New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

by Chris Kenniburg -
Number of replies: 14
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Hello Moodle themedom,

I am looking for suggestions or comments on a new theme I am putting together.  It is still under heavy development but here is a short video.  We are looking for a clean and simple layout focused on the learning activities.


The theme has a couple of unique features:

  • Use any Google Font with simple copy/paste.  Pick a font for Headers and one for Body.  Also control Font Size for body.  
  • Custom Icon Navigation at top of each page for quickly getting around which includes the Custom Moodle Menu, Language Menu, and Course Search box.
  • Course Summary Images from Course Settings are now utilized by the theme Header in each course!  Thank you Richard Oelmann. This allows teachers to customize the header image in their course.
  • Socialwall Course Format Integration and customization.  Allows you to control the look and feel of the Socialwall Course Format from the admin panel.  
  • Blocks have special styling brought to Moodle by Mary Evans in which the Block Title appears on the side of the block.  This creates visual separation from the rest of the page and is a nice visual cue for the learner.  
  • Single Page look and feel
  • Two Columns
  • Right aligned blocks

Some things I am thinking of implementing are

  • custom login feature on the frontpage that is displayed for logged out users.  
  • Ability to control the height of the header image via a Padding setting.
  • Slideshow???  Are these even needed?
  • Toying with the idea of a fullscreen Youtube video or image background if you use the Moodle Login Page or Force Users to login.

Average of ratings: Useful (4)
In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

by Usman Asar -
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Yes

That is a very unique Layout Chris, Congrats on bringing another theme to the community.

btw, will you be keeping front page content in theme general settings as well? Just asking as I Richard removed it from his, so to be sure if you are doing similar or not.

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In reply to Usman Asar

Re: New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

by Chris Kenniburg -
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Usman, 

Are you referring to the custom frontpage from the Evolve-D theme?  I am not sure what Richard did to his theme.

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In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

by Usman Asar -
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Sorry for confusion Chris, its Front Page Settings I was writing about, where I together  with plenty other make use of it for customizing front page, I have seen 2-3 themes where this option was removed, so was asking if you are keeping this option intact.

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In reply to Usman Asar

Re: New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

by Richard Oelmann -
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Front Page settings are not part of a theme Usman, they are found when you turn editing on on the front page and go to Edit Settings

Unless you are referring to the fact that some themes have settings for marketing spots or other theme specific front page features - In which case, yes I have taken those out of the General Settings page for Flexibase as I decided to create multiple settings pages not just a single enormous one,. So you would find for example Alerts on a theme setting page for that feature, likewise the carousel has its own settings page, as do Marketing spots.

So the options (provided the feature is part of the theme) are not removed, just moved to different theme settings page and called something specific to their function, rather than a single loooonng 'Front Page theme settings' option.

settings options

There were many reasons for doing this - amongst them the primary one was usability and a secondary one was future development. This structure has allowed me to create these features as 'modular' drop-in functions that I can easily lift out and drop into another theme as they are all done through include/require statements to separate files for layouts, settings, css, etc.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Richard Oelmann

Re: New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

by Chris Kenniburg -
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Richard,

I like the modular design that you describe.  Do you use includes in the lib.php and settings.php files for each page/function?

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In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

by Richard Oelmann -
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Yes

lib.php - https://github.com/roelmann/moodle-theme_flexibase/blob/master/lib.php#L31-L36

renderers.php - https://github.com/roelmann/moodle-theme_flexibase/blob/master/renderers.php#L32-L36

settings.php - https://github.com/roelmann/moodle-theme_flexibase/blob/master/settings.php#L37-L47

relevant layout files are all as includes in a /layout/includes subfolder. The stylesheets are separated out too, into separate ones for managing each of these sub-elements, as well as the main one. What I just realised I haven't done is to do the same for the LESS files, so I may need to review my stylesheets and move some of those areas into separate LESS style sheets too.

Just about the only element that could be done this way that I deliberately chose not to do at the time was the language file - I have done it for a local install and it worked, but I wasn't sure what impact it may have on the translation process for submitted plugins so hadn't gone quite that far with it.


I find this modular design easier to work with when putting new themes together for people, or when supporting flexibase - it means I can more easily pick and choose elements to build with as they are required (or not). One part of the project I originally started with was to release it with those sub-elements, each in their own subfolder. I didn't go with that in the end for that release, because of concerns that my sub-elements were all using BS3 and weren't appropriate for people to just 'drop in' to BS2 themes. But as more BS3 themes are being made, I may do that for the Flexibase2.0 release.


R

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

by Chris Kenniburg -
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I am thinking I am very close to having this theme ready to go.  I suspect that maybe next week or so it will be ready for release on Moodle.org.  

There are a few items I need to work out still:

  • My courses dropdown menu
  • My Courses on Dashboard display as blocks not rows
  • Fix some activity display issues I want to address before release
  • Marketing Blocks with html

Nice to haves:

  • In This Course drop down menu like BCU
  • Course Block Styling Toggle.  Allow admin to pick between three different stylesheets for blocks and activity background styling.
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

by Chris Kenniburg -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

Here is the finished look and feel for the new Pioneer theme that will hopefully be hitting the Moodle repository for Moodle 2.8 and 2.9 next week....



Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

by Usman Asar -
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Thanks for keeping Front Page Content area.

Plenty of new things found in the theme - congrats on that!

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In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

by Mary Evans -
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it's Looking good Chris!

i have been looking at adding the courses as small images across the page too...but I am planning on getting mine to scroll. I got the idea from one of the CSS Zen Garden web pages. I think it was called Radio Zen.

So glad you are using the sideway headers too in the blocks.

I have extended that idea to the frontpage course, category lists and combo too. Also the login page, but that is causing problems when resizing the screen.

Anyway...looking forward to seeing your new theme in action.

Cheers

Mary

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In reply to Mary Evans

Re: New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

by Chris Kenniburg -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

I took the featured images idea from the eguru theme.    

Mary, I loved the blocks from More Candy.  It really creates that subtle visual cue for the learner that separates them from the content.

I will be putting it up on github this coming week and then get it into the repository.  

I have a couple of ideas I'd still like to implement.  On top of the header image I want to put a block area and do a custom styling for the upcoming event block when placed in this new block area.  

Better yet, I'd love to figure out how to just embed that block in the course.php template file.  

Maybe save that for a future update.  


Thanks for the feedback.  

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In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: New Theme: Pioneer coming soon

by Mary Evans -
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H,

You need to look at one of the older versions of AARDVARK which had the Upcoming Events added to the dropdown header profile block.

Richard Olemann was the one who thought it out and submitted it to the AARDVARK GitHub so he is best person to ask!

Cheers

Mary

Average of ratings: Useful (1)