Hi Moodlers,
Please get the theme from: https://moodle.org/plugins/pluginversion.php?id=10160
It has:
1. Fix Quiz > Edit quiz -> Edit maximum mark.
2. Fix all blocks when docked #13.
3. RTL tidy up.
4. Dock tidy up.
5. Travis CI -> https://travis-ci.org/gjb2048/moodle-theme_shoehorn.
Cheers,
Gareth
I've finally got to having a play with this theme.
Again, I do not claim to be an expert, in fact even less so with this theme. I did not understand quite a few of the settings.
Here goes, simple bullet points . . . .
1. Loaded the theme, then set about fiddling with the settings. It comes by default quite full of colour, which I wanted to wash out a little. I lightened the background colour. I was then unable to figure out how to set the colour for the header, which by default is white.
2. FONTS There are two overall types of font, headings and text. I could not get these to work. It says 'enter the exact name of the font', but the ones I chose didn't work.
But I like the choice and simplicity of setting like this.
3. Further down the same setting page it was not so clear. I could not figure out what fonts for body were, why there were several options and if I put something in both, which one will win.
4. And there are some strange abbreviations. Strange to me at least. Google is your friend. I had to search for a number of words here. eg WOFF.
So, with all these font options you can obviously make your typography look really cool. Now I know why Gareth has his font of the month.
5. Site pages. Built in. I had not seen this in a theme before. This is kind of common sense. You will always have some pages at site level. Really good.
And a fancy uploading images function as well. Really really cool. Save a lot of silly fiddling.
6. GETTING HELP At this stage I had exhausted my ability to fiddle productively. So (sigh!) RTFM. This is where things got interesting. No written help, so to the videos. I was fine with video 1 until it said I needed node.js, and then grunt. I had misunderstood "Customising Shoehorn for Production"
At that stage I stopped watching.
On to video 2. The first thing it said is watch video 1. So I abandoned that also. I was expecting "Customising Shoehorn for newbies" I bet I have missed the video somewhere for this.
7. TILES IN SECTIONS VIEW. At the section level: documents shown as tiles, running across the page. This is interesting. The first time I had seen this is in the Snap theme.
8. Plugins: Generico OK
And also styles in the styles plugin from ATTO
9. Plugins: Tabs filter OK
10. Course menu. Not so good. Firstly I could not get the sidebar to the left. There seemed to be no setting for this. Nice and very cool styling of the blocks.
11. Editing roadblock: Then with a course with Course menu in it it is not possible to edit unless you are on the Course main page, which I couldn't find how to show. So course menu does not play well with this theme, or at least I could not figure it out. Or maybe any single section view is not editable.
12. ACCORDION BLOCKS In the settings there is a reference to accordion blocks. I could not understand this until a bit of trial and error. Unfortunately this is another way Course menu and Shoehorn don't co-exist well. As far as my fiddling went. What this means is that blocks get hidden and appear on a click. Great for removing clutter. But when you want OFF for one significant block, you are out of luck.
12. This course, a dropdown at course level. Now this dropdown I really like. I first saw it in Flexibase.
My rationale is that it is very intuitive, and you can change the terms in it if you wish, and it's there at one click: grades, assignments, forums etc.
On the other hand, if yo.u want these more available and you use course menu, they are all selectable to show in the course menu block.
13. Other formats: Onetopic. Not too good out of the box. Probably easy to fix, did not wrap.
14. BUT, with Onetopic, editing was possible even when not on the course main page:
I think this theme is about fonts, bootstrap, but as of yet you still need to be in the cognoscenti and do a fair bit of fiddling to find your way around. I was a bit surprised to see talk of grunt and node.js in the first video. Maybe a little more help text Gareth could make it easier for us lower down the food chain. It is also about responsiveness (there is some video stuff in here as well to be responsive) and there are settings like transparency in the front page, I suspect I need to get help to use these.
It's got cool next and previous sliders, but no built in way to choose another non-adjacent section to go to.
The complexity of some of these interactions can work against other plugins, specifically Onetopic and Course menu. But I suspect easy to fix. I'm not sure what is different or the same with Essential.
I did not dabble in the branding, banners, marketing etc. Maybe another time.
My 2c worth.
Taking a break now from Themes.
-Derek
Hi Derek,
Firstly, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to review Shoehorn.
Shoehorn for M3.0 is still beta so may indeed have snags to be fixed, something I am working on.
To answer each point:
I'm surprised that you did not cover the awesome features of:
Kind regards,
Gareth
P.S.
RE: It's got cool next and previous sliders, but no built in way to choose another non-adjacent section to go to.
Yes, there is, use the carousel slide indicators .
RE: I'm not sure what is different or the same with Essential.
Differrent to Essential:
P.P.S.
Page header background text colour setting in next version.
Gareth, thanks for your comments, a quick response:
You say:
I'm surprised that you did not cover the awesome features of:
Regarding your other post, about carousel slide indicators
I googled this just to check I was on the right wavelength.
Consider this:
I think this course format is a nice idea. Especially when combined with resource tiles, and it has got rid of a lot of clutter such as next/previous - but at present I'm not sure I can make it work.
I should highlight again one thing that slipped through in the review in point 5.
"All theme designers: hack/steal Gareth's Image management for themes functionality. Stop this silly business of having to upload images in some obscure way and link to them in our themes"On the matter of plugins to themes, Gareth you this to say in 2014: "Also thought that themes should have transposable 'sub-modules' such that specific theme bound functionality can be installed in other themes just like plugins" +1 This is a good idea.
-Derek
Hi Derek,
Syntax highlighting improves the educational presentation of code and thus the overall look of any course that is about programming.
I have made a screen cast about it here:
I'll have a look at the indicators showing the section number etc.
The administrator load chart is an experiment which came from previous conversations over back end tools for admins. Yes it could be a block. In its current state it was easier to add it within the theme as a starting point. It only shows on admin screens.
The comment I made in 2014 really depends on HQ changing the whole underlying architecture in order to facilitate it. It is a desire rather than something that can be practically implemented in a contributed theme. Although I am making progress with child theme technology and 'tiles'.
Kind regards,
Gareth
"The comment I made in 2014 really depends on HQ changing the whole underlying architecture in order to facilitate it. It is a desire rather than something that can be practically implemented in a contributed theme. Although I am making progress with child theme technology and 'tiles'."
It would certainly be much better and easier to do with changes in the underlying architecture, but I've tried a 'proof of concept' with the 'plugin features' in flexibase (e.g. making awesomebar portable to other themes). It's not ideal, but it is a step better than nothing