just updated Moodle 1.6 (in my computer) using CVS.
Went to the /theme/chameleon directory and checking the footer.html could not find any differences between the old one and the recently updated. (lines 8, 9, 10...).
The error, when renewing the 1.5.3 version, remains.
Any advice?

Thanks in advance.

Athail Pulino

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Sunday, 5 March 2006, 9:10 PM

Athail,

CVS seams to be down in the moment. I can't check if my update is saved there or not.

Here are the changes for line 6 to 11:

<div id="footer">
<?php
  if (function_exists('page_doc_link')) {
    echo '<p class="helplink">';
    echo page_doc_link(get_string('moodledocslink'));
    echo '</p>';
  }
?>

I hope this helps.

Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Athail Pulino - Monday, 6 March 2006, 1:21 AM

Urs:

Worked fine. I feel the theme has some influence on the speed of loading the page. Is it true?

Thank you.

Athail.

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Monday, 6 March 2006, 3:09 AM

Athail, you are welcome.

When the styling dialog is active (chameleonenabled = true) then all scripts for the client side interface are loaded and calculated. This slows down the page.

Therefore it is best to activate the interface only when you work on the CSS and deactivate it after you finished. Then Chameleon loads without the interface and is as fast as other themes.

I wish you great CSS work with Chameleon
Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by werner mülders - Tuesday, 7 March 2006, 4:24 PM

Hallo Urs,

saving the results / changes made with chameleon is not possible although I get the feedback that the changes were saved. I tried to save changes using chameleon as a course-theme. The directory and its files aren't write-protected.

Do you have any idea?

Felix

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Andrew Walker - Tuesday, 7 March 2006, 5:13 PM

Hi,

What permissions are set for the files user_styles.css and temp_user_styles.css?

Try setting them to 646 (or maybe 666)

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Josie Fraser - Monday, 21 August 2006, 10:51 PM

Hi all – just to add to all the praise – it’s a fantastic theme.

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

I’ve changed the permissions for the two files within the chameleon folder as suggested, but unfortunately the changes still won’t stick. Any other ideas?

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Josie Fraser - Tuesday, 22 August 2006, 7:23 PM

Sorted it! Thanks!

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Colin Lawson - Sunday, 1 October 2006, 6:11 AM

Josie, I am having the same problem, how did you resolve the issue?? (I have changed the permissions of the Chameleon folder and the files within it to 777 and still no luck - my theme changes do not stick). Thanks in advance for any help.

Colin

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Natalia Foronda Velásquez - Saturday, 10 February 2007, 1:50 AM

Hi again... guiño

I have a misterious problem with the engine... the chameleonenabled variable is set to true, the engine was working great, but since the past week I can´t edit anymore the theme...

Was wrong? what would be the problem?

As test, I put the engine in the standarlogo theme and now I can edit the theme... but some styles from Chameleon are missing... confuso

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Saturday, 10 February 2007, 6:49 PM

Hi Natalia,

very mysterious, as you say. And a quite difficult task to solve. The most likely possibility is any change on the theme folder or theme files due to:

an update
an admin having changed file/folder rights
you having changed/deleted any files

If you don't find the reason within a short time I recommend you newly install the basic theme and add the Chameleon engine again. When this fresh installed theme works you may copy your "user_styles.css" file from your old theme folder into the new one. If it then stops working you found the reason. If it works you can continue without any hassle.

I hope this helps
Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Athail Pulino - Monday, 6 March 2006, 3:25 AM

Hi, Urs.

After a few tests on Moodle 1.5.3+ I had to quit from chameleon theme. Some features don't work well. For instance, Instant Messenger has a very bad behavior.
Anyway, looking forward for new versions. I liked the idea very much.
My knowledge is not sufficient to help fixing bugs.

Athail.

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Re: Chameleon - importing other themes

by Peter DeBruyn - Saturday, 1 April 2006, 2:32 AM

Hi Urs,

I am working on importing another theme into the Chameleon (engine?) and am wondering why there is a styles_layout.css file and not just user_styles.css file. Are there any plans to enable Chameleon to edit multiple css files within itself so that there is continuity in the schema of having css broken up into colors, fonts, layout and moz?

At this point, to import another theme, I am going to delete the file styles_layout.css, delete all the code within user_styles.css, copy in all non php files from the theme I'm importing and then edit config.php to accommodate the new files and settings from the imported themes config.php. Does that plan work or are there any tips you might provide?

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Re: Chameleon - importing other themes

by Urs Hunkler - Thursday, 20 April 2006, 3:12 AM

Peter, your question was the starting point to enhance Chameleon a bit...

@"Are there any plans to enable Chameleon to edit multiple css files within itself so that there is continuity in the schema of having css broken up into colors, fonts, layout and moz?"

No, in the moment there are no plans. And you are right, it's confusing to see a mixture with a normal Moodle CSS file and a user editable CSS file in the theme folder. Therefore Chameleon will come with temp_user_styles.css and user_styles.css.

@"At this point, to import another theme ... Does that plan work or are there any tips you might provide?"

This question made me think too For easy intergration of Chameleon into other themes it is important to reduce the procedure to as few as possible changes.

_ All Chameleon files are in the "ui" folder.
_ The Chameleon PHP code is not in "header.html" but in a PHP file. This gets included in "header.html" with one line of code.

Based on these changes you can add the Chameleon engine as you called it and which is a good labeling to any existing theme.

_ add the "ui" folder to your theme folder
_ add the two files temp_user_styles.css and user_styles.css to your theme folder and set write permissions for apache
_ add the include line in "header.html"
_ add the Chameleon vars in "config.php" and set them

Then you can start working on your CSS for any Moodle page from your browser.

Thank you very much for your great and helpful questions Peter.

I hope this helps
Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Chad Outten - Friday, 7 April 2006, 10:03 AM

awesome work guys!

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Thursday, 20 April 2006, 4:04 AM

Read the explanation how to enhance any Moodle theme with the Chameleon engine in Moodle Docs on the Chameleon page in the section Adding the Chameleon "engine" to your theme.

Have fun
Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Eduardo Fernandes - Monday, 24 April 2006, 9:59 PM

Hi. I have explored the sample page and my only question is where can i get this theme?????????????????????

t is one of the best themes i have sawn .

goood work

eduardo

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Monday, 24 April 2006, 11:11 PM

Eduardo,

thanks for your nice words. Chameleon is part of Moodle 1.6. You can also use it with 1.5.

I hope this helps.
Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Helen Foster - Monday, 24 April 2006, 11:12 PM

Hi Eduardo,

Chameleon is in Moodle 1.6 beta, which may be downloaded from Moodle Download.

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Saving Chameleon Themes as Moodle Themes

by Tony Silva - Sunday, 21 May 2006, 12:39 AM

Thee cheers for the Chameleon developers! I was able to do in a few hours what it took days to do by trying to discipher all of the Moodle classes.

Chameleon has allowed us to beautify the Moodle interface considerably, but I'm still not quite at the level of making it match the rest of the site it lives in. Here are two questions on that front:

1. How can I get a header similar to the Family Mentors main page into parts of Moodle without munging Chameleon's theming? The top DIV is just plain HTML. Below that is a graphic that will be themed to whatever the guest is reading. Right now, it's just a static hard-coded picture.

Chameleon seems to only allow for a background image over which the course title and log-in info is laid. If I add new classes to the "styles.css" file, will Chameleon display them for easy changes in the future?

2. Once we've created the theme we like using Chameleon, is there an easy way to make it a standard Moodle theme? I'm not keen on uploading a lot of JavaScript with each page view.

Thanks,
Tony

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Re: Saving Chameleon Themes as Moodle Themes

by Helen Foster - Monday, 22 May 2006, 7:57 PM

Hi Tony,

Please check the section "Once your theme is completed" in Moodle Docs Chameleon for the answer to your question 2.

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can't change topics section borders in chameleon

by Matt Gibson - Wednesday, 7 June 2006, 7:06 PM

Hi Urs, great work with this - it's pure genius!

I'm having a great time fiddling with the colour scheme now, but have got mightily stuck on one page element, which I can't seem to alter, no matter what. My CSS is basic, but developing and I'm starting with the basic greenish chameleon theme that came with 1.6 beta 4. The 1px border of the topics sections within the courses is jammed on black despite my having changed every border-color to #666cc and added a td.content style. Should it be doing this? Everything else works fine.

One small bug - in Firefox, when switching away from chameleon's free edit to another window/tab, then switching back, the free edit window resets to the top of the stylesheet, making it hard to find where you were.

Thanks again,

Matt

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Re: can't change topics section borders in chameleon

by Matt Gibson - Friday, 9 June 2006, 3:21 PM

Found it!

I hadn't realised I might need to add new tags. The following worked for background and border of the topic sections within courses.

tr.section.main {
background-color: #b3cbe6;
}
td.content {
border-color: #6666cc;
}
td.left.side {
border-color: #6666cc;
}
td.right.side {
border-color: #6666cc;
}

I think a guide to what tags do what would be a good addition to moodle docs. Perhaps a screenshot with labels?

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Re: can't change topics section borders in chameleon

by Urs Hunkler - Friday, 9 June 2006, 5:57 PM

Hi Matt,

great that you could find the solution. My answer to your question was still on my ToDo list . And thank you very much for your nice words.

You are right, a CSS guide for Moodle would be great. This guide is such a huge project that one person can't handle it. The collaborative Wiki approach in Moodle Docs could be a way to manage this project.

Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Simon Clegg - Wednesday, 28 June 2006, 5:27 PM

Hi there,

I think this new feature is fantastic. It must make Moodle now the easiest and most flexible CMS to theme. Well done.

I am using the theme for the first time in a new installation of Version 1.6. Everything works fine but for two things. First of all I get this initial message when I apply the Cameleon Theme from Admin:

Warning: readfile() has been disabled for security reasons in /home/*********/public_html/support/theme/index.php on line 46

Secondly when I go to Save to Server I get confirmation that everything has been saved, but when the page is refreshed everything reverts to the original settings???

Thanks, and best of luck with this project!

Simon

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Thursday, 29 June 2006, 6:26 PM

Hello Simon,

thank you for your nice words.

@ "Warning: readfile() has been disabled..." Do you get this error message only when you change to the Chameleon theme or do you get it with every theme change?

@ "... when the page is refreshed everything reverts to the original settings." Please read in the Moodle Docs Chameleon page about file permissions.

I hope my information is helpful for you
Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Simon Clegg - Thursday, 29 June 2006, 9:07 PM

Thanks Urs,

The warning message appears when I choose ANY of th themes.

The problem with the chameleon styles is not resolved even though I have changed chmod on all chameleon css files to 0777 (?)

Please advise,

Simon

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Friday, 30 June 2006, 1:23 AM

Simon, you may check the permission settings of your theme folder and the other themes folders too. Are all folders readable and is execution allowed?

Does it work then?
Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Simon Clegg - Friday, 30 June 2006, 3:03 AM

Thanks Urs,

The Chameleon folder and all files within are set at chmod 0777 and the problem persists.

What am I missing. I am really anxious to solve this problem as I believe it is one of the most effective productivity features of Moodle an any CMS/LMS

Thanks for your continued support.

Simon

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Friday, 30 June 2006, 5:23 AM

Hmm, from your description I suppose it's a problem with the rights on your server. Chameleon is running on serveral Moodle installations without this issues.

Please check all the rights for Moodle and for your web server.

Urs

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Simon Clegg - Friday, 30 June 2006, 3:45 PM

I don't understand how this is possible. I have encountered no other write permission problems. Also, the Chameleon UI does indicates that the changes have been made with no errors reported.

?????

Thanks

Simon

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Andrew Walker - Friday, 30 June 2006, 5:04 PM

"Also, the Chameleon UI does indicates that the changes have been made with no errors reported."

That's a bug which I think i've fixed it now. There should be an update with some new stuff (including this fix) quite soon

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by José Robles - Friday, 14 July 2006, 7:06 AM

Excelente tema chameleon. Felicidades!.

Creo que falta agregar la clase dimmed (user_styles.css) para que los recursos ocultos se muestren como tal.

Jose Robles

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Mark Stevens - Wednesday, 28 March 2007, 10:18 PM

Urs,

Amazing theme and thanks again for all of your work! I think I have the same question as Jose: the class "dimmed" seems to be missing in Chameleon. Should I file a bug tracker on it?

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Mark Stevens - Sunday, 8 April 2007, 7:30 PM

Follow-up: This was resolved in MDL-9192. Thanks!

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Richard wang - Tuesday, 18 July 2006, 10:49 AM

Hi Urs,

I wonder why I am not allowed to access your site, http://chameleon-theme.unodo.de/.

I have follwoed the instruction on the web page, using "chameleon" as both user name and password, however, result is always "invalid....".

What is my problem?

Thanks

Richard

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Tuesday, 18 July 2006, 2:17 PM

Thank you for your information Richard,

the password had changed. I suppose someone clicked on "Lost password?" and somehow got a new password generated.

I changed it back to "chameleon" now.

Urs

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I need help

by Natalia Foronda Velásquez - Thursday, 1 February 2007, 6:05 AM

Hi!

I´m a new chameleon engine user... sor far, I think that it´s great because thanks to that engine we are saving a lot of time editing the Moodle interface.

I´m editing the "standarlogo theme" using the engine and I completed my work.. but when I set to "false" the variable $THEME->chameleonenabled, the styles disappear.

I saved in the server... the .css files have the correct permissions... so... what happend? triste

Thanks for your help!

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Re: I need help

by Urs Hunkler - Thursday, 1 February 2007, 6:51 AM

Hi Natalia, great that Chameleon helps you style your Moodle.

Did you add the CSS file "user_styles.css" to THEME->sheets = array(..., 'user_styles');? If not the CSS you created with Chameleon is not loaded any more when you deactivate the engine.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)

Re: I need help

by Natalia Foronda Velásquez - Thursday, 1 February 2007, 7:48 AM

Thanks!!!

Maybe I didn´t see that I had to do that in the steps described... but it´s ok... the important thing is that I learned a new thing and my theme works!

Thanks again guiño

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Paul Butterworth - Wednesday, 7 March 2007, 7:28 PM

I must say that I have found chameleon amazing!

It makes the whole customisation process so simple and intuitive, I wish this simpliicty could be used in other web applications such as Joomla.

Awesome work guys

Paul

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by way kay - Friday, 9 March 2007, 10:03 PM

Hi Urs,

Chameleon works like a charm; I take my hat off to everyone involved, really excellent work!

Just some quick questions...

I used Chameleon on the administrator’s login and it looks great. When I login in under another account I cant see the changes. Is this normal, or have I missed something?

Where do I post this sort of question and how can I get involved in the development? ie. testing, general helping out.

Thanks,

Wayne

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Matt Gibson - Friday, 20 April 2007, 7:26 PM

I love chameleon!

Its enormously useful. I was planning on using it to get students to design their own themes for a sort of design-a-theme competition, but it lacks an image uploader, which makes this less easy. Is there a way/are there any plans to add an image upload facilty?

Matt

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by jimmy kent - Tuesday, 12 June 2007, 6:22 PM

Hi Urs

First of all great theme. I have uploaded it and it seems to work fine. But as a rookie, I have a few problems

1. How to install accordion?
2. How do I customize the theme, as for e.g. change font, heading colours and text?

I am running both 1.6 and 1.8 versions on different servers. I aslo dont have any clue as to how to work with CSS. However I have a fair knowledge of HTML, but I guess that aint very helpful.

Many thanks

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Monday, 25 June 2007, 9:00 PM

Hi Jimmy,

1.) You may download and install the "Accordion" course format and the theme. The course format "accordion" goes into the "course/format" folder in your moodle installation. The theme "accordion" goes into your theme folder. You may also check the "accordion" thread in the Course formats forum.

2.) The "accordion" them is based on Chameleon. Please read in docs.moodle.org about Chameleon and how you work with this interactive theme.

"accordion" works with Moodle 1.5 and 1.6. There is no version for Moodle 1.7 and 1.8.

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by John Finch - Monday, 25 June 2007, 6:55 PM

Hi All

I have used the chameleon theme for three courses (seperate copies each time) and all is very well indeed. Chameleon is great and just what we need.

There is one small problem I cannot find a solution for:

in the 'jump to...' menu - everthing has been truncated down to 10 characters - if I change to a non-chameleon them each combo box item shows the full topic names.

eg: in non-chameleon:

1)Johns First Resource About Stuff

2)John Second Resource about stuff

eg: in chameleon

1)Johns Fi...

2)Johns Se...

I would like the full topic descriptions to show in the 'jump to...' menu- can anyone let me know how please.

with many thanks

John

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Urs Hunkler - Monday, 25 June 2007, 8:24 PM

Hi John,

you may change the value for "$THEME->navmenuwidth = nn;" in your "chameleon/onfig.php" file.

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by John Finch - Friday, 29 June 2007, 10:20 PM

Hi Urs

thankyou for the reply - I have changed the setting of navmenuwidth to be = 40. I thn stopped and restarted appache and mysql. But the 'jump-to' menu is still just showing 'john ...'

Is there something else I need to do for this to take effect?

I also have another question regarding chameleon. I have recently upgraded from 1.6 to 1.8 and my breadcrumbs seem to have lost the >>. It has been replaced by a small white square.

with many thanks for your continued help.

best wishes

John

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Angel Luis Vicentín - Thursday, 5 March 2009, 9:53 PM

Hello. I have a small problem with the item.
I modify some sections of the front page (with Shift+click) and then save the changes on the server. At that time the changes are. But when doing a refresh these changes are not. Why might this happen?

Thanks.

Angel

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Joerg Maschtaler - Monday, 7 December 2009, 5:35 PM

Hi there,

first of all: it's a very nice theme.

But we have a little layout problem which can't we fix so far.

If a user uses the Internet Explorer 6 the standard chat window show artifatcs:

If the frame border is moved everything become well:

How can I fix it?
(This problem won't occur if another theme is used.)

Thanks in advance.
regards, Jörg

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Mary Evans - Monday, 7 December 2009, 11:02 PM

You might find this article helpful in finding a solution to the problem.

http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/about-boxmodel.htm

The main problem with IE6 is that there are many issues with the way it reads the CSS file. IE7 & IE8 have changed quite a bit, and display the page better than the older browsers, but even so they have their own problems too.

I'm sorry I can't help you further because I don't have access now to IE6 browser. I tend to use Firefox as this is more web standards compliant.

Mary

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Joerg Maschtaler - Tuesday, 8 December 2009, 7:30 AM

Hi Mary,

thank you for the links. There are indeed interesting although I am afraid I am not as familiar with CSS issues of IE6 as needed so far.
And I agree that Firefox seems to be more compliant to standards. Unfortunately not all of our users are able to choose but have to use IE and some of them even IE6.
Nevertheless I'll take a look at these sites.

regards,
Jörg

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Jo Doughty-Roberts - Tuesday, 5 January 2010, 6:46 AM

Hi,

This looks like a great tool to edit our theme. I have done everything detailed in documentation ie. eg. set $THEME ->chameleonenabled = true; in my config.php but for some reason it won't bring up the CSS window to make changes.

Any ideas??

Thanks

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Dominic Bond - Friday, 12 November 2010, 10:11 PM

I am having trouble displaying SCORM packages through IE7 (sadly the only browser the school where I work offers for students). I am using a derivative of the Chameleon theme (although the problem seem to occur with other themes). I have tried to change some of the code, but haven't had any success. Please note how it displays on IE7 in the attached pic.

If anyone could advise me of code changes that I can make I would appreciate it.

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Dominic Bond - Friday, 12 November 2010, 10:13 PM

This is how it shows on Chrome (which is fine)

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Mary Evans - Friday, 12 November 2010, 10:41 PM

Is there any way you could get me a temp user access so that I can view this on your website? If it is possible, you can send me a private message with usename and password, and also the site address, then I will be better able to try to help you with this problem.

Cheers

Mary

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Re: Chameleon - an Interactive Moodle Theme

by Kamal Joshi - Friday, 23 December 2011, 3:14 PM

"chameleon" username and password is not working...

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