Essential pre-release testers needed

Essential pre-release testers needed

by David Bezemer -
Number of replies: 19

For Moodle 2.6 and Moodle 2.7 we (Gareth and yours truly) are looking for people that want to test the new release prior to releasing it as STABLE.

You can grab a pre-release copy here: https://github.com/DBezemer/moodle-theme_essential/releases/tag/2.7.2a

We kindly ask you to post all found issues on https://github.com/DBezemer/moodle-theme_essential/issues

This release is not intended for production use (yet), but we need you guys to make sure the next full release will be!

Also, if you are a translator, please translate the strings for this theme on AMOS (http://lang.moodle.org/) where essential has a lot of untranslated strings at this moment.

Regards and thanks in advance,

David

changelog:

New in 2.7.3
========================
- FIX: Fixed slide show by replacing with Bootstrap 2.3.2 one. Issue #18.
- FIX: Permanently replace edit icons with FontAwesome icons
- FIX: Massive cleanup in all files, reducing CSS with 50kb
- FIX: Fixed all custom block regions to stick where they are
- FIX: Displaying footer and header on login page as well
- FIX: Further language file cleanup, looking for maintainers of all non-english language files!
- FIX: Optimize code for much improved processing time
- FIX: Optimize javascript to reduce browser lag on load
- FIX: Resolve layout issues on font-rendering
- FIX: Set layout options for responsive rendering, more mobile support to come soon
- NEW: Reduced amount of fonts in theme, added legacy themes for websafe support
- NEW: New slider with up to 16 slides, full responsive
- NEW: Footer will go all the way to bottom on modern browsers (except IE of course)
- NEW: Removed output of summary to header due to potential exploits
- NEW: Breadcrumb styling
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to David Bezemer

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

by David Bezemer -

Since we have received overwhelming response on this thread we have decided to give you one more pre-release to test, namely 2.7.3a
This pre-release can be downloaded here: https://github.com/DBezemer/moodle-theme_essential/releases/tag/2.7.3a

Tomorrow we will release 2.7.3 with the above changes.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to David Bezemer

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

by Usman Asar -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi David,


Thanks for keeping Essential Alive, as being one of the most popular themes around.

Few questions, is it OK to go with Moodle 2.7.1? as until 2.7+ things were going OK as soon as I upgraded to 2.7.1 plug-ins started showing problems (though they are on a test site for testing purposes only). 

Also, I remember updating Julian's version to FontAwesome 4.1, have you upgraded this to FA 4.1 as well?

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In reply to Usman Asar

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

by David Bezemer -

Hi Usman,

the latest release has been tested with Moodle 2.7 and we did find some issues as well.
They should all be fixed, but please test with our pre-release to make sure: https://github.com/DBezemer/moodle-theme_essential/releases/tag/2.7.3a

We are trying to get this release out today.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to David Bezemer

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

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

Can I add that FontAwesome has indeed been updated to 4.1.0.

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In reply to Gareth J Barnard

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

by Usman Asar -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

OK, just tested it with 2.7.1

FontAwesome found to be updated to 4.1 (Many Thanks) and David, so far haven't found any issue on Moodle 2.7.1, in fact felt much speedier and improved over the Julian's default version.

Is there any chances to work on Julian's Essential Gourmet Edition? smile



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In reply to Usman Asar

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

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

RE: Is there any chances to work on Julian's Essential Gourmet Edition?

Possibly.  Would you like to take that theme over and maintain it?

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In reply to Gareth J Barnard

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

by Usman Asar -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

I definably would have, should I have been comfortable with CSS and all things involved smile Lets hope in sometime I might.

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In reply to David Bezemer

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

by Colin Wheelhouse -

David, the theme is looking good. Can the slideshow images be made to stretch the full width of the slider OR be moved to the right as per the http://features.demo.moodle.com.au/ site?


Cheers


Colin

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In reply to Colin Wheelhouse

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

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

Why not just make an image with the text imprinted on it, like lots of marketing companies do. You can make the image as wide as you want and the Carousel adjusts it to the screen width accordingly. See the example on my website: That image is 1200px wide, which on my screen (1024px x 768px) it adjusts to that size, and keeps on resizing down to small hand-held devices.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Colin Wheelhouse

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

by Casey Snyder -

I'd agree with Colin.  Having the option of the old style with the image to the right and heading/blurb to the left....  or the full banner image option would be great.  Simple to reinstate?


Also, can't find the option to change the background color for the slideshow.  I'm guessing a custom css fix for now?


Overall the theme looks great, and the continual improvements are fantastic!


Casey

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In reply to Casey Snyder

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

by David Bezemer -

Hi Casey, the background color setting follows the site color, or the color set in the slideshow settings. I discussed adding both designs with Gareth, and because of the work required for that we decided to build that if someone is willing to sponsor that development. There would be an option to crowdfund this, and we would be looking for around €500,-  Alternatively if someone wants to build it, we will be more than happy merge this.

 

 

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Casey Snyder

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

by Colin Wheelhouse -

Casey,

To change the background of the slider to an image or colour you could do the following. In the custom CSS section of the Essential theme is "General Settings" add one of the following:

For an Image:

.carousel-inner > .active {background-image: url("//addressofimagefile")}


For a Colour:

.carousel-inner > .active {background-color: #enterhexcodeofchoice;}


These shouldn't be too difficult to add as an option into the essential.css files with a setting but I just don't have time for that at the moment.


Cheers


Colin

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In reply to Colin Wheelhouse

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

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

Do you want extra functionality added to the new slider or the option of having the old slider put back as a switch-able alternative?  The latter does have lots of issues, which was why it was removed, that would need to be addressed if it were included again.

Also, I did look at the code: http://tympanus.net/codrops/2012/03/15/parallax-content-slider-with-css3-and-jquery/ and have just looked at the license for the site upon which it was hosted: http://tympanus.net/codrops/licensing/ - and need to be sure that the theme is compliant, as "You are not allowed to take our work "as-is” and sell it, redistribute or re-publish it, or sell "pluginized” versions of it." but "If you plan to create free WordPress, jQuery, Joomla, etc. plugins out of our scripts, please credit us in a fair way and link to the respective article on Codrops." so would need to be sure that all of the theme complied with these terms.

Of note is the line: "that most of the tutorials and resources are experimental and not ready for production, but made for inspiration and demonstration purpose only." therefore would indicate a non-production ready state for versions of Essential that use it."

Therefore the current version only incorporates the stable Bootstrap 2.3.2 version of the carousel.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Gareth J Barnard

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

by Casey Snyder -

Either would work for me, personally. smile  Adding it to the new slider would be okay, to avoid licensing problems.  I tinkered with it a bit, and was able to force the image in front of the caption, however long captions get hidden by the image using this 'fix'.  More tinkering to get it right (I tried floating the caption box left, and the image right, but I'm not a CSS expert... it didn't work for me...)...

/* This forces the image to be in front of the caption.  If the caption is long, it will be hidden under the image. */
img.carousel-image {z-index:1;}
div.carousel-caption {z-index:-1;}


My own OCD required I code the marketing spots to all be the same height.  Otherwise, different lengths of marketing text in each box make the boxes varying height.  This was fine when they stacked top to bottom on small displays (tablets, phones) but drove me bonkers when side-by-side on desktop displays.

/* This sets the height of the marketing spot boxes so they're all uniform.  Otherwise, they size to fix the text and each ends up being a different height. */
div.service {height:250px;position:relative;}
/* This parks the marketing spot boxes buttons in the lower right corner of each box.  Otherwise, they float up just below the text, looking funny. */
div.service p {position:absolute;bottom:5px;right:10px;}


Again, it's a nice theme, and borrowing features from Elegant is great, too!

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In reply to Casey Snyder

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

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

Thanks Casey,  I have plans to implement this: https://github.com/DBezemer/moodle-theme_essential/issues/63.

To be honest, Elegance borrows things from Essential.  And Essential will soon borrow things from Shoehorn and Bootstrap.  Shoethorn has borrowed things and improved on them from Elegance.  I have improved all four themes in varying amounts of effort.

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In reply to David Bezemer

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

by Usman Asar -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

David / Gareth,


There is a small issue I just noticed (ignore if someone already has mentioned that), I have guest access in few of the courses, and when user picture is displayed, it shows up like this (as shown), this gets OK in all browsers when logged in. The issue is with Guest Icon only (or may be with user names that exceed the length of certain characters in first name)


EDIT: I have just re-tested it again, adding  characters to my logged in user, and it accepts characters up to 10 to show everything perfect, exceed that character in a single word, the name extends beyond the border, if blank space is used in between 2 words then it pushes the icon down.


tested on 5 browsers, Platform (Windows 7 32-bit)




Average of ratings: -
In reply to David Bezemer

Re: Essential pre-release testers needed

by Emilie Lenel -

Hi David, Gareth,

Thanks for keeping Essential Alive, we really love this theme, we branded/customized it and will deploy on our moodle in September.

By the way, we'd like to suggest new feature requests

  • Option to show marketing spots and/or alerts on my page (most of our users get connected through the university portal and are redirected on 'my page', they don't see the homepage), we managed to get it on 'my page' but we had to modify the layout files.
  • Have "My grades" into the dashboard (see thread), as most students will expect to find their grades in the dashboard menu
  • Possibility to place a block in the middle region within a course layout ?
  • Alerts : once the user hide the message, the message still appears when he refresh his page

How to suggest those features, should i add it directly on https://github.com/DBezemer/moodle-theme_essential/issues or somewhere else ?

Thanks again

Emilie

 

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