Turn off Autolinking for individual users

Turn off Autolinking for individual users

by Steve Bilton -
Number of replies: 5

Hello All,

As like many moodlers I have extensive glossaries, which are auto-linked within my other resources, the 'lesson module' is the most heavily affected.

I have students ask me this question quite frequently and thought this to be a good idea to action some changes on my site:

"How do I turn the glossary links off? It makes reading the text difficult"

And to be honest, I'd agree!

Auto-linking to the glossary is a Great feature! However there are downsides.....

Within Diploma/Degree level courses where a lot of textual content is a requirement it's an arduous job manually using the nolink features or "<span class="nolink">term</span>" for each word (or indeed page) I do not think should be linked.

Aside from this being a long winded task, it means I have to make the decision whether a term should or should not be linked. Although this really should be the decision of the student.

Students are at different levels, expertise and backgrounds. Many are from all around the world where English is the NOT their first language. The qualifications however, are taught in English as per the examining bodies requirements.

Students also have different learning styles and preferences, some use the linked terms in the glossaries heavily, others not at all.

So to my point - Shouldn't the feature to turn on/off the auto-linking for glossary terms to available for the student to toggle according to their personal preference?

Well I think so..... and I was wondering what other moodlers, teachers and admins alike think about providing this as an option to the student.

I'm still running a heavily customised 1.8.8 Moodle.....Upgrading to 1.9 isn't really an option and the jump to Moodle 2, well let's just say is problematic for us at present.

Regardless of which version of Moodle you are using, I don't believe this is an option in ANY version for the student to turn off/on the glossary auto-linking feature. Unless of course I'm mistaken?

I was hoping someone may have developed or hacked-up the code to allow for this.... If there are people out there with a solution I'd be very happy to get hold of it!!

I'd very much like to see this as a feature. Does anyone else have any thoughts about this?

All the best ;)

Steve

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In reply to Steve Bilton

Re: Turn off Autolinking for individual users

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hi Steve,

This feature is available in Moodle 2. A teacher can give students the "manage local filters" capability. Which means that a student with this capability can turn glossary autolink ON/OFF either for a whole course or for each activity instance individually.

If you are stuck with Moodle 1.8 I have no idea if it would be possible to hack (even more) your moodle to introduce this feature. Probably quite difficult.sad

Joseph

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Turn off Autolinking for individual users

by Steve Bilton -

Hi Joseph,

Thanks for the info, I wasn't aware this feature had been included in moodle 2 - Although I'm very pleased to see it's there indeed!!

It's about time I started developing a new site anyway - bring on V2 Moodle!

 

Thanks

Steve

www.sheilds-elearning.co.uk

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In reply to Steve Bilton

Re: Turn off Autolinking for individual users

by Frank Ralf -
Hi Steve,

If it's just a matter of readability a possible workaround would be to style the autolinks using CSS so that they are less obstrusive, e.g. giving them the same color as the normal text and only change their appearance on hover.

hth
Frank
Average of ratings: Useful (2)
In reply to Frank Ralf

Re: Turn off Autolinking for individual users

by Steve Bilton -

Hi Frank,

I'm such a dumb ass!! I can't believe I didn't think of that!!

Great idea indeed. I'll change the style so it's  little less visually obtuse

I did however make a change which helped in the Manage Filters settings (www.mysite.com/admin/settings.php?section=filtersettings)

This reduced the repetition of filtered phrases & keyword words:

Filter match once per page [X]


Automatic linking filters will only generate a single link for the first matching text instance found on the complete page. All others are ignored.

Filter match once per text [X]


Automatic linking filters will only generate a single link for the first matching text instance found in each item of text (e.g., resource, block) on the page. All others are ignored. This setting is ignored if the one per page setting is yes.

Thanks to you both for the replies

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In reply to Steve Bilton

Re: Turn off Autolinking for individual users

by Steve Bilton -

Hi,

I updated my CSS files and commented out the existing code, it's much easier to read now smile

styles_color.css

a.autolink:link,
a.autolink:visited {
  color:#000000;
  /*SB remove background color - background: #DDDDDD;  <-- removed background colour as this makes it hard to read*/
}

a.autolink.glossary:hover {
  cursor: help;
  /*SB add background colour*/
  background: #DDDDDD;       /*<--- now background colour exists on mouseover*/
}

 

Similarly for styles_layout.css

/* style for glossary auto links*/
a.autolink:link, a.autolink:visited
{
background-color: #fff;
background-image: none;
background-repeat: repeat;
background-attachment: scroll;
background-position: 0% 0%;
border-bottom-width: 1px; /*<-- changed size of dotts - it's much more subtle*/
/*border-bottom-width: 2px;*/
border-bottom-style: dotted;
border-bottom-color: #ffcb44;
}

So as per my previous post I've reduced the amount of times glossary terms (are repeated) appear on a page, I've also made the highlighted glossary terms much easier to read using CSS styling.

Here's an example of what the style now looks when doing some glossary terms tests.

We use a lot of health and safety terminology and it's quite repetative within course text.

  • You'll notice the word Safety appears a number of times but only the first word 'safety' term is highlighted.
  • The dotted underline is not as prominent making reading easier.
  • The hover on mouse over changes the background colour to grey
    (this only happens on mouseover, again much easier to read as this background previously was always visible before the changes to css)

Terms after css change

Testing Glossary style nebosh-glossary-visual-ease-of-reading-test

Terms before css change (for comparison)

Testing Glossary terms (before css change) nebosh-glossary-visual-ease-of-reading-beforetest

As you can see making changes to the css style really helped with readability! Imagine this in an A4 sized page stuff with glossary terms.... it's very difficult to read.

I hope it helps someone, it's just a simply tweak and it's much easier on the eyes.

Steve

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