Good Morning,
I have recently upgraded to 2.7+ however it's just been pointed out to me that there is no option to change the text size in the new Atto editor or change the font colour.
Do I need to change a setting somewhere? I've looked in the Atto settings but nothing jumped out at me.
Thanks,
Hi there. Please see #2 I am misssing some buttons in Atto that I had in TinyMCE editor in the Text editor FAQ and also the Toolbar settings section of Text editor
Hi Mary,
Thanks for that but i'd already checked those settings and there is no option for text size there. Incidentally I notice that there is no text size option here on Moodle.org either, surley that must have been a mistake to leave out an option to change the size of your text?? I remember a discussion on here a while ago about leaving out the option for people to change colors and there was a bit of an argument over that but I don't remember seeing anything about the size?
Thanks,
I'm not seeing any options for text size either. Several of my users are asking about changing font sizes.
Isn't it interesting that these two options have been removed yet there is a button dedicated to emoticons?
It would certainly be interesting to hear the rational around why this decision was made. This new editor does seem like a backward step if people can't do simple things with it.
I've added your comments to the tracker issue here MDLSITE-3209 - hopefully it will be explained soon.
Thanks didn't realise there was a tracker issue open for this, i'll start watching that.
Apparently, with some mouse calisthenics, one can bring them back but my biggest complaint is the diminution of the icon colors to comply with what I call the "Gray Plague" which is sweeping the internet.
For both the font options and the gray icons,
I have yet to find a single source waging a complaint to cause these changes.
I see no discussion for the change and I see no indication as to who is pushing it.
I have yet to see any explanation as to why it is happening.
If anyone has any answers, I would highly appreciate knowing them.
Funny you mentioned the "Gray Plague"...I just read this and then noticed that on Amazon.com my orders page is now filled with "Gray Plague"!
Icon colors are so difficult to get consensus on, but core functions like font sizes missing are inexcusable. Even text color (which needs to be re-added to the editor) only gives you five colors to choose from! Is this 1998?
Is this 1998?
and using CGA monitors?
Hi Steve,
As I've seen the word "accesibility" being used in these forums to suggest (not explain) the reason behind, I'd say that someone really just decided to simplify and got rid of colors, precisely and ironically ignoring in the process the accesibility guidelines:
"Color is not used as the only visual means of conveying information".
---
I am thinking that "Accessibility" is what programmers use as similar to "For Security" is what IT uses when they don't want to fix something. They are both escape words designed to get us think that they know what they are doing and that it is for our benefit.
Even the ADA.GOV web site is infested with the Gray Plague....
I think we need to start a campaign to get this new editor workable and bring back the missing options
In all serious though I think what we need is Martin or at least somebody from HQ to give us a proper explanation around the decision making for this and start a constructive discussion around these changes and what should be included.
Cheers,
Hi all,
This is a response to this entire thread rather than a single comment within it.
When we wrote the Atto editor, it was intended to be a small and simple replacement with fewer options offered and prompts to encourage the creation of accessible content for users. Indeed, the name `Atto` was based upon the scientific unit of measurement \( 10^{-18} \) (0.000000000000000001) - i.e. really small.
As part of this, it was decided to remove a number of buttons and options which either offer little value, or lead to the creation of inaccessible content.
In particular, we opted not to create plugins for text size, and for font colour in Atto. Both of these plugins have historically existed in TinyMCE.
When we talk about the lack of accessibility in the created content, we are not referring solely to things like the use of clashing colours in content - that's to say a red background with green font; or a white background with grey font. It goes much deeper than that. Often those features are used to emphasise content within the body - highlighting an important part of the content by making it's background colour yellow for example, or by increasing it's font size.
While both of these methods will indeed highlight the content to sighted users who can clearly see the difference between the highlighted and non-highlighted content, there is no distinction to many other users. The most obvious examples are partially sighted, and non-sighted users who are using screen readers. Since screen readers do not read out things like the background colour and font size, this emphasis is entirely lost and the content is less accessible to those users. Other affected users can include those with dyslexia and ADHD (where many sufferers will use coloured filters to reduce the effect of certain colours and where existing colours in that content could potentially effect the use of those filters); and colour blind users, where sufferers may be unable to distinguish between certain colours, unable to see the effect of certain colours, or only see in greyscale. Again, in these cases the benefit of these colour-based emphasise is either entirely lost, or potentially leads to reduced access to the content.
It's also worth bearing in mind that some of these affected conditions involve a large cross-section of people, and that these conditions may not always be immediately apparent. Some users may not even known themselves. Colour blindness can affect 7-10% of men and I would guess that you're unlikely to know which of your students may be colour blind and how your content will affect them. Dyslexia is estimated to affects a similar number of people - the Australian Dyslexic Association estimates that 10% of the Australian population have some form of Dyslexia, and although they may know and have informed your institute, that information may not necessarily reach tutors. Statistics for ADHD suggest that between 5% and 10% of the Australian population have some form of ADHD.
Rather than using either of these in content, the paragraph plugin should be used to create navigable, structured content; and the bold, underline, and italic plugins should be used to add appropriate emphasis which can be picked up by a much wider range of users.
One of the other features which came about from the creation of Atto was the ability for individual users to select their own editor (rather than a single site-wide selection). This in turn means that others can contribute other editors to Moodle if they do not like the Atto editor.
In addition, we've worked to create an extensive editor framework for Atto to enable you to create your own plugins, and we're seeing a range of community-contributed plugins beginning to appear already using that framework.
You're welcome to create and contribute plugins for text size, and we have an existing plugin for font colour (with a selection of high-contrast colour options) and submit it to the plugins database, but I suspect that it's unlikely that it would be included in the core Moodle release.
.Regarding the `Grey Plague`, this is unrelated to Atto and I won't discuss it in depth here, but it relates to the extensibility of theming in Moodle. At present we have no mechanism to utilise different icon colours for different themes without copying an entire set of icons to each theme (not a small, or easy task). As a result, and to cater for the largest number of theme designs and theme colour configurations we have been trying to choose colours which work with the greatest number of background and foreground possibilities whilst still being accessible. Grey is the safest option for the widest range of options. However, we are looking to allow for delivery-time colouring of those icons to allow administrators to choose different colours for different themes. This is partially discussed in MDL-45993, and there's another related issue which I'm struggling to find right now.
I hope that this answers some of your questions. As ever, Moodle is an Open Source project and we do welcome contributions from our community, be it in the form of testing, documentation, patches for bugs, and contributions to the plugins database. If you're able to help with any of the above, your contributions would be appreciated by the community as a whole.
Best wishes,
Andrew Nicols
Thanks for your explanation.
I can appreciate some of these accessibility issues because I suffer from deteriorating sight and hearing, myself. However, I would never want to deprive the world from the benefits of being able to "show" or "say" things, instead, I must live with my problems. I do like to turn closed-captions on when I watch TV. I wonder when these accessibility issues will affect artists and photographers, for example, and force them not to use colored paints or work only in greys? Color is in the world around us, and I would not want to deprive 90% of the world from it. I like the idea that someday, maybe in the user's profile, they will be able to switch between color and grey icons.
My own deficiencies also cause me to speak up too. What is happening here is making difficulties not only for me but for the average user. This is like requiring subtitles to be always visible for all AV productions or like removing staircases and ramps only to make everyone use single passenger wheel chair elevators instead. My readers tell me that in many cases they have to copy/paste text into a word document to change the contrast back to normal in order to read the content.
It would be interesting to see if everyone had the choice to remove Font-Size and Font-Color or had the choice to bleach out icons, from the original design instead, how many actually would. So far I have heard no viable reason why these options have been dropped or relocated to make them very challenging to bring back. All I hear is a lot of theory.
When I was into graphics, I had an image of a galaxy and needed to place a caption "You are Here" and indicate an arrow from there to a star near the center. The problem was that in the white density of stars, a white arrow disappeared. When in the blackness of space, a black arrow disappeared. The discovery was the use of a "Black-White" arrow, an image that had both arrows with a slight overlap, which could be used in any background. I would have been laughed out of the company had I chosen to convert it all to shades of gray as the effectiveness of the picture would have been destroyed. My point is that instead of removing all color from icons and ultimately making them look as if they are disabled, a better back color for the icon itself would be the answer.
I have a friend that is significantly ADHD who now spends a lot of time checking these icons to see what they do and he has to do it with every attempt to use them. It is not just a simple matter of learning the new ones.
As I asked either here or in another message, why is it that Font-Size and Font Color get eliminated while a new button is created for Emoticons and takes a high priority. On a snarky note, why are not emoticons in gray?
You provide some more good points, Steve.
You see, I am not at all opposed to making content more accessible, but I think one needs to apply the "80/20" rule. First, let's make sure that content works for 80% of the population, then let's work on the remaining 20%.
However, as in your example of "ramps", it appears that some folks prefer that the 20% solution must be applied to everyone.
Hmmm, this makes me think a little about statistics, and "expected value". In the "worst case" scenario, let's say week have a solution worth 100 points for 80% of the population (e.g., colored icons), and 0 points for 20%. The expected value will be (100*.8)+(0*.2), or 80 points. If we have a 50 point solution (grey icons) for 100% of the population, the expected value is (50 * 1), or 50 points. Do we want the "tail wagging the dog?" Well, you get the idea. Some might debate the numbers in my example, and yes, if we could discover a 100 point solution for 100% of the population, this would have the highest expected value.
A simple border around icons would prevent any problem with the surrounding colors.
This one will even work on a black background.
I update our Moodle to 2.8, I cannot find picture resizing points in the text editor area? is this picture resizing point feature gone in 2.8? Thanks.
Hello Andrew,
Thanks very much for taking the time to provide the logic behind Atto.
--- it was intended to be a small and simple replacement with fewer options offered
The concept is fine, there must certainly be a large number of people that want a simple and straightforward tool to create content with. The issue I see is that most users, be them design-aware or not, expect to find the tools that they have learned to use and that are present in other software toolbars; I sincerly cannot imagine MS removing them from their Office Suite nor Adobe from their Creative Suite.
--- or lead to the creation of inaccessible content
From my particular point of view, protectionist regimes do not tend to do any good to anyone. Knifes shouldn't be made because they lead to the killing of people or animals? It is unavoidable, there'll be always people creating content that goes against each and every rule of, let's not say good design, but at least an acceptable one. It's a known fact that many people copy and paste from Word, so now, if the editor doesn't provide the basic editing tools, even more people will start doing that routine, and we know what that means.
--- we opted not to create plugins for text size, and for font colour *** Since screen readers do not read out things like the background colour and font size
There might not be many screen readers capable of reading formats, yet, but at least ClickHear & ClickHear Mobile seem to handle variable text and highlighting color options. HAL reads font styles, though I don't know if that includes highlight color.
http://www.disabled-world.com/assistivedevices/computer/screen-readers.php
"Not only do screen readers differ widely from each other, but most are highly configurable."
If font size were irrelevant, screen magnifiers wouldn't be available. Truth is that many programs and screen readers include them. Take for instance:
http://www.aisquared.com/products
Regarding background color, software is being designed to deal with that. For example:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chromevis-by-google/halnfobaneppemjnonmmhngbfifnafgd
"Google ChromeVis is a Google Chrome extension that magnifies any selected text on a webpage. The magnified text is displayed inside of a separate lens and preserves the original page layout. Users can change both the lens text color and the lens background color."
Finally, let's not forget the reason behind the development of CSS and user style sheets.
http://webdesign.about.com/od/userstylesheets/a/aa010906.htm
"Adding back the underlines or making the fonts larger is a good start towards making the Web pages I visit more accessible to me."
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/ie10/
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-stylesheet/nlfpnjpcddafclelkbgijfpdanaacdcp
--- Rather than using either of these in content, the paragraph plugin should be used to create navigable, structured content; and the bold, underline, and italic plugins should be used to add appropriate emphasis which can be picked up by a much wider range of users.
As I expressed in my previous post, color has never been meant to be discarded because of accesibility:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#visual-audio-contrast-without-color
"Color is not used as the only visual means of conveying information."
---One of the other features which came about from the creation of Atto was the ability for individual users to select their own editor
This is definitely a great feature.
--- we've worked to create an extensive editor framework for Atto to enable you to create your own plugins
This totally contradicts the first statement: "it was intended to be a small and simple replacement with fewer options offered."
We certainly recognize and support the effort being done in each step to bring Moodle to what it is, but given the reasons provided I'd say that maybe some reconsideration could be done regarding Atto. What is the real benefit of having Atto?
Seems to me that a lot of work is being done to develop a small and simple tool only to spend a lot time and effort to develop an editor framework so people have to do more work to get the expected editing options; take for instance the following quote regarding the horizontal rule:
https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=atto_hr
"I just noticed this feature was 'missing' from the new Atto editor, and was happy to find it here".
This whole Atto issue also affects other plugins, like Geshi:
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=240578#p1134044
Cheers!
"When we wrote the Atto editor, it was intended to be a small and simple replacement with fewer options offered..."
I am curious, for what purpose?
"...and prompts to encourage the creation of accessible content for users...."
So the logic here is give fewer tools and expect more creativity?
I wonder, where are these said prompts?
So, if we give the students fewer supplies, (IE underfund the schools) we will get more production out of them. Yes?
"When we wrote the Atto editor, it was intended to be a small and simple replacement with fewer options offered..."
I am curious, for what purpose?Just before Atto was written (or was public anyway) there was a big debate about TinyMCE not being suitable for mobile devices, and various other factors, such as giving users too much power so that they could create content that didn't fit with the institution style or good web design. Comparisons were made with a number of online text editors - primarily those related to posting to forums and such rather than content creation though - and I for one strongly disagreed with that premise. Misuse by a small minority should not be dealt with by removing that ability from the majority of users (IMO).
I presume Atto was originally intended for to meet that purpose - but to me that doesn't justify setting it as the default editor and not upgrading the power tools available from a fully powered editor such as TinyMCE. It does meet the purpose of being one of two editors available (as it is) but I would have prefered to see TinyMCE4 (or another full editor) properly integrated alongside Atto to give that genuine choice, rather than just leaving the outdated TinyMCE3 as the poor second alternative. Yes I do realise that additional editors can be contributed by the community, but to me it is a core part of Moodle which should be part of the core set up and not reliant on contributed code.
But it looks like that is a lost argument - HQ have decided on ATTO and whether we like it or not its what we have, so as users we either have to work with the community to develop Atto so that it does an adequate job, work with others in the community to get another editor (besides the outdated TinyMCE v3) into the plugins database, or stick with TinyMCE by making sure users know how to set it as their own editor (or even setting it as our own site default)
For me, currently (and inline with comments from users who have been involved in our beta testing), when we upgrade to 2.7 next week we will set the site default editor to TinyMCE. Atto does not provide the tools I feel are needed for us (e.g. we use the Templates function of TinyMCE to provide pre-set content) - and I am prepared to deal with the fact that the occasional user can't cope with simple design guidelines and 'misuses' the available tools - but I'm also trying to develop functionality in terms of filters that can be used in Atto, as well as watching the development of Atto plugins, so that we can soon move to that as our main editor in line with HQ and core.
Hopefully in time, Atto will become the editor it is intended to be - a simple, user friendly, accessible editor with the power of a wide range of plugins to provide the full range of features that people require and the ability to easily add and remove those features (possibly on a role-by-role or capability basis). And hopefully discussions like this one will help the HQ developers, and others in the community to push it along faster so that it is ready for mainstream use.
Not being able to change text size is very frustrating. I have a lot of cloze questions in my courses, and I use a smaller text size for the questions for 2 reasons.
1 - so as the person creating & editing the questions, I can easily identify the question amongst the text. (see pic below & attached)
2
- because the drop-down menu box appeared (in 2.5) quite tall compared
with the rest of the text, I found that by reducing the font size, it
also reduced the size of the drop-down menu box and fitted in much more
nicely with the rest of the text. (I don't have a pic for this sorry, as I have already changed to 2.7 and I didn't realise there's be any change to this.)
These would both be helpful for me in 2.7. As would the full-page editor.
In
2.7 I also note that the new drop-down menu boxes are identical in
size. Unfortunately this is also not ideal for me, as I had some very
short answer (e.g. yes, no) drop-down menu boxes that fitted snugly into
tables in cloze questions, and now the longer box makes the layout of
my page look rather odd. Tables are an interesting challenge in
themselves and I'm not looking forward to adjusting those again. Perhaps
an option to choose whether to have the box the same size as the
longest answer or to have a certain pre-set length would be helpful.
So,
for the time being, I have gone back to TinyMCE, but I'm worried that I
will be forced to stop creating questions for my course because of the
lack of functionality in my editor. I'm trying to pump as many out now before TinyMCE disappears.
I
do feel frustrated, because TinyMCE wasn't ideal in a lot of ways, but I
managed to work around it and get it to work for me. I feel that Moodle
forced me to do this, even though I would have preferred to have more
advanced editing like paragraph spacing. However, I utilised font size
and tables to make my cloze questions work the way I want, and look the
way I want them too, and I was happy with that.
Now, with the changes to the editor, I feel I have to make new workarounds and figure out new ways, or just suck it up and say well that's the way Moodle wants me to create my questions, and there's no room for my individuality or creativity, and it doesn't fit with the look and feel of my existing course. This makes me sad.
My
main concern/gripe is: when changing to a new version, why are there so
many things that need to be altered? I don't have any plugins for this
very reason, yet I still must manually change some things. Often things
that had to be previously altered from the last upgrade, e.g. Theme. Is that just the nature of computers? I'm no technology expert, which I think is part of the problem. However, it should be expected and accepted that not all teachers *are* technology experts.
We are education experts though, and it would be great if you could
consider that what might be 'easy' in the mind of a techie might be
illogical and confusing in the mind of a non-techie.
Following
my update from 2.5 to 2.7, I had to move all my carefully crafted
blocks from the right hand side (in Orange theme) to the left hand side
(in 'More' theme, which initially I thought was a link to 'More
information' about Themes), because the Quiz navigation is on the right
hand side now, and I can't move it to the left, as it was previously in
my Quizzes. I only want one side bar, so had to move these to work with
the existing Quiz navigation block. This was time-consuming and
frustrating to say the least, as I'd had to do a similar thing when
moving to the 'Orange' theme. Then, when the Atto editor didn't have the
functionality I expected, that was the icing on the cake in my
frustration and disappointment.
Maybe I need to learn HTML to present my Cloze questions the way I want them... but that seems (in my opinion) to defeat the usability & accesibility of Moodle.
As for font colour and highlighting, most teachers I know are aware of their students' capabilities and create resources that embrace different learning styles and learning abilities. We are aware of different types of colour-blindness and access difficulties. Please don't restrict our creativity based on your assumptions.
I would be grateful if you could consider the above and either continue to support TinyMCE or make changes to Atto to include font size, font colour, highlighting, and other functions that were available in TinyMCE.
Thank you.
I suspect that after thinking about this, and the reasons given above to reduce the options available with the atto editor, most people would see that the option to do something is not the same as removing the option altogether. One is giving the user a choice, and the other is denying the user a choice.
I would have to agree with the idea that abundant choice is the beginning of a new and distasteful tyranny, but the reality is that teachers, course creators, course makers, what ever you call them, are going to build a course for their users.
Much of the evidence cited above is not relevant to the needs of individual classes anyway, not in many other countries where Moodle is used, and not for much longer in Oz. Like many other things, the arguments cited for containing atto sound good, but upon closer inspection, are based upon several untenable conclusions, or ignore a wider need.
To suggest, for example, that the ability to resize text, change colour exists in TinyMCE, and does not need to exist for atto is based in what need? Who's need? To suggest that "Grey is the safest option for the widest range of options." is based in what evidence, which conclusions? Older users may need a higher degree of contrast, and for someone to suggest that the grey is the safest option is completely ignoring those needs.
To make it "better", people are being urged to create plugins for atto, to add functionality. That works fine in many circumstances, but what about those who do not know how to create plugins. "OK Learn!" sounds a little like "Let them eat cake." The other side is that plugins created may not suit a large percentage of needs. Another aspect is that many admins can do anythign they like inside their Moodles but are reliant upon others, outside of their influence, to add the plugins into code. How about creating a plugin that allows the Moodle to write plugins to the right places? Not that it would compromise security in any way mind you.
I rather like the idea of the atto editor, it has a number of features that I am really excited about using, but I suggest it needs a lot more thought than it is currently receiving.
Let's hope that all the options that have been removed are included back once again instead of having lots of people developing plugins to restore those options. Plugins should be for new particular functionality not for standard characteristics.
Tish " I have a lot of cloze questions in my courses, and I use a smaller text size for the questions for 2 reasons.
1 - so as the person creating & editing the questions, I can easily identify the question amongst the text. (see pic below & attached)
2 - because the drop-down menu box appeared (in 2.5) quite tall compared with the rest of the text, I found that by reducing the font size, it also reduced the size of the drop-down menu box and fitted in much more nicely with the rest of the text."
Reason #1 can be quite useful when editing quesitons.
However, Reason #2 did work in Moodle 2.5 and 2.6, using Standard Theme. But it no longer works in Moodle 2.7 using "standard" Clean theme (Bootstrap based). Maybe it's no longer necessary?
Joseph
Title says it all, but a testimonial of how the Atto decisions are creating problems for my promotion of Moodle as our new LMS might help.
I'm presenting Moodle to full faculty next week, after piloting with a small cohort and 200 students.
We used TinyMCE for our first user test, in 2.7.2.
Teachers reacted to the online text submission view by saying: "It feels like writing an email."
"Not to worry," I said. "Just click the Full Screen button and it feels like writing on Google Docs."
"Ooh," they said.
"And watch this," I said, and toggled the "More tools" button.
More oohs. "Actually a better user experience than Google Docs, that toolbar," I said. They nodded agreement.
* * *
After our 200 students wrote their online essays in Assignment, the big complaint was: "Some lost their work. Google Docs auto-saves. It's better."
"Not to fear," I said. "2.8 has auto-save, coming soon."
* * *
So now, when I show them auto-save in 2.8 Atto--without full-screen--they're going to say, "It feels like writing an email. Google Docs is better."
I'm so excited about 2.8. I so appreciate the work done on it. And I so hope I don't have to wait for somebody to create a full-screen plugin. I teach, I don't code. But I do contribute to the community, and I do praise Moodle for all its goodness to all comers.
On this one, though, I'm mystified by the rationale for denying choice of core Atto defaults. I truly hope this is re-considered, and soon. (Along with putting "Draft saved" popup anywhere but lower left of editor.)