General plugins

No, it is about system security. It is very important to control access to all categories of users.

I'm a little taken aback by this response.

The whole point of open source software is that it isn't kept secret with a 'specialised few' having access and charging money for everyone else to use their system. Anyone with the time and inclination can access the code and use it in whatever way they want.

The reason that people keep saying that 'allowing anyone on the system to run arbitrary javascript is a security risk' is not some kind of conspiracy to keep us in work (and I'll point out at this point, I am a teacher, who has developed a several free plugins in my spare time - not really an example of someone who is just trying to extort as much money as possible!). It means that it is a well documented security risk.

Maybe an interface to allow some fancy effects (based on YUI) within the web page resource would be a good idea. It would need to be properly written (again to avoid the security risks involved in allowing arbitrary code to run on user's browsers and to make it user friendly, so teachers don't have to learn YUI to use it), but it could be useful. However, someone will have to write the code to make that available.

Admin can set the Moodle site wide to trust content (see image for illustration) in which case certain roles (e.g. teachers) may add content such as scripts. Then a teacher can add in, say, a web page resource, something like

<script type="text/javascript"> ... </script>

so as to apply client side effects. It may be possible to refer to the YUI libraries moodle already uses, but if not, the teacher can include the relevant js file in the course files in something like:

<script type="text/javascript" src="..."></script>

and refer to them.

For effects on the main page, you can add to the page an html block and put the scripts there.

hth

At least I stimulated a discussion, but I make no apology for the provocation.

If I were to sum up Moodle in a word - compromise. I am always having to compsomise and I will explain why. Davo unwittingly alludes to the reasons why I get frustrated:

"Anyone with the time and inclination can access the code and use it in whatever way they want" and "... who has developed several free plugins in my spare time"

I teach. I know my subject and I know teaching.

I have been experimenting with Moodle for some months now; I have bought a couple of books (Mary Cooch's Moodle 2.0 and Alistair Hole's Javascript and Moodle), I have spent hours browsing the moodle docs and youtube videos as well as researching some existing moodle sites to see how creative people can be with it. On the face of it, it seemed a powerful tool and after the excitement came the "gotcha's".

I create learning content, I want to deliver it "creatively" and I keep getting frustrated with a feeble wysiwyg editor when it comes to adding my learning content in pages, or lessons etc. Yet I see a load of examples of others delivering learning content quite creatively. I recently came accross regular expressions for analysing answers to open questions, and again after the initial excitement came the "gotcha's". Just something simple as wanting to change the headers on my theme became a mammoth research for "how to's" and then you delve under the hood to php code - Layout scripts, config files, output rendererer's etc. etc.

I mentioned the Open University site OpenLearn as an example of a creative delivery. I was impressed with their use of the YUI library to assist with their delivery and thought, yeah, I'll have some of that ... wrong!

I don't want to be a php expert, a javascript expert, a moodle internal expert and YUI library expert or learn "regular expression" speak!! I want to create learning content and spend my time being creative with the courses I design! Moodle has the power and sophistication under the hood but I can't access it that easily because the interface I have, to manipulate that functionality, is weak. Instead, I have to open it up and manipulate it from the inside or - employ techies to do it (like I suspect the OU do!).

Life is too short!

Davo probably enjoys writing plugins, that's his life choice on how to spend his spare time.

I teach, I know my subject, I know how to teach and I want to deliver my learning content to students (who are my consumers) creatively without also learning moodle internals, PHP, javascript, etc. etc. etc.

I am sorry you feel your "helpful answer" wasn't well received, but I am frustrated with Moodle and the answer did not move me forward to my goal, it just seemed like yet another "gotcha"!

I have to compromise my delivery because I can't get at the functionality that exists under the hood.

I can't speak for other teachers, but when I read the posts and questions from many of the threads on this forum I suspect there are others equally frustrated with the "gotcha's" they keep coming up against when all they really want to do is deliver their content to their consumers using the power offered by the tool without first transforming into a "nerd".