I've taken my first crack at Theming a Moodle 1.9 site and I'm quite pleased with the results. It's far easier to theme a site than with other CMSs I've attempted.
My main sources for info on the subject have been:
MoodleDocs - Make your own theme
MoodleDocs - Creating a custom theme
Moodleman's excellent
The route I followed is basically outlined in "Make your own theme".
It seems to me that one can get pretty far by writing CSS exceptions to the main parent styles. However, once you start drilling down through some content, some very specific style rules reveal themselves. I find myself writing rules for things like '#calendar .maincalendar .eventlist .event' just to get the border color corrected. This doesn't seem right.
Am I doing something wrong?
Hi Craig
Like you, I have found that exceptions work and are precise but lack elegance in the long run. The original construction was brilliant in its flexibility but where I find it tricky is finding out which of the loads of potential inheritances etc. is affecting my page. I am at the draft phase (and have been on-and-off for over a year) because I have a load of content to write and frankly the theming is a distraction.
Firebug and developer toolbar have both been suggested and work as long as your screen is wide enough to take the sometimes page-wide element descriptions. Other users have also been very helpful in their suggestions (see my related post).
So, can I empathise - absolutely. Are you doing something wrong? - I don't think so. Can I help - not yet!
Keep plugging
Ed
Like you, I have found that exceptions work and are precise but lack elegance in the long run. The original construction was brilliant in its flexibility but where I find it tricky is finding out which of the loads of potential inheritances etc. is affecting my page. I am at the draft phase (and have been on-and-off for over a year) because I have a load of content to write and frankly the theming is a distraction.
Firebug and developer toolbar have both been suggested and work as long as your screen is wide enough to take the sometimes page-wide element descriptions. Other users have also been very helpful in their suggestions (see my related post).
So, can I empathise - absolutely. Are you doing something wrong? - I don't think so. Can I help - not yet!
Keep plugging
Ed
Ed,
Thanks for the confirmation.
I did neglect to mention that I am using Firebug quite a bit to get the job done. I can't imagine I'd be nearly as far along without it, in fact.
Also, I see that the forum has somehow turned my links into an embedded YouTube video which was not my intention.
I had originally referenced the two MoodleDocs I'd been using in addition to the video:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Creating_a_custom_theme
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Make_your_own_theme
I guess my next questions is, if this is something that a themer deals with regularly, does a Theme Developer (a person who builds themes that do not inherit from parent themes) face this as well? If not, then perhaps this is the way to go.
I know the reason for building off of parent themes is to make your new theme future-proof, but has anyone documented what a new original theme entails? How does one go about updating an original theme when a new version of Moodle is released?
Thanks for the confirmation.
I did neglect to mention that I am using Firebug quite a bit to get the job done. I can't imagine I'd be nearly as far along without it, in fact.
Also, I see that the forum has somehow turned my links into an embedded YouTube video which was not my intention.
I had originally referenced the two MoodleDocs I'd been using in addition to the video:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Creating_a_custom_theme
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Make_your_own_theme
I guess my next questions is, if this is something that a themer deals with regularly, does a Theme Developer (a person who builds themes that do not inherit from parent themes) face this as well? If not, then perhaps this is the way to go.
I know the reason for building off of parent themes is to make your new theme future-proof, but has anyone documented what a new original theme entails? How does one go about updating an original theme when a new version of Moodle is released?