Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

by Shaun Daubney -
Number of replies: 14

Nothing ready to download yet, but thought I'd post that I'm currently working on Aardvark 2.2 with an ETA of Easter. Although that is heavy on the E part.

Codenamed "Shredded Tweet" due to my obvious focus towards a Twitter inspired header/menu/profilebar combo.

At this point in the process, suggestions and wishlists are welcomed (although I may not have the skill set to impliment them).

My wishlist that I'm looking to impliment in 2.2 (although I again refer to my limited skill set so may not all come to fruition) is...

  • New intergrated header/menu/profile bar (DONE)
  • Notification badges of new forum posts, events, etc
  • Customisable backgrounds for individual courses
  • New RSS powered news module displaying feeds across the top of frontpage and course pages like TapTu (highly unlikely I'll pull this off)
Attachment Screen Shot 2012-02-12 at February 12, 08.14.32 PM.jpg
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Re: Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

by Shaun Daubney -

This is what I'm aiming for. Help would be so appreciated though because I'm not entirely sure where to start with it.

Attachment taptustyle.jpg
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Re: Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

by Mary Evans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Oh! It's NOT pink! Its BLUE! LOL

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Re: Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

by Mary Evans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi Shaun,

Joking apart, I think what you need to do first is make the theme a fluid theme, but add a setting that users can fix the width should they want to. Take a look at the latest Formal White theme for an idea of what I am talking about.

As for adding the 'Tweets' or whatever these things are called, to the top of the page, all depends on how you want them to work. You could perhaps add them to a scroller that rotates, like the one in Edu-Moodle. I've got the code for that if you want to try it out?

HTH

Mary

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Re: Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

by Shaun Daubney -
Yes please. I've been hacking apart the RSS code this morning
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Re: Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

by James Cracknell -

Sean

Please could you use the following hex/rgb codes for Mary's version smile

lightpink       lightpink       #FFB6C125518219312695295

lightpink 1lightpink 1#FFAEB925517418512168959

lightpink 2lightpink 2#EEA2AD23816217311379438

lightpink 3lightpink 3#CD8C952051401499800909

lightpink 4lightpink 4#8B5F65139951016643595

pink        pink        #FFC0CB25519220313353215

pink 1pink 1#FFB5C525518119712957183

pink 2pink 2#EEA9B823816918412102126

pink 3pink 3#CD919E20514515810392013

pink 4pink 4#8B636C139991087103371

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Re: Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

by Mary Evans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

ignore!

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Re: Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

by Shaun Daubney -

Thanks for the email Mary. Whilst I was tidying up the code to send you I actually ended up spotting something that made me change track and actually improve on my original idea (i think). So I managed not to solve my problem, but get rid of it at least.

Attachment Screen Shot 2012-02-15 at February 15, 12.55.06 AM.jpg
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Re: Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

by Chris Kenniburg -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

Hello Shaun,

I've always admired your work with the themes.  This new 2.2 theme looks very clean and nice! In my opinion, I'd drop the RSS feed as it seems to be just a distraction for the overall design of the page.  I am not quite sure what rss feed I'd want to display on our moodle setup.  I'd imagine you'd have to make sure the feed had photos associated with it too if they were to be formatted as seen in the mockup.

Can't wait to see what you come up with!  Your themes are always a pleasure to look at.

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Re: Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

by Shaun Daubney -

Thanks. I've been playing around with some code today and have the beginnings of something for the RSS area, but I'm actually thinking of shelving it in favour of a modified RSS Block instead.

 

The thing I can't get my head around at the moment that I really want to introduce is course specific backgrounds.

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Re: Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

by Chris Kenniburg -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

The RSS block might be better.

For your twitter style menu, you might want to take a look at the code for rocket theme where in the menu it dynamically displays a list of enrolled/teacher courses for the use when they login.  http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=185129

The dynamic display of enrolled courses as a drop down would be a nice and useful addition to your theme.

The other suggestion would be to include the Quick Course Search option as developed in this block: http://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=block_quickcourselist  This would also be a nice addition to your main menu at the top of the theme.  With this block you start typing the name of a course and it displays a list as you type as suggestions.  would be very nice if integrated into your top menu as it would save realestate in the page.

Just my 2 cents if you are soliciting ideas for the theme!

I am interested in using your new theme as the twitter menu is very similar to the menu style we use on our main school website:  http://dearbornschools.org  Would be nice to have this for our Moodle site as well.

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Re: Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

by Shaun Daubney -

Thanks I'll def look into those.

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Re: Aardvark 2.2 (Codename: Shredded Tweet) Pre-release info

by Danny Wahl -

I have a couple of ideas for you about the course-level backgrounds

1) you just need a "for" loop that populates a field in the theme settings for every course and you can add the url to the image from there - obviously this doesn't sound like what you want, you want the course teacher to be able to select the image

2) code it in such a way that it looks for a "resource" in the course maybe called "background.xxx" - and populate with that (kinda tricky, but feasible). So the teacher uploads an image into the course overview section and makes it hidden and the theme sees it and makes it the background.

The second is kinda hacky too, but may work.

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