I have a suggestion for the Moodle maintainers: Why not keep the "standard" themes truly "standard" between releases? The standard themes in 1.4 were gorgeously rendered...somewhere along the way, someone mucked with them in 1.5, and are not nearly as visually pleasing as the original versions. The fonts no longer render as well, the pages aren't as sharp, color background schemes are gone, text justification is screwed up.
Sure, I could copy the standardblue theme over from 1.4. (In fact, I've done so, and it's obvious that there have been other internal changes which prevents full rendering of the original theme.) But if you're thinking that, you're missing the point: It should *not* be necessary to modify a standard theme after every upgrade. A little continuity between Moodle releases would do wonders for those of us who do try to keep up with the releases, but don't necessarily want to modify the look and feel of our Moodle sites every time we upgrade.
How about restoring the original look-and-feel of the 1.4 standard themes in the 1.5 release tree? This seems like a no-brainer to me.
--Brian
The theme changes are quite radical in 1.5 and things needed to be broken severely this time so that we wouldn't have to break them ever again.
"standard" itself needs to be completely bland now, it's crucial to how it all works.
The others (standardred, standardblue etc) have simply not had enough work done to recreate them in the new schema because no one has had time to do it yet. Instead of just complaining please feel compelled to fix them up and attach them here for us.
"standard" itself needs to be completely bland now, it's crucial to how it all works.
The others (standardred, standardblue etc) have simply not had enough work done to recreate them in the new schema because no one has had time to do it yet. Instead of just complaining please feel compelled to fix them up and attach them here for us.
Sorry, Martin. Between preparing for Moodle presentations at the upcoming MACE education conference in Kansas in July and the national League for Innovation CIT conference in Dallas, and working on the dates usability patch for 1.5 that still doesn't seem to have made the cut from 1.4.3 (pretty high bar there), along with small usability patches for various other aspects of Moodle, and some usability bug reports that I'm preparing for 1.5, I suspect I'll have to put this one at the end of the queue.
Sorry for complaining...I'll go back to the other Moodle advocacy stuff I've been working on. Don't mind me.
--Brian
Sorry for complaining...I'll go back to the other Moodle advocacy stuff I've been working on. Don't mind me.
--Brian
We're all very busy and I'm glad you are doing all that with Moodle.
I apologise for the frustrated tone in my reply. Let me rephrase my request so it reads more like I really meant: if *anyone* would like to upgrade the 1.5 standardx themes to make them look more like the 1.4 versions, please send them in as I'd be happy to include them in the distribution.
I apologise for the frustrated tone in my reply. Let me rephrase my request so it reads more like I really meant: if *anyone* would like to upgrade the 1.5 standardx themes to make them look more like the 1.4 versions, please send them in as I'd be happy to include them in the distribution.
Hi Brian!
From my forum readings, many things have gone into v1.5 to improve the code and features from wonderful developers like yourself. From my understanding this is why the release has been delayed.
My classes ended just recently and I just could not really get my head above water prior to that time to try to help out. I wanted to create a theme but then that process changed. I understand the reliance with the new themes on CSS is so eventually teachers, students, admins etc. will be able to choose their own theme and to make it easier to change and create themes. Still there is a learning curve.
I really liked the garden theme and that is just a mess right now. I am going to work on a newbie manual for using SSH and TortoiseCVS for the recent and then upgrading the code for including images on the left hand side of the course descriptions. By then, hopefully, the theme "dust" will have settled some so I can play a bit with that and some new mods I am interested in. Then, back to school. 
I know this theme stuff is annoying right now. But, it is suppose to lead to a better and easier to configure Moodle future. There are folks creating some nice new themes for v1.5. Let's see what is available when v1.5 is officially released.
To the future of Moodle!!!
WP1
You're right, WP. It was my belief that these types of issues are best tackled in the beta phase, but obviously I'm wrong (as usual). Since I've been branded a complainer for bringing up the issue, I guess I've now been shamed into fixing the problem. Which I was going to do anyway even without the shame part.
--Brian
--Brian
Hi Brian!
You are not a complainer. You just help to keep folks "on point". And that's "OK".
Please take a personal thank you from me (and I am sure many others) for all the hard work you do for Moodle including your help with us non-coding newbies (keeping us on point).
WP1
Over the summer, I'm going to try to take some time to take a look at the standard themes, see if I can fix them up a bit so they more closely resemble the original standard themes from 1.4. I didn't realize changes from 1.4 to 1.5 necessitated changes in the standard themes.
--Brian
--Brian
Brian, changes to 1.5 necessitated changes to the standard themes, and to the standard blocks, and generally in many other "standard" areas. Changes to 1.X or 2.0 in the future will also require modifications to be made to existing code, it's inevitable as Moodle matures and evolves.
I 'd hazard a guess that the themes part stood out more than other things for two reasons: a) Visual impressions always stand out, while we might have completely rewritten some other internal part and if you didn't follow CVS you 'd never know, b) It's not a big deal if a theme has some slight deficiencies, but it is a big deal if the code has deficiencies.
Since you 've been participating in the forums for a long time now, you surely know that there is simply not enough manpower to polish everything to a shining edge. Furthermore, every developer has their own agenda and for good or for bad right now there isn't anyone dedicated to the themes (except possibly Urs, who does spend lots of time bringing orangewhite to a level which hopefully surpasses your expectations).
I think it's not fair to imply that changing the themes was bad engineering or something. It's only natural that big progress can only come through change, change that takes something at the end of its capabilities and replaces it with something far more efficient and extensible.
It's up to every one of us, including you, to help make the new system as good as the old one and even better, because now it can become even better. And that's what I think Martin would have said if he had as much time as I do right now.
Cheers!
Jon
I 'd hazard a guess that the themes part stood out more than other things for two reasons: a) Visual impressions always stand out, while we might have completely rewritten some other internal part and if you didn't follow CVS you 'd never know, b) It's not a big deal if a theme has some slight deficiencies, but it is a big deal if the code has deficiencies.
Since you 've been participating in the forums for a long time now, you surely know that there is simply not enough manpower to polish everything to a shining edge. Furthermore, every developer has their own agenda and for good or for bad right now there isn't anyone dedicated to the themes (except possibly Urs, who does spend lots of time bringing orangewhite to a level which hopefully surpasses your expectations).
I think it's not fair to imply that changing the themes was bad engineering or something. It's only natural that big progress can only come through change, change that takes something at the end of its capabilities and replaces it with something far more efficient and extensible.
It's up to every one of us, including you, to help make the new system as good as the old one and even better, because now it can become even better. And that's what I think Martin would have said if he had as much time as I do right now.
Cheers!
Jon
Hi Brian,
I can see where you are coming from, upgrading your themes is one more job you could probably do without. Still the new themes are a good mod - maybe even a great mod.
I just installed 1.5 beta and the upgrade made no attempt to keep my heavily modified themes. (Probably a good thing because they were a messy hack). So I spent 12 hours and remade the theme from scratch. I love the granularity and control over the CSS. I'm sure I will have fun with this once I get my head around it. (... a road map to understanding the themes would be handy).
My beta server is at http://safezone.dyndns.org/moodle.html, along with the newly hacked theme.
Steve.
I can see where you are coming from, upgrading your themes is one more job you could probably do without. Still the new themes are a good mod - maybe even a great mod.
I just installed 1.5 beta and the upgrade made no attempt to keep my heavily modified themes. (Probably a good thing because they were a messy hack). So I spent 12 hours and remade the theme from scratch. I love the granularity and control over the CSS. I'm sure I will have fun with this once I get my head around it. (... a road map to understanding the themes would be handy).
My beta server is at http://safezone.dyndns.org/moodle.html, along with the newly hacked theme.
Steve.
Brian, I feel your pain!
Mark