Grid Format - better way to present list of courses to users?

Grid Format - better way to present list of courses to users?

by Deleted user -
Number of replies: 7

I am using 1.9 at the moment, and I love the Grid format.

I have 8 courses, each of which has approximately 5 to 10 Topics. 

I give the user the Category Link, which presents them with a vertical list of the 8 courses.

I want to make the list more visual and informative, so for each course, I put a heading, an image, and some description in the Course Summary.  I also hyperlink the heading and image to point to the course URL.

The result is of course still a vertical list, this time each item is a horizontal box containing the course name, and with the new header, image and description off to the right.

EDIT: see attached

It doesn't look great, there is a lot of empty space, and it means a much longer scroll.

Ideally, it would be much nicer if there was a grid of the list of courses too.

Can anyone suggest a way to do this please?

Attachment Untitled.png
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Deleted user

Re: Grid Format - better way to present list of courses to users?

by Hartmut Scherer -

Hi,

I don't know how to use the Grid format for categories. When I use images in categories, I add them into the first column of a table for each category and write the description in the second column.

With kind regards,

Hartmut

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Hartmut Scherer

Re: Grid Format - better way to present list of courses to users?

by Deleted user -

Just saw your response, thanks Hartmut!

I think I slightly over-engineered my solution!

I didn't realise there were tables built in - great to know.

Thanks again!

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Deleted user

Re: Grid Format - better way to present list of courses to users?

by Deleted user -

Update:

I have managed to figure it out.

I created a 3x3 table in Kompozer (free) WYSIWYG HTML editor, created the text that I wanted including links, copied the WYSIWYG table from Kompozer and dropped it into the Category Description.

Then I inserted my images at that stage within description.

It works well. Hope it helps someone else.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Deleted user

Re: Grid Format - better way to present list of courses to users?

by Gareth J Barnard -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

Hi Maths guy,

I've been having lots of issues getting the Grid format to work with Moodle 2.1 (http://moodle.org/plugins/pluginversions.php?plugin=format_grid) - I'm curious how you got it to wok with Moodle 1.9 as it is not stated that there is a version for it?

If you want to perform some greater customisation, then the code that creates the list of categories is in /course/category.php at the bottom which is a table so could be coded in such a way as to place (for example) courses in a two column format.

Cheers,

Gareth

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Gareth J Barnard

Re: Grid Format - better way to present list of courses to users?

by Deleted user -

Gareth, we just installed it for 1.9 and it works fine.

I am concerned to note that people are having issues with 2.x, as we are hoping to upgrade, so I am keeping an eye on those threads.

Thanks for the php tip.

Eamonn

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Deleted user

Re: Grid Format - better way to present list of courses to users?

by Julian Ridden -

We have made some major updates to the code today for 2.x. Please grab the latest from https://github.com/PukunuiAustralia/moodle-courseformat_grid and your reported issues should dissapear.

This latest version no longer generates errors with debug turned on. It has been tested in Moodle 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2.

Julian

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Julian Ridden

Re: Grid Format - better way to present list of courses to users?

by Deleted user -

Great news, thanks very much Julian!

Average of ratings: -