Moodle in English: Leaving the summary blank

A constant complaint here is the useless resource summary field, esp. for text or html resources.

It seems just like busy work to have to enter something in here, and have it not show up. Its nice as an option, but it is a pain to have it required.

No big problem, I thought, I'll just add a default value of a ' ' to the summary column in mdl_resources.

By MySQL says:

#1101 - BLOB column 'summary' can't have a default value

So is there anyway to make the resource summary skippable?

Tired of advising faculty to put a space in here if they don't feel like typing up an invisible summary for their syllabus!

Thanks!

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Przemyslaw Stencel - Wednesday, 4 August 2004, 9:35 AM

There may be a hack (which I'm not aware of

) to make it skippable, but I'd just like to say that it's not totally invisible. Click on the "Resources" link in the "Activities" block and you'll see where it comes in handy. big grin

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Martin Dougiamas - Wednesday, 4 August 2004, 11:24 AM

As well as showing on the Resources page, the summary is intended to improve searching (when we get that feature).

But fear not, the summary is now optional in Moodle 1.4.

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Timothy Takemoto - Wednesday, 4 August 2004, 12:15 PM

Great! Summaries are optional!
But I have been trained for so long that I will probably keep writing them. Even though I never read them.
Tim

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by W Page - Wednesday, 4 August 2004, 11:35 PM

Hi Martin,

Maybe a comment can be made next to the Summary TextBox similar to the comments next to the HTML editor (like "Read carefully"). That would alert the user that the information in this textbox will be used for "metadata" . This would easily explain its purpose and may cause users to fill it in at the time of use. That way it will save time later when the extensive search feature is in effect.

Just a thought.

WP1

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Martin Dougiamas - Thursday, 5 August 2004, 10:53 AM

There is one already called "summary".

I've improved the text a little for Moodle 1.4.

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Michael Penney - Thursday, 5 August 2004, 5:05 AM

Great to hear it will be optional in 1.4, so there is no easy way to make it so in 1.3?

At Cal State, we have to do alot of work (about 20mh) on the source code to make Moodle ADA compliant, so upgrading is a non-trivial issue (we'll probably wait to upgrade from 1.3.1 until January).

As far as searching goes, I can see the benefit for non-text resources. Hopefully the search tool will search fulltext on html/text resourcess?

Anyway, the main issue comes with faculty using a resource to post their syllabus, which just seems silly to have to enter summary text for.

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by W Page - Thursday, 5 August 2004, 6:04 AM

Hi Michael.

Can you share some of the ADA code, particularly if you have any that address page text size.

WP1

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ADA code (was: Re: Leaving the summary blank)

by Michael Penney - Thursday, 5 August 2004, 8:06 AM

What we did for that is change formal white from using pixel based text sizes to ems.

The rest of the code is unfortunatly sprinkled throughout the 1.3.1 source code.

The main thing was going through and putting alt tags on _all_ the images and form labels.

Anyway, code and docs here (login as guest) The docs are from the 1.2.1 work, but they mostly appy to 1.3.1 as well.

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Re: ADA code (was: Re: Leaving the summary blank)

by W Page - Thursday, 5 August 2004, 10:41 AM

Hello Michael,

Thank you. BTW, what is "ems".

WP1

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Re: ADA code (was: Re: Leaving the summary blank)

by Jan Dierckx - Thursday, 5 August 2004, 12:23 PM

ems is a way to set the font-size relative to the default font-size of the browser. If a user sets his browser to use bigger font-size, all the fine-print in th epage also gets a little bit bigger (so it is important for ADA)

You can read more about it here.

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Re: ADA code (was: Re: Leaving the summary blank)

by David Scotson - Thursday, 5 August 2004, 7:29 PM

I tried to do that in CSS (as part of implementing a user-selectable text size changer) but found that text sizes were often hard-coded into the HTML and so the text size only changed in a few areas.

Did I miss something obvious?

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Re: ADA code (was: Re: Leaving the summary blank)

by Michael Penney - Saturday, 7 August 2004, 3:13 AM

Using formal white on 1.3.1 with pixels changed to ems, seems to work most places.

Check out the formal white version in the download above (it has some other changes for sec508, so it may act a bit odd on a standard 1.3.1 install).

Our site is learn.humboldt.edu, you can login as guest and check out the "Introduction to Moodle" course to see how it works in most places (and please let me know if you find a place it doesn't

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Re: ADA code (was: Re: Leaving the summary blank)

by David Scotson - Monday, 9 August 2004, 11:26 PM

I think we're talking at slightly cross-purposes because I got the wrong end of the stick.

Changing from pixels to ems means that Internet Explorer on Windows will allow the user to increase and decrease the text size (other browsers always let you do this).

My issue, which is probably more about usablity & design than strictly accessability, is that the font sizes in Moodle are sometimes hard-coded with <font> tags and so you can't override their default size in the CSS.

For example if you visit our development site you can see a little experimental text-size switcher in the top-right-hand corner.

http://guide.gla.ac.uk/moodle/development/

This changes the size of some text, but others remain the same e.g. the names of tutors in the Course description boxes. From looking at your site it seems you too have been unable to overule the font size setting in that particular case.

I'm not sure if that was W Page's problem with text size too, or if it was the Internet Explorer resizing bug that troubling him.

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Re: ADA code (was: Re: Leaving the summary blank)

by W Page - Tuesday, 10 August 2004, 6:29 AM

Hi David,

Just want to let you know just how "outta sight" I thought your dev site was. The ability to change text size on the site if very helpful to some students. Take a look at the upper right corner of the web page indicated below, It allows for the font and size adjustment of the web page. The problem I have with the site is that the changes do not follow through from page to page. Otherwise, I think it is pretty neat too.

Section 508
http://www.section508.gov/

WP1

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Re: ADA code (was: Re: Leaving the summary blank)

by David Scotson - Tuesday, 10 August 2004, 4:32 PM

Do you have cookies disabled? When I move from page to page in that site it retains my choice of font face and size.

It looks like it uses a different technique from the the style switcher I implemented (copied from zeldman.com) though you can achieve very similar effects. With Zeldman's switcher you can also view and switch stylesheets in Mozilla by choosing *View* -> *Use Style* and selecting from the list.

You can use these switchers to control any part of your site's style (colors, images, fonts, even layout) as long as those styles are defined only in the CSS. I'm hoping that Moodle will soon allow user stylesheet switching so that we can create a 'hi-vis' theme for those with poor eyesight, using bigger text and large, clear, black & white icons etc. and perhaps one for viewing on small-screen devices.

Obviously this will also allow users to choose their favourite background color, font and or other style if that is a requested feature.

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Martin Dougiamas - Thursday, 5 August 2004, 10:52 AM

Sorry to hear you've had to fork the code so much .. Moodle 1.5 should address all those ADA concerns so you won't need to.

Thanks for documenting your changes so well ... I wasn't aware of this work before. it will definitely come in useful as a checklist for me! In fact, most of it we can probably fix in 1.4.

As for removing the need for summary in 1.3.x, edit mod/resource/details.php and look around line 35 for this:

        if (!$form->name or !$form->type or !$form->summary) {
            error(get_string("filloutallfields"), $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"]);
        }

Just remove the summary bit:

        if (!$form->name or !$form->type) {
            error(get_string("filloutallfields"), $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"]);
        }

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Timothy Takemoto - Thursday, 5 August 2004, 12:12 PM

The optionality of the summary is a really nice thing about 1.4. It would be nice if the other similar non-optional summaries went the same way. E.g.

The name of a quiz item. If one does not enter the name of the quiz item then not only is one prompted for reentry but one also gets all the text erased. Ideally this would default to the quiz question as it does when using GIFT import format.
The self introduction.
The course description

Warnings are great though.
Tim

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Martin Dougiamas - Thursday, 5 August 2004, 1:03 PM

The first idea (quiz name = quiz question) is a good idea, I'll do that one.

I'm not budging on user and course descriptions though.

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Joseph Rézeau - Tuesday, 10 August 2004, 1:24 AM

Timothy Takemoto wrote: The optionality of the summary is a really nice thing about 1.4. It would be nice if the other similar non-optional summaries went the same way. E.g.
The self introduction.
The course description

Martin Dougiamas answered: I'm not budging on user and course descriptions though.

I notice that in Moodle version 1.4DEV, user Description is now optional; I wish the City/Town field was optional as well; the Country option can be set by default in Admin Config, which is a good thing.
Now that the User Description has become optional, it would be logical to move it under the The following items are optional: heading, wouldn't it?

Joseph_R

PS Should I file a bug/feature request for it?

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Martin Dougiamas - Tuesday, 10 August 2004, 1:59 AM

The user description is not optional. Users are required to fill it out when they edit their profiles.

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Michael Penney - Tuesday, 10 August 2004, 2:58 AM

I understand. Students here don't want to have to type anything, they just want to login and go to the course.

Often the first time they login is just before the exam/paper/forum post is due, at 2am, when there is no one to ask whether they really need to add this information. This isn't common for all students, but it does seem to be common among students who complain the most loudly, call site admins at 2am, refuse to give personal information on a web page without a good reason, etc.

I did find that in 1.2.1, you could add default values (such as a ' ') for required student information in the database viat phpMyAdmin, so that students could login the first time and go directly to their courses.

Hopefully you can still do this in 1.x.x (my problem was that you could not do this for the resource summary, as it was a field type that would not accept a default value).

It would be ideal if this was something local site admins could set in the database or config for all 'required' fields, IMO.

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Timothy Takemoto - Tuesday, 10 August 2004, 6:31 AM

Michael Penny, Martin

I, personally, dont mind course being compulsory, since it is me that writes the course summary, (especially if this were combined with some "display course summary, no of weeks, photo of teacher on course page" check boxes.)

But when one has 600 students, and this number will increase, that do not like to make linguistic self representation, signing into courses at about the same time, shortly before homework deadlines, then it becomes a headache for the reasons that Michael Penny mentions.

Dear Michael Penny,
Thank you very much for the tip regarding adding a default value. I hope it is still there in 1.4.

Tim

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by W Page - Tuesday, 10 August 2004, 7:18 AM

QUOTE:
"I, personally, dont mind course being compulsory, since it is me that writes the course summary, (especially if this were combined with some "display course summary, no of weeks, photo of teacher on course page" check boxes.)" Timothy Takemoto

This project is completed and has been submitted for evaluation for submission into v1.4 Final. The script with instructions can be downloaded from the thread.

SUBMISSION OF NEW SCRIPT: Course Image
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=10856

The following will be submitted for review soon but I do not think it will be ready for v1.4 Final

New Project: Course Image + Course Detail
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=10858

WP1

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by David Scotson - Thursday, 5 August 2004, 7:21 PM

"If one does not enter the name of the quiz item then not only is one prompted for reentry but one also gets all the text erased."

That sounds like a bug. Is it a known one?

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Michael Penney - Saturday, 7 August 2004, 3:40 AM

Thanks for the summary hack Martin!

As for Sec508, it would be awesome if this can be done in 1.4, all US Public Universities technically have to be trying to comply with these guidelines (technically all private ones that receive and federal $ also), and in California the compliance requirements (w/508) are often even more strict.

Our changes should pass all the bobby.watchfire.com 508 tests, (though not all Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0).

PS, one of our staff not directly involved with our Moodle project just got back from OSCON 2004 and told me "I hope the open source LMS you guys are working with is Moodle, 'cause that was the one the buzz at OSCON said was the best

>".

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Andrew Steele - Friday, 18 February 2005, 10:55 PM

Martin

You say that the summary will be searchable when that feature arrives... Any idea what the plans are for that? wink

Andrew

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Marcus Green - Thursday, 5 August 2004, 6:14 AM

I put a dot (full stop/period) in the summary space sometimes. Despite only me using it at the moment I often look at resources later on and think, hmmm should have put some description into there.

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Joseph Rézeau - Sunday, 8 August 2004, 12:45 AM

USING version 1.4DEV dated 2004080300

Now that the summary field has become optional (using version 1.4dev) I still have a complaint about its behavior when displaying some resources! Let me explain.

When resources such as Composed plain text page or Composed web page are displayed, the Summary field is NOT displayed at their top. NOTE: such pages are displayed within the actual Moodle window/frame, not in an extra frame.

However, when resources such as uploaded HTML files or Web sites are displayed, and the teacher has selected the following parameters:

Same window:

þ Display this resource within the current window

þ Put resource in a frame to keep site navigation visible

then, the Summary Field is displayed - at the bottom of the upper Frame (the Moodle navigation frame) - even if it's empty! This is a waste of valuable screen space (takes up amost 2 centimeters in height on my 17" screen in 1024x768 mode.

My wishes:

at least make that empty space disappear when Summary Field is empty;
or provide an option for Summary field to be displayed or hidden when the actual Resource is being displayed.

Thanks!

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by W Page - Sunday, 8 August 2004, 7:14 AM

Hi All!

QUOTE:
"or provide an option for Summary field to be displayed or hidden when the actual Resource is being displayed." Joseph Rézeau

That one sounds pretty good.

WP1

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Martin Dougiamas - Sunday, 8 August 2004, 4:09 PM

The frame height is actually not affected by the display of that text - it's impossible to calculate what height would be needed to fit the text in so we don't.

If you want to change that frame height go to: Admin >> Configuration >> Modules >> Resource >> Settings

I'm wondering now, though, about ways around this. Should we use IFRAMEs instead of normal FRAMES?

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Re: Leaving the summary blank

by Joseph Rézeau - Tuesday, 10 August 2004, 12:51 AM

Hi Martin

>If you want to change that frame height go to: Admin >> Configuration >> Modules >> Resource >> Settings

Thanks for pointing me to this workaround; changing the frame height from the default 130 px to 75px gave me exactly the visual effect I wanted to achieve (i.e. got me rid of the potentially empty Summary space at the bottom of the top frame!)

>I'm wondering now, though, about ways around this. Should we use IFRAMEs instead of normal FRAMES?

Using IFRAMES might indeed be a solution (on the other hand, it might break other things into the bargain...)

Thanks

Joseph_R

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