Themes

Ahhh... alas, this cannot work without hacking of components outside the edit or report trees.  I'm now wading into waters from which I may emerge a creature indistinguishable from Godzilla.

I can only echo Mary's sentiments here. The deeper I have gone with Essential the more issues I find with how moodle is written. Not that Moodle is badly written, far from it. But with so many elements built over so many years it will take a while to get everything where we need it to be.

Of course bootstrap design is just highlighting it because Moodle was not written with bootstrap in mind. The more we can move towards not just CSS driven design (Moodle is nearly there) but also to Moodle CSS standards the happier I will be. Just in loping at icons I have discovered three different methodologies for apply styles (or not at all) to icon images and it is driving me insane.

But Moodle is constantly evolving. Always had and always will. We just need to be patient and continue to push the boundaries and provide the feedback and tracker items.

Time for another Moodle UX review?

Julian

It appears that UX Design is affecting more than just Moodle -> http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/51103

So it's just a matter of learning new skills and applying them.

I appreciate your remarks and believe you've hit the nail on the head with the assertion that most of what is encountered in trying to fix the themes is actually a Moodle problem.  Unfortunately, and surely in my case, most people are looking to themes to fix as much as they can because its a much harder and slower process to achieve the same result through Moodle core.  What's been accomplished here over the past 24 hours is immense in my eyes and hopefully will benefit many others.

"The real problem as I see it, is that there are few coders who are web designers and fewer still web designers who are coders."

And they are not users and do not have an adequate methodology for obtaining user input and signoff.

Hi Mary, thanks for all the assistance you're provided along the way.  I know I couldn't have made it without all the valuable suggestions.  This is where my Categories and items page is at current.  Using the essential theme, I've had to make the following changes:

1. grade/edit/tree/index.php: $PAGE->set_pagelayout from 'admin' to 'print' so I wouldn't cause myself so much harm
2. grade/edit/lib.php: added in the following clause so it would adequately handle the 'print' $active_type:

   • } else if ($active_type == 'print') { // hack to get a wide report
     $PAGE->set_pagelayout('print'); // end of hack

3. changed theme/essential/config.php so 'report' array only contained the following:

   • 'file' => 'columns1.php',
     'regions' => array(),

4. made the following additions to my custom css:

   • .gradetreebox h4 {font-size: 1.4em;}

     .gradetreebox td.colspan, .gradetreebox tr.category .cell {line-height: 1.3em;
     padding: 2px;
     vertical-align: middle;}

     .gradetreebox tr.category
     {padding: 1px;}

     .gradetreebox tr.category .level1 {background-color: #fdd4d5;}

     .gradetreebox tr.category .level2 { background-color: #d1e7f8;}

     .gradetreebox tr.category .level3 {background-color: #e8ffc7;}

     .gradetreebox tr.category .level4 {background-color: #fdffc7;}
     
     .gradetreebox tr.category .level5 {background-color: #eed7ea;}

     .gradetreebox th.level1,
     .gradetreebox th.level2,
     .gradetreebox th.level3,
     .gradetreebox th.level4,
     .gradetreebox th.level5
     {width: 2em !important; min-width: 2em;}

     .gradetreebox tr.categoryitem td.cell {background-color:#ffdab6; font-size: 1.4em;}

     .gradetreebox img.icon[title = "Aggregation"]{visibility:hidden;}

     .gradetreebox tr.categoryitem td.name:before {content:"CATEGORY TOTAL :";}

     .gradetreebox tr.item:last-of-type td.cell {background-color: #fdd4d5;}

I've yet to figure out how to match the color of the categoryitem line with the rest of the category but apparently everybody else's theme's have suffered the same issues.  And I'm flummoxed as to how to distinguish the Course total line at the bottom.  I'll probably keep at it but its probably beyond my padiwan skillset.