When I add a resource or assignment or whatever the text is displayed
to the user in a box. It seems that the box is not set to a fixed size
so if there is no line break the text just fills one long line and is
visually ugly and difficult to read.
I'm not sure if this effects all themes or just the ones I am using.
1) What is deemed to be the 'best' line length for moodle screen reading?
2) How do I force the above line length for moodle web page resources and the like?
I agree. There is lots about Moodle that is quite ugly! The available themes are really bad.
Unfortunately there seems to be no solution to your problem other than adding your own XHTML to the assignment or resource page. Wrap your entire assignment in a fixed width div tag. Like this:
<div style='width:450px;">All your content in here.</div>.
I spent days modifying a theme so that I could get something more pleasing looking for my Moodle site. It's possible but it takes nerves of steel as you suffer through the ridiculous amount of CSS and icon illustrating necessary to make all the modifications. The CSS is distributed among 3 files that will drive you crazy as you explore their labyrinthine, and ridiculously distributed nature. The icon image files are all over the place as well.
Unfortunately there seems to be no solution to your problem other than adding your own XHTML to the assignment or resource page. Wrap your entire assignment in a fixed width div tag. Like this:
<div style='width:450px;">All your content in here.</div>.
I spent days modifying a theme so that I could get something more pleasing looking for my Moodle site. It's possible but it takes nerves of steel as you suffer through the ridiculous amount of CSS and icon illustrating necessary to make all the modifications. The CSS is distributed among 3 files that will drive you crazy as you explore their labyrinthine, and ridiculously distributed nature. The icon image files are all over the place as well.
If you set a pixpath for you theme, then you can put all the icons in a pix folder inside your theme folder.
please elaborate: what is a pixpath and how does one create one?
and what about the icons which reside outside the themes?
and what about the icons which reside outside the themes?
From the 1.5 standard theme config.php, around line 117:
$THEME->custompix = false;
/// If true, then this theme must have a "pix"
/// subdirectory that contains copies of all
/// files from the moodle/pix directory, plus a
/// "pix/mod" directory containing all the icons
/// for all the activity modules.
Set this to true, and create a pix folder, and subfolders for the mods. This will let you replace all the icons in a standard Moodle 1.5 install. The icons in 1.5 are linked via a 'pixpath' variable rather than a hard coded link, which is set by seeing if custompix are being used (custompix=true) and if so looks in the themename/pix folder(s).
See for instance here: learn.humboldt.edu; we've replaced the standard icons with ones from the kde nuvola set (icon-king.com).
IMO, the standard theme seems fairly well documented, though things could always be better.
PS, even if you can't share your full theme, sharing your icon set would be great
.
$THEME->custompix = false;
/// If true, then this theme must have a "pix"
/// subdirectory that contains copies of all
/// files from the moodle/pix directory, plus a
/// "pix/mod" directory containing all the icons
/// for all the activity modules.
Set this to true, and create a pix folder, and subfolders for the mods. This will let you replace all the icons in a standard Moodle 1.5 install. The icons in 1.5 are linked via a 'pixpath' variable rather than a hard coded link, which is set by seeing if custompix are being used (custompix=true) and if so looks in the themename/pix folder(s).
See for instance here: learn.humboldt.edu; we've replaced the standard icons with ones from the kde nuvola set (icon-king.com).
IMO, the standard theme seems fairly well documented, though things could always be better.
PS, even if you can't share your full theme, sharing your icon set would be great
I totally disagree about the documentation. I am fluent in the language of CSS and build complex, CSS-positioned websites for a living. I read through the documentation, but still had to reverse-engineer the whole theme by combing through the source code, looking at the classes and testing to see what would happen when I made a change. Urs even suggests doing that in his theme 'documentation'! That's not real documentation IMHO.
With an application this complicated--with many varied screens and pages of CSS rules--useful documentation would ideally contain a specific guide to each unique screen, showing the naming of each CSS style rule and its inheritance properties.
With an application this complicated--with many varied screens and pages of CSS rules--useful documentation would ideally contain a specific guide to each unique screen, showing the naming of each CSS style rule and its inheritance properties.
Professor Steven Lyons,
as you teach at the California College of the Arts you know a lot about design and pedagogy. Knowing this I take your posting as the statement of the Advocatus Diabolus.
So in clear reading you say something like:
"There is lots of work to be done with the documentation and with live examples of Moodle designs. I will be glad to work with my students on this project and support the Moodle community with brilliant documentation of my projects and superb Moodle Themes." Don't you?
Steven, you are very welcome to help with theme documentation, support in the forums and with Moodle themes you offer to the Moodle community. I am looking forward to productively discuss your points and make Moodle proceed on its way to a VLE which is flexible not only in pedagogic but also in design aspects.
Urs
touché Urs!
If my students had the time I would definitely have them work on it. But the reality is that design students pursuing a bachelors degree at CCA (formerly CCAC) have barely enough time to eat and sleep, never mind doing non-profit work. It is an intense program that produces great results. The program is more like a 4-year master's program than a typical undergrad program. Many of the students come to the program with a BA from another institution.
My implementation of Moodle is a pilot project. I am testing Moodle in 2 courses to see if I can go on to recommend it for a campus-wide implementation. I am doing this as a volunteer--nobody is paying for it. Currently CCA has no instructional technology in place whatsoever (Amazing for a school that has fantastically well-equipped computer labs). Since I am shared-hosting on a remote server, I am coming up against some limitations and quirks (php memory issues being the worst) which are making it hard to evaluate fully since the performance is sluggish and I get some errors.
If the school goes on to install Moodle as courseware, then i will probably spend the time to document my theme and post it here for all to use. But right now I have created a hacked version of the standard theme and I am not at all sure how to make it into its own independent theme, since I have changed icons, css and even some of the php pages. I would also need to produce a documentation of the css files and describe what each individual rule does. A gargantuan task given the hundreds of rules. But share it I will, if it happens.
If my students had the time I would definitely have them work on it. But the reality is that design students pursuing a bachelors degree at CCA (formerly CCAC) have barely enough time to eat and sleep, never mind doing non-profit work. It is an intense program that produces great results. The program is more like a 4-year master's program than a typical undergrad program. Many of the students come to the program with a BA from another institution.
My implementation of Moodle is a pilot project. I am testing Moodle in 2 courses to see if I can go on to recommend it for a campus-wide implementation. I am doing this as a volunteer--nobody is paying for it. Currently CCA has no instructional technology in place whatsoever (Amazing for a school that has fantastically well-equipped computer labs). Since I am shared-hosting on a remote server, I am coming up against some limitations and quirks (php memory issues being the worst) which are making it hard to evaluate fully since the performance is sluggish and I get some errors.
If the school goes on to install Moodle as courseware, then i will probably spend the time to document my theme and post it here for all to use. But right now I have created a hacked version of the standard theme and I am not at all sure how to make it into its own independent theme, since I have changed icons, css and even some of the php pages. I would also need to produce a documentation of the css files and describe what each individual rule does. A gargantuan task given the hundreds of rules. But share it I will, if it happens.
"If the school goes on to install Moodle as courseware, then i will probably spend the time to document my theme and post it here for all to use."
Steven, can we support you anyhow to reach your goal? I personally would love to see an College of the Arts use Moodle.
Urs
Urs,
That's very kind of you. I will keep that in mind as the testing process progresses. I am fairly hopeful that adoption of Moodle will happen at CCA since I have some allies in the right places. The bigger problem will be that of adoption by a faculty of mostly middle-aged, computer-phobic artists. Selling the benefits of instructional courseware to folks that have little computer experience other than sending email and surfing the net could be a challenge.
That's very kind of you. I will keep that in mind as the testing process progresses. I am fairly hopeful that adoption of Moodle will happen at CCA since I have some allies in the right places. The bigger problem will be that of adoption by a faculty of mostly middle-aged, computer-phobic artists. Selling the benefits of instructional courseware to folks that have little computer experience other than sending email and surfing the net could be a challenge.
I have been using a slight variation on this solution:
After creating the resource/assignment, I toggle to edit in text mode and put
<div align="center"><div style="WIDTH: 85%">
at the start and
</div></div>
at the end.
The 7.5% on either side provides a "page-like" view without sacrificing too much instructional space. The student can adjust actual line width with the browser. An early version of 1.5 kept wiping the tags on re-edit, but I haven't seen that problem in awhile. When going back in, on first click the editor shows the box, on second click it places the cursor as expected and edits work normally.
Darren, the best line length is the one with which you can easily read the text. You can start to read in the Web Style Guide about Line length. The article is from 2002 but the typographic points are still valid.
Other aspects like font size, line height and font type play a important role too. The line length also depends on the width of your browser window. We deal with dynamic and flexible parameters here. In Firefox for example you can easily change font size to your actual needs. To scan a text fast you can make the font small, to read carefully in the evening with tired eyes you can make the font large.
For further reading about this aspect of web page design and specially Moodle pages I recommend the discussion we had about "Can I change the width of every moodle page like this?" some time ago.
What ever way you will decide to go please do not force your learners to work with the Moodle pages the way you prefer. Give them all possibilities to work their way.
I hope this helps you to proceed
Urs
Thanks for the replies. I shall investigate all when I finish this post 
.
As for not forcing learners to view a page a particular way - isn't that what is happening now
? Learners are forced to read a resource at pretty much 100% of the
available space regardless of font size / length / content / time of
day.
Perhaps a slider to dynamically alter the line length at the bottom of each resource page. Of course, I am sure this will raise other, more technical issues.
Just reading the post and saw Martins's comments about resizing the browser but that doesn't do it for people who are using windows with the browser maximised. Most people who visit my site are viewing at 1024 by 768 and I know my resources of a few sentences are very difficult to read as a result of the current formatting.
Off to read the rest now ....
Darren
.As for not forcing learners to view a page a particular way - isn't that what is happening now
? Learners are forced to read a resource at pretty much 100% of the
available space regardless of font size / length / content / time of
day.Perhaps a slider to dynamically alter the line length at the bottom of each resource page. Of course, I am sure this will raise other, more technical issues.
Just reading the post and saw Martins's comments about resizing the browser but that doesn't do it for people who are using windows with the browser maximised. Most people who visit my site are viewing at 1024 by 768 and I know my resources of a few sentences are very difficult to read as a result of the current formatting.
Off to read the rest now ....
Darren
Darren, your idea sounds great: "Perhaps a slider to dynamically alter the line length at the bottom of each resource page."
Martin was hinting me to the slider at the button right side of the browser window during that discussion I mentioned above.
With Stevens proposal to use your own DIV around your text and some CSS and a switcher you can offer different line length with your resources. On the other hand to inform your readers about the possibility to resize your browser would be the much easier way. Hardly any bug fixing would be involved too
Another way without any technical changes would be to add pictures, illustrations and annotations to your recourses. Make 2 columns - one with 1/3 of the page for pictures and annotations and the second with 2/3 width for the text. Your recourses will become much more attractive and better to read. If you choose the illustrations wisely your text will be better understandable too. This kind of page layout you find in many books.
Urs
Urs is right. Breaking up your page with two columns (one for text, and another for images) is the way to go. You can see a sample of how I have done this on my site here (although this sample has a table of contents too). It's actually three columns in the html-the middle one contains nothing but provides space between the text and images. I also had to space the lines a bit differently to accomodate the hieroglyphs, which I think also lends a bit more readability to it. You can also just put images here and there next to text, and this will help to shorten line length and make the reading more interesting and gives the reader something to rest his eyes on for a break, such as here. You'll also notice I have shrunk the standard width of my all my resources. I think illustrations are really important for learning and they serve a double purpose to make lines shorter.
I just read a quite interesting study "The Effects of Line Length on Children and Adults Online Reading Performance"
We should especially consider the outcome: different preferences of children (short lines) and adults (medium lines). Children and adults need different themes.
In the very moment I am experimenting with a smaller forum layout as you can see in the image below.
Urs
