I have made a default one if anyone's interested...
(Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Shaun Daubney -
Number of replies: 19
In reply to Shaun Daubney
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by A. T. Wyatt -
Very cool. A technical question:
How are your students testing their css? Do you have them all install a local instance of moodle, or do you give them server access to a prototype moodle instance? I would like to do this with my own students, but the technical problems were daunting (I am not able to run my own server, so we had nowhere to test.)
atw
How are your students testing their css? Do you have them all install a local instance of moodle, or do you give them server access to a prototype moodle instance? I would like to do this with my own students, but the technical problems were daunting (I am not able to run my own server, so we had nowhere to test.)
atw
In reply to A. T. Wyatt
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Shaun Daubney -
We do have the facility to run demo/practice servers for them to 'play' but to start with they'll be mostly focusing on just creating artistic backdrops. The idea is to have a similar scheme to the current MTV.com site where the content is displayed the same but it's submerged in distinctive themed backgrounds incorportating the Moodle logo. Like 'Moodle' as crop circles, or a blinging version, etc.
MTV.com
(Not that I'm stealing ideas ;)
Depending on how they do I may open it up and allow them to work on the CSS too, but for now, it's just the surround they'll be doing.
MTV.com
(Not that I'm stealing ideas ;)
Depending on how they do I may open it up and allow them to work on the CSS too, but for now, it's just the surround they'll be doing.
In reply to A. T. Wyatt
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Dave Perry -
There is an all-in download of moodle which includes something called XAMPP - it includes everything you need to run moodle (including pre-setup server software) that doesn't need administrator login on the windows PC to use - you just extract it to a folder the student has right access too (most institutions will have somewhere on C users have full rights to, e.g. C:\user) and then run the .exe files you need (httpd and mysqld). They can then install their themes as they would a real-world moodle on the machine they're sat at - using the url http://localhost/
My uni did something similar (packaged up J2E servers etc) and on logout the one folder we had full rights to was emptied.
HTH,
Dave
My uni did something similar (packaged up J2E servers etc) and on logout the one folder we had full rights to was emptied.
HTH,
Dave
In reply to Dave Perry
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by A. T. Wyatt -
Yes, I use the local install package for myself. But I thought it would be very slow to run off the network. I might give it a try. I have one student who would be a very good test case (having the skills to be successful from the beginning!)
Thanks,
atw
Thanks,
atw
In reply to Shaun Daubney
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by James Phillips -
"if anyone's interested..."
Are you kidding? They're great! A fantastic improvement to the overall look of a Moodle site.
James
Are you kidding? They're great! A fantastic improvement to the overall look of a Moodle site.
James
In reply to James Phillips
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Shaun Daubney -
Thank you. I will aim to get a downloadable version up next week when I've made a couple more tweaks. Maybe Wednesday after enrolment.
In reply to Shaun Daubney
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Andy Kemp -
Is the new version available yet? I hadn't seen an announcement.
Cheers
Andy
Cheers
Andy
In reply to Andy Kemp
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Shaun Daubney -
Yes, been up for a little while, the 2 new (current) themes are...
A very different path design wise I'm afriad, however I will make a new default at some point (prob. Autumn Study Break) in line with these with minimal theming.
In reply to Shaun Daubney
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Andy Kemp -
Thanks. I've downloaded the Attack of the Brains theme and will take a look. Shouldn't bee too hard to tweak it into what I need.
I did notice there are still several places where it unnecessarily fails xhtml validation. If I have a chance I will have a go at eliminating these so it works better in a screen reader environment.
If I get it into valid xhtml I'll post back the changes...
Cheers
Andy
I did notice there are still several places where it unnecessarily fails xhtml validation. If I have a chance I will have a go at eliminating these so it works better in a screen reader environment.
If I get it into valid xhtml I'll post back the changes...
Cheers
Andy
In reply to Andy Kemp
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Andy Kemp -
I also noticed that it doesn't render properly in IE8 (not in the compatibility mode which makes it render the same as IE7). The Moodle Logo ends up in a layer behind the background so can't be seen...
In reply to Andy Kemp
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Shaun Daubney -
I've not even looked at IE8 yet, the idea of anything that starts with IE fills me with terror. I'm sure Microsoft go out of their way to make things difficult.
In reply to Shaun Daubney
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Andy Kemp -
IE8 is far and away the best version of IE they have ever made, and whilst it still isn't as good as FireFox or Safari, I do actually find myself using more often then I ever would have in the past.
Also IE8 is much more standards compliant!
With IE8 scheduled for release later this year I think we will see lots of tweaking of websites going on... MS have however allowed for a 'compatability mode' which makes it render like IE7.
So If you don't want to fix your site for IE8 you can just add:
Also IE8 is much more standards compliant!
With IE8 scheduled for release later this year I think we will see lots of tweaking of websites going on... MS have however allowed for a 'compatability mode' which makes it render like IE7.
So If you don't want to fix your site for IE8 you can just add:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" />
To the header...
In reply to Andy Kemp
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Shaun Daubney -
Thanks, I'll try it.
In reply to Shaun Daubney
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Andy Kemp -
I have tracked down the reason none of the images were appearing in IE8. It is down to the transparent PNG fix js code, which doesn't check if it is IE8. In IE7 or 8 this was fixed so the JS doesn't need to run. Though for some reason if it does run in 8 it strips the images out...
I changed the check at the top so it now reads:
if ((version >= 5.5) && (version < 8) &&(document.body.filters))
This seems to work fine in IE8 both in compatibility and standards mode.
I have basically finished a rewrite of your theme stripping out all the tables etc and replacing them with div's so it is valid xhtml, whilst trying to maintain the same look.
It still needs a little bit of tidying up, and there are a couple of invalid CSS lines still to clean up but I think I am basically there...
You can see the site at:
http://moodle.1kemp.co.uk
And there is a test course with guest access so you can have a look at how different types of activities render.
I have also added a handful of CSS hack's for various modules to make them render more nicely in the theme. This includes fixing the width for the files section and stripping out the background in the Chat windows (otherwise it is almost impossible to see what is going on).
I appreciate many people are not bothered about having standards compliant code, but I know some are so when I am finished if Shaun is happy I'll offer a standards complaint version of his theme which people can use...
If you spot anything that doesn't look right in this version please drop me a note and I'll have a go at fixing it.
Cheers
Andy
I changed the check at the top so it now reads:
if ((version >= 5.5) && (version < 8) &&(document.body.filters))
This seems to work fine in IE8 both in compatibility and standards mode.
I have basically finished a rewrite of your theme stripping out all the tables etc and replacing them with div's so it is valid xhtml, whilst trying to maintain the same look.
It still needs a little bit of tidying up, and there are a couple of invalid CSS lines still to clean up but I think I am basically there...
You can see the site at:
http://moodle.1kemp.co.uk
And there is a test course with guest access so you can have a look at how different types of activities render.
I have also added a handful of CSS hack's for various modules to make them render more nicely in the theme. This includes fixing the width for the files section and stripping out the background in the Chat windows (otherwise it is almost impossible to see what is going on).
I appreciate many people are not bothered about having standards compliant code, but I know some are so when I am finished if Shaun is happy I'll offer a standards complaint version of his theme which people can use...
If you spot anything that doesn't look right in this version please drop me a note and I'll have a go at fixing it.
Cheers
Andy
In reply to Andy Kemp
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Joanna Tsai -
Hi, Shaun
I like your theme very much, it sounds very powerful, but I have problems with the layout, for forum module and other new module, the main problem is that there is no margin that characters too close to the border, I try my best to modify in the style_layout.css, however, there are a lot of codes and I am not so skillful that missing into it. Please see the attachment
In reply to Joanna Tsai
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Joanna Tsai -
For flashcard module, the explanation for play is no space to the border.
In reply to Joanna Tsai
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Joanna Tsai -
The another problem is about the theme Alternatives (Newbury College Theme Set) v3.10 - Emo Pink
I don't find what is beneath the logo, but everytime when you open the site or refresh, it always prints blue block first, then it disappears, I grasp the code for the blue color, and look through carefully all the files of this theme, but still can not find it. Would you give me some guide?
In reply to Shaun Daubney
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Manish Verma -
I hope College Blue makes it into the new set. I am using it in the production site and having some display issues with IE.
In reply to Manish Verma
Re: (Current) Newbury College Alternatives to Retire (in favour of new set)
by Shaun Daubney -
I doubt I'll be doing anymore work to College Blue I'm afraid. It was just my first theme, a kind of playground to learn CSS, PHP, etc. Sorry. You can try College Red though, it's still available for download, you just need to change some colours to blue.