Wish list for themes | some thoughts

Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Derek Chirnside -
Number of replies: 20

I really owe this post to Mary, I've been meaning to do it for over a year when she asked "What did I mean?" or something but now I cannot fins the thread.  In no way is this meant to be specific to any themes, but a random quick mind dump of a few Plus and Minus factors that make the life of an enduser nicer.  My wash spin dry cycle to get Moodle 3.0 sorted by January continues, and the richness and variety of themes is great.

You are smart enough to gloss over where you KNOW I am on a soap box.  All comments, pushback and additions welcome.

A. Things that make it easy to get to grips with a new theme

  1. If possible have an 'on/off' toggle for key items eg a slider.  Having to remove all the old images is a pain.  Then having to put them back in later . . .
  2. Have a set of default images come with the theme.  makes it quicker to see what is what.
  3. Put default sizes for any images on the settings pages in the description text.  Saves a guess or a firebug inquiry.
  4. Have horizontal navigation pages between settings pages if possible,  (I've never seen this in Moodle)  probably an example of severe feature creep.
  5. Where possible define terms like Nav bar, Front age centre text as unambiguously as possible.  Saves guessing.

B. Settings

You can of course have overwhelm in settings.  (See the Atahaulpa theme in Wiordpress for example)

  1. Sooner or later we will need control over screen real estate.
    Good: adjustable heading heights.
  2. 'All site message' on front page.  A good bonus.  (Make sure it is styled well)  (Is there a stabndard descriptive term for this?)
  3. "Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should" colours, extra icons, all added for local needs with no settings or rationale.  smile  One of the first things I eliminate and try to reduce.  smile
  4. Check the width of pop out menus.  ie then they are roll overed.
  5. Columns: try to allow choice as in right or left for two col themes.
  6. Explain stuff where you can.  Like a design decision, a limitation, a gotcha.  
  7. Edit Mode ON.  I do like having this as a button.  Other random buttons:
    • Edit footer/header
    • Edit label in one click
    • Edit a text box on the front page you may like to change on a regular basis

C. General

  1. Moodle things (that make it Moodley looking).  Avoid like the plague, and maybe have switches.  I won't detail this, as it is too personal really.
  2. Colours of buttons.  Choice is good.
  3. Have a modern looking rollover.  
  4. Search box.  I like having an admin search always available.
  5. If you have a really way out innovation, tell us if there is a place to do so what the rationale for this is.
  6. Build in Print CSS.  Print books, print pages, print quizzes.  Just eliminate a few of the blocks etc, have nice widths, and decent fonts/font types.
  7. Completely speculative: maybe include a built in daughter theme for those who want to go direct to hacking.
  8. Having H1-3 and H4-6, body styles (etc) in groups helps us tweak the appearance a little easier
    • I like being able to change body text to serif
    • I do like a global setting for serif/non-serif
    • I also like being able to choose larger text at times, and a % setting sitewide is great

As I said, I am very grateful for the new functionalities in themes.

With regards,

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Fernando Acedo -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Derek, I like your comments and suggestions. And agree with most of them. We are working very hard to get BCU a flexible theme avoiding the complexity. But the main problem is moodle itself that do not offer enough tools to get themes like Wordpress or Joomla. If the themes architecture, and part of moodle, was different probably we could get less complex and more powerful themes.

You have a sample in the themes directory. You can find UIKit, a famous Joomla framework, that here is not so famous but is one of the most completed Moodle Themes. But probably to complex to setup.

New BCU version will have about 200 settings and it means that you need time to configure the theme to fit your needs, and good documentation as well.Now that is becoming stable we'll work. If you can play with it will see that can be adapted to any user requirements (or almost).

 

 

 

 

 

 

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In reply to Fernando Acedo

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Richard Oelmann -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Fernando - while not disagreeing, I would note that Moodle itself is a far more complex piece of software and does far more than WP/Joomla (at least in core versions) and while there are many things which would make our life easier as themers (getting renderers in place for everything, having one method of doing things - renderers, no renderers, now templates, etc). I would say my experiences of theming in WP have been less than user/developer friendly in comparison to Moodle. I guess its down to personal experiences and personal preferences. For me, I am far happier with the 'Moodle way' and the Moodle community - but that is a personal opinion and preference and should in no way be taken as criticising either WP/Joomla or the people who work to produce some beautiful themes for both of those and other systems.

As for UIKit - I think that's a much wider framework than just Joomla isnt it? (although I understand the people who built UIKit - the framework rather than the Moodle theme - used their experience of building themes for both Joomla and WP to do so). It seems to me to be a like for like with Bootstrap - without such a  wide acceptance and adoption that Bootstrap has across the whole net. It would be good to see the UIKit theme updated for 2.9/3.0, but can you explain what exactly you mean by it being 'one of the most complete moodle themes'? It has its own styles manager where others have settings pages, but in what areas do you feel UIKit is more complete than other themes?

Derek, as always an interesting set of comments and suggestions. I got caught in the 'complexity of settings' trap in the early days of settings pages with the original flexi themes (flexi_ii is still in the database I believe and was in use at least in Moodle2.8 on a number of fairly major sites, even though it wasn't still under active development, simply because of that level of customisability). Back then we didn't have (didn't know about) creating multiple settings pages, so it became one long (hugely long!) single settings page but could control almost every visual aspect of the site. Now I hope flexibase treads the balance between power/flexibility and not being overly complex - and yet I have found that to be a different balance for different users - some wish for greater individual settings rather than using the customcss (or customless in flexibase) while others want fewer settings and fewer options to make things simpler - for example, your suggestion about a font-size setting: an extra setting or rely on a site admin to simply add a line of customcss? If an extra setting, what about the next entirely reasonable request that is a balance between setting or simple customcss solutions - the features creep smile ? That is the balance we try to reach as theme creators (well, one of them smile ) Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it right for some people but not others - and yes, sometimes we get it hideously wrong smile Hopefully in all cases we listen to feedback such as yours, or comments such as Fernando's above and try to learn from them - the Moodle theming experience is constantly evolving and, I hope, constantly improving for the end users smile

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In reply to Richard Oelmann

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Fernando Acedo -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Richard, I work only with moodle and Joomla and sometimes with WP. But moodle is far away of them or other CMS  the templates architecture.

Yes, many of them use Bootstrap but the layout is totally different. In Joomla, you can create a simple template from a HTML/CSS layout. In moodle you need to create the regions and follow all the rules to get a very simple theme.

Joomla I need a few hours, normally less 3, to get a complex theme using a framework like UIKit or Gantry. Menus, blocks and especially regions (positions in Joomla) are really easy to create.

And a good sample can be found in moodle UIKit theme. The settings are totally different, easy to use (improved usability) and you can configure almost all the styles from the backend in an easy way. And you can save the settings!!!

Normally I use Gantry with Joomla and it is even more simple to use with all the settings in 5 pages and never more than 2 screens long, while in moodle we have many long pages full of settings. (Some volunteer to help to remove the awful colour picker and use the bootstrap color selector???)

In my opinion, this is one of the most important challenges in moodle: To get an easy way to create complex themes and get the users never say: "I want a site but without the moodle style". Bootstrap was a good start but is not enough. And I don't see a clear way for the next future. We all need to to improve the themes: themes developers and moodle HQ. If not, we'll keep stuck in the past.

 

 

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In reply to Fernando Acedo

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Mary Evans -

Hi Fernando...

here is a little Moodle History...

I think we have come full circle...as what is happening now is historic...

read on...

https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=116398

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In reply to Mary Evans

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by ben reynolds -

My gosh, Mary. Tl;dr because I'm at work, but the top bit is a fun read, and I'm not even a CSS or theme person.

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In reply to Mary Evans

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Fernando Acedo -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Thanks Mary to recover from the deep moodle forum this fantastic discussion. I remember read it some years ago and especially the Urs thread.

Unfortunately we have not moved so much from 2009 while others did it. I only can compare with Joomla because is the one I use more, and they are centuries ago from moodle even using bootstrap as a base. Just take a look to Gantry 5 framework from RocketTheme. 

From my point of view, the layout is exactly the same: one fixed position for maincontent and the rest for blocks (or the called modules in Joomla). So it could be possible, why not? Just need to move forward.

 

 

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In reply to Fernando Acedo

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Derek Chirnside -

This is fascinating Fernando.  I did not know the significance of this, and I looked at every theme in the database a month ago.

UIKIT is being updated for Moodle 2.9 and 3.0 before the end of December.

https://moodle.org/plugins/theme_uikit

Fascinating.  If I get impatient I'll install it on our 2.8 just for a play.

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

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

Interesting words Derek.

Perhaps this could be the start of an academic paper entitled "Moodle themes, past, present and future with a view to facilitating the pedagogical learning interface.".  For your research you could use each statement as a lead in to a question on a survey - such as SurveyMonkey.  That would then form the basis of a concrete foundation of work with solid evidence by which themes could be engineered to suit the needs of all learners.

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Mary Evans -

Oh goody...you have answered at last...

A lot of what you are asking for is more a Moodle problem and nothing to do with themes.

My simple thinking is that it's about time Moodle Developers got to grips with Moodle themes. They are prattling about with them at the moment and making them so complicated...it's a pain.

There is far to much movement going on that appears to be pushing new ideas into Moodle, and not really looking at simplicity of code either. Besides I'm getting too old for this and need to retire.

I am working on a theme called Morecandy. Rewriting it actually...Now I know what you are looking for I will try and include some new features...

Thanks Derek...

Have a nice Day...

Mary

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Frankie Kam -
Picture of Plugin developers

Frankie enters the room. He lowers his head slightly and whispers in a hushed voice:  "Lightbox-like popups when clicking on PDF and image file resources, whether the Display setting of the file resource is set as "Automatic" or 'pop-up' - without hacking core Moodle code . Yes, that would be nice. More glory to the Moodle course page that is used as a glorified PDF file repository". Frankie leaves the room.

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In reply to Frankie Kam

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Derek Chirnside -

I think this is a little off the topic of themes Frankie.  A really really good addition to Moodle, and I hope we can get this into our 3.0.

Question as of today: can you do this PDF magic without hacking the core code yet? or are we still waiting?

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

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

Hi Derek,

There are three ways of getting new functionality for Moodle:

  1. Code it yourself.
  2. Be patient.
  3. Pay for it.

Cheers,

Gareth

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In reply to Gareth J Barnard

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Derek Chirnside -
Hmm. I'm not sure about that Gareth. Of course we all have to use (2). But you have not mentioned the most important way. The most important by a long shot.

-Derek


Sent from mobile which may (or may not) explain typos and non sequiturs.
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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

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

Which is?

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In reply to Gareth J Barnard

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Derek Chirnside -

Gareth, I think advocacy, voting on the tracker, giving time to test, fiddle with and suggest.

I guess I also ask people to code things, providing feedback to coders on things.

One little example I came upon today was this, I think I emailed Dan and asked him for some help based on seeing this report in a Catalyst hosted site:


I also subscribe to the romantic view that if by engaging in the forums here I can help a person save time then that is often a way to move Moodle on.  I know I have annoyed HQ with some of my suggestions, but you can't make progress all the time.

All this as well as the three you suggest.

smile

-Derek


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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

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

Hi Derek,

True that encouragement works, Michael de Raadt did email me about improvements to Collapsed Topics, now it has Bootstrap support and will soon have PHPUnit tests.  But its only because I wanted to and I saw an opportunity to improve my skills.

As for voting, I don't think that really works, look at MDL-372!

Cheers,

Gareth

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In reply to Gareth J Barnard

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Mary Evans -

Well for what it's worth, a long time in comming, MDL-372 is fixed and in place for 3.1 smile

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In reply to Mary Evans

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Fernando Acedo -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

And only tooks 13 years to fix it. Awesome!!! Yes

This request is even 2 years older than me as a moodler. wide eyes

And Gareth is asking for an option to save settings. Probably in next life

...or not wink


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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Wish list for themes | some thoughts

by Frankie Kam -
Picture of Plugin developers

Hi Derek

How to get the PDF thing to work without hacking core code? I'm afraid I'm still not there yet. I'm not in the same coding league as a Gareth, Itamar, Davo, Chris, Tim or Justin. Those guys are Jedi Masters. I can't even fly the FM. #3 is a nice thought, but I shudder if I accept people's hard-earned money but can't deliver to their expectations.

Regards
Frankie Kam 

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