Hello,
the growing number of questions relating to the Moodle 1.5 themes made me think how I can give some overview. I will write here a serial of short sections over the next time. Each will cover one topic of the Moodle 1.5 themes.
Please propose topics, make general comments about the 1.5 themes, how they work etc. here.
Please use the parallel thread "1.5 Themes Basics" to ask and comment on each written topic.
Urs
Nicole, Urs will be certainly give you a far more complete answer, btw I'm now in the process of creating a couple of theme for 1.5dev, and the following is my two cents about.
After some tries, what I currently do is to load the styles_layout.css from the "standard" theme, thus omitting "standard" styles_color and styles_fonts, then I build from scratch the custom theme css for fonts and colors.
If some layout of "standard" theme is not good for you, you can always ovverride it on your custom style sheets.
Of course I'm using FireFox with the web developer extension, in any case be carefull since some class is omitted from display. If you find yourself creating not working classes for apparently no reason, switch to code view and check for classes that are not shown.
Thanks Urs, I choose this way since I found myself overriding lot of classes when keep loading all three standars styles: so after a brief discussion with Martin I selected this way to minimize the effort maximizing the font and colors consitency across site pages.
BTW, the formal_white theme still need work to be conisdered ready.
Hi Nicole,
you could do that, but it means going the hard way. The CSS editor of the developer toolbar is very handy for some short tries but quite uncomfortable for the complex work on themes. It does not have any property support, help and search and replace functions.
I can think of two other ways:
Install Moodle 1.5 via CVS as a second installation on your local machine or on your server and work with the themes directly in Moodle 1.5. Use a good CSS editor with property support. Via CVS you can update the Moodle installation easily with one command. Your running Moodle 1.4 system would not be affected.
Save the Moodle pages you want to work on with Firefox as "Web Page, complete". Then use a good CSS editor to work on your local copy. If you open the downloaded page in your browser and the CSS file in your CSS editor you can view the changes simply by refreshing the page in the browser. You will probably start with the course page and download the other pages to go on, for example the forum page or an admin page or some else.
When you work with the three CSS files, it will be much easier to change colors or fonts. You can replace the one downloaded CSS file by the three CSS files from any existing Moodle 1.5 theme. Working with gradients and background images is also possible this way.
For windows:
I use TopStyle Pro, which is very comfortable with a CSS property popup and a Style Inspector and many more functions. It has build in Firefox and MSIE side by side preview.
The free TopStyle Lite focuses on the CSS property popup and the Style Inspector but lacks many other functions including the browser preview. Via the popup TopStyle proposes all parameters you can use with a selected CSS property.
Hi Gustav,
these are the next topics on my to do list for the Moodle CSS series. I will continue publishing them when I have the time to write and draw.
Urs
George, from the "Admin" block in your course you select "Settings" and change the theme with the theme list "Force theme:" towards the end of the configuration page under "Force language:". Just to be sure - you use Moodle 1.5.x?
Urs