I'm new to Moodle and, the Wow! affect is starting to wear a bit thin.
Sure, there's tons of stuff, tons of answers to just about every question you could possibly think of...
But, to have to trawl through 15 or more pages of forum posts to find answers to things like, how do you correct the CSS to fix some of the more crazy defaults like 100% page width... (didn't the term "accessibility" exist when Moodle got started?)
My number 1 pet hate: that it doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone that visited links should be a different color.
Like, have I actually read that discussion on the "Themes" forum or not...?
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!!!!
As for your pet peeve: you can track new and read posts by setting "Forum tracking" to "Yes: highlight new posts for me" in your user profile.
The "visited links with different color" wouldn't work for me as I check Moodle forums from half a dozen computers and two or three browser brands regularly. Even with a single computer and a single browser it doesn't seem to be very reliable.
It's true that it is often hard to find things from the Moodle forums as there are so many posts and the search is a bit overly eager to find things. Using the advanced search and narrowing the search to a specific forum helps a lot. Also, using the "Subject should contain" field sometimes helps.
Your "accessibility" comment I don't follow: do you mean that having 100% page width is violating accessibility rules?
The "visited links with different color" wouldn't work for me as I check Moodle forums from half a dozen computers and two or three browser brands regularly. Even with a single computer and a single browser it doesn't seem to be very reliable.
It's true that it is often hard to find things from the Moodle forums as there are so many posts and the search is a bit overly eager to find things. Using the advanced search and narrowing the search to a specific forum helps a lot. Also, using the "Subject should contain" field sometimes helps.
Your "accessibility" comment I don't follow: do you mean that having 100% page width is violating accessibility rules?
Tom,
Moodle is the work of a lot of people, who give it to you for free. Is hate the right word? You can use Moodle's internal search of Google to find what you're after...
So join in and help fix the things that bother you. There's no time for unproductive things like hate.
Moodle is the work of a lot of people, who give it to you for free. Is hate the right word? You can use Moodle's internal search of Google to find what you're after...
So join in and help fix the things that bother you. There's no time for unproductive things like hate.
In reply to Martín Langhoff
Re: Number 1 thing I'd like to help improve in Moodle
David Scotson གིས-
As you say it depends on whether hating something leads you improve it or otherwise do something constructive to change the situation:
Yeah, ok, you phrased it a lot better than me, Martin. I fully appreciate that a lot of people put an awful lot into it.
Hate was the wrong word -- though "pet hate", the phrase I did actually use, is not quite the same thing...
But my whole point of saying, this is my pet hate, was to say, "Look, this is something we could improve that would make the learning curve easier for newbies like myself".
Hate was the wrong word -- though "pet hate", the phrase I did actually use, is not quite the same thing...
But my whole point of saying, this is my pet hate, was to say, "Look, this is something we could improve that would make the learning curve easier for newbies like myself".
The misunderstanding (of the "tone" of your post) probably comes from that there is no such phrase as "pet hate" in English, the phrase you are looking for is "pet peeve".
But as David explained, changing this would not be "fixing" Moodle. The visited link color thing only works for static web sites, not for web applications and definately not for busy web applications.
But as David explained, changing this would not be "fixing" Moodle. The visited link color thing only works for static web sites, not for web applications and definately not for busy web applications.
In reply to Samuli Karevaara
Re: Number 1 thing I'd like to help improve in Moodle
David Scotson གིས-
In my experience (UK/Scottish English) pet peeve and pet hate are roughly equivalent, with perhaps hate being stronger than peeve:
In reply to David Scotson
Re: Number 1 thing I'd like to help improve in Moodle
Samuli Karevaara གིས-
Okay, thanks for correcting! I'm using Merriam-Webster mostly, and have never heard this "pet hate"... Should have googled though.
Google says: "pet hate" 106,000 vs. "pet peeve" 1,920,000
so "pet peeve" is a lighter thing to throw around.
Google says: "pet hate" 106,000 vs. "pet peeve" 1,920,000
It's funny you should mention link colors, I just decided yesterday to make all link colors the same, unchanged by clicking them, in my themes.
The rationale is that Moodle is mostly dynamic. Forums, Wikis etc. are clearly dynamic and even though you may have visited them once, that's not really a useful bit of information in the same way as if you were looking through a long list of static web pages, images or PDF files etc.
(As an aside, I know some software tries to change the URL every time dynamic content gets changed but I've always found that a bit of a hack)
Similarly, a lot of the links in Moodle are more like application controls in a desktop application. Think how many times you click on 'forums' or 'log in' and how useless it is to know that you've clicked it once (in the last short while, on that machine, using that browser). Bear in mind that the educational focus of Moodle combined with it's nature as a web application somewhat assumes that students will be accessing it from a variety of machines, both at home and various labs/classrooms/computer clusters in the hosting institution.
In certain circumstances having links of different colours, for possibly obscure reasons, could even be confusing or at least distracting. I used to try and seperate out the Moodle infrastructure links from the content links but I'm not sure it's worth it anymore, particularly as you can easily use such Moodle-links within your content.
The only thing I hate about Moodle are posts like yours. Now I hope your sentiments are not as strong as your post implies. This is a FREE app made and maintained through the hard work of developers and a support community who also work for FREE. Thousands of hours have been spent developing, nurturing and shaping this app to make it what users want it to be.
Pet peeves are brought up all the time, as are bugs. I wont deny it. But as our social constructivist approach implies, they are also pretty quickly picked up and fixed by the community if it is really seen as an important issue.
You want to try HATE? Spend a few grand on WebCT, Blackboard or other such apps and see how quickly your peeves are fixed by them.
And lastly. If you do have a problem...ASK NICE!! Your problem is simply fixed and is purely a matter of theming. I provide you this answer against my better judgement, but to show how quickly issues such as yours can be resolved without complaining or moaning.
In your theme, open your css file (if it is a 1.5 theme, open styles_color.css). You will see the following tag in most standard themes near the top:
a:link,
a:visited {
color:#0000FF;
}
Obviously the color could be anything. Now replace it with this
a:link{
color:#0000FF;
}a:visited {
color:#0000CC;
}
This will change your visited links to a new color.
Have a nice day. 
JR
Actually, I wasn't complaining, Julian -- I think you misread my sentiments.
I figured out how to change the links colours on my site. But that wasn't my point.
My point was, could we have a "visited links" colour on the forums here on Moodle.org ...?
That way, when a newbie like myself comes along, we can trawl round all those goodies (that people clearly have spent so much time and energy providing) just a little more easily.
I figured out how to change the links colours on my site. But that wasn't my point.
My point was, could we have a "visited links" colour on the forums here on Moodle.org ...?
That way, when a newbie like myself comes along, we can trawl round all those goodies (that people clearly have spent so much time and energy providing) just a little more easily.
It is a shame the documentation wiki is not publicised more. I know it's still in it's relatively early state but a lot of people may find what they are looking for in there ...
http://docs.moodle.org/wiki/Main_Page
Of course, if you don't you can always add it after you have worked it out
Darren
http://docs.moodle.org/wiki/Main_Page
Of course, if you don't you can always add it after you have worked it out
Darren
Like David - and knowing the meaning of "change color when visited" very well - we also deliberatily changed our colors back to the situation you hate: we first used our college colors green red and black to echo the windows style and then discovered that Moodle is a different kind of interface that has to echo different kind of cues: so not in ignorance but deliberatily we changed it back again..
Another aspect relates to the current succes of Moodle: it is also used by normal people, who are not educated in the style habits of the web: they just use it!
So For the same reason you should not refer to "the homepage" in a manual to help them: doesn't mean anything for them. (These are words and habits from another planet, populated by computer guys like you (and me )
There is only one real way of implementing "visited links" in Moodle, and that is much like the "new posts" feature that is implemented in these very forums. That is, keeping a database table with reference to all resources/items a Moodler has visited and flagging them using CSS as "visited". Now this is not only stupidly resource intensive, but a very fundamental change to the way people use Moodle.
I can understand wanting to flag resources like articles as "read" so a student can keep a record of which course material has been reviewed, however, and maybe this would be a good little project for somebody. It could just be an adaptation of the post tracking code (although I havn't looked at it personally to verify this).
I can understand wanting to flag resources like articles as "read" so a student can keep a record of which course material has been reviewed, however, and maybe this would be a good little project for somebody. It could just be an adaptation of the post tracking code (although I havn't looked at it personally to verify this).
There are at least 2 releases of hacks that allow resources to be marked as read. See the conditional activities forum
for just flagging - as a student - your visits of resources and activities as opposed to the many more visited links of the navigation and other control parts of the interface, there is a patch available (as a course format, see picture), this discussion is about the flat interface.
for finishing jobs behind the visited links there are several checkmark systems as add-ons, like MoodleFN, conditional linking, ..
Maybe just wonder why people who can build such a nice tool, make another choice for parts of their interface: web- or (guided) tutorial-browsing is another kind of sport then controlling your learning life from a Moodle dashboard (yes, a kind of homepage ).
Hi Tom;
"Hate" is a strong word, as pointed out elsewhere. The fact that Moodle is "free" as in "free to be changed" means that you are at liberty to put those things right (for you).
As for trawling through tons of stuff - yeah, sometimes it gets on my nerves too, even with judicious use of keywords. But the upside is that I ALWAYS learn something new, that may not otherwise have occurred to me. Every cloud has a silver lining.
So go ahead - hate something, change something, make it better. And share it, because somebody Out There (Out Here??) will appreciate what you do.
[edit]
...and the thing I like BEST about Moodle is what is being displayed here...a gripe was posted and within 3 hours there's an international conversation going on, and a fix has been proposed. As Julian says, try getting that kind of response from any of the commercial VLEs.
Happy Moodling!
"Hate" is a strong word, as pointed out elsewhere. The fact that Moodle is "free" as in "free to be changed" means that you are at liberty to put those things right (for you).
As for trawling through tons of stuff - yeah, sometimes it gets on my nerves too, even with judicious use of keywords. But the upside is that I ALWAYS learn something new, that may not otherwise have occurred to me. Every cloud has a silver lining.
So go ahead - hate something, change something, make it better. And share it, because somebody Out There (Out Here??) will appreciate what you do.
[edit]
...and the thing I like BEST about Moodle is what is being displayed here...a gripe was posted and within 3 hours there's an international conversation going on, and a fix has been proposed. As Julian says, try getting that kind of response from any of the commercial VLEs.
Happy Moodling!
Yeah,
and, once more, the old Spanish saying is true:
it was really interesting for me to know about "pet peeve" and "pet hate". Thanks!
Ciao
and, once more, the old Spanish saying is true:
"A la cama no te irás sin saber una cosa más"
(to the bed you won't go without learning one more thing)
it was really interesting for me to know about "pet peeve" and "pet hate". Thanks!
Ciao
I think many of us focused on the use of the word hate and his closing line "I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!!!!" A natural response when someone seems to be saying that your baby is ugly.
But I think Tom was actually asking something else (correct me if I'm wrong, Tom): Is there a way to turn on the visited link color function within any and all of these forums?
Because this is not a normal classroom, but rather a mega-super classroom (because of all the people participating and all the posts accumulating) it does become a rather daunting task to read through the many posts in the many forums without finding yourself reading over stuff you've already seen.
So, is there a recommendation from anyone about what the most efficient way to navigate Moodle.Org might be?
Thanks,
claude 
Oh, I think Tom was trying to show us how _not_ to get help by pissing people off 
As Eloy says, everyday has something new for us to learn.
If you want to change the way Moodle.org functions, your best bet is to propose changes _tactfully_ and supply a patch that implements the change. Now, if you want UI change for yourself, most modern web browsers let you have a CSS stylesheet at your end, to apply it to the website. On Mozilla, try View->Apply Theme.
A more advanced trick is to use greasemonkey. I hear it's a lot of fun, but you need to know javascript.
If you want to change the way Moodle.org functions, your best bet is to propose changes _tactfully_ and supply a patch that implements the change. Now, if you want UI change for yourself, most modern web browsers let you have a CSS stylesheet at your end, to apply it to the website. On Mozilla, try View->Apply Theme.
A more advanced trick is to use greasemonkey. I hear it's a lot of fun, but you need to know javascript.
Yeah, Claude, that's right, sincere and most humble apologies if I offended anyone. That was never my intention, far from it.
The most amazing thing about Moodle is not, I don't think, that as users we are really that much different from 90% of any of the other users of the Internet (the 10% being those at M$ and Google is Evil, Blackboard, etc) -- but that there are so many people so very clearly expert giving so freely of their time and their knowledge...
All I meant to say was, wouldn't it be possible to make that vast store of knowledge just ever so slightly more accessible?
Of course you can use the search facility, but no matter how many times you refine your search, you still get dozens of results... Amazing! Fantastic!
But couldn't we refine those results further by marking in some way those already read...? Even if that was only an user-selected option...?
Tom
The most amazing thing about Moodle is not, I don't think, that as users we are really that much different from 90% of any of the other users of the Internet (the 10% being those at M$ and Google is Evil, Blackboard, etc) -- but that there are so many people so very clearly expert giving so freely of their time and their knowledge...
All I meant to say was, wouldn't it be possible to make that vast store of knowledge just ever so slightly more accessible?
Of course you can use the search facility, but no matter how many times you refine your search, you still get dozens of results... Amazing! Fantastic!
But couldn't we refine those results further by marking in some way those already read...? Even if that was only an user-selected option...?
Tom
No worries. The open source world is different to other spaces because the developers are always in involved in the community activities, there isn't a separation between the users and the developers. Some of us are just developers, some just users, most probably a mix. And we're all involved in this.
WRT your technical question, someone has posted a very good, valid reason to _not_ have colour-coding of visited/non-visited: in a dynamic system like Moodle, the same URL often leads to a new or changed page. So is potentially very misleading.
If you want it, however, you can use the feature of web-browsers that allows you to force a CSS stylesheet on a website. I'm sure it's available on most modern web-browsers. For more advanced magic, you can use Greasemonkey too. Cheers.
WRT your technical question, someone has posted a very good, valid reason to _not_ have colour-coding of visited/non-visited: in a dynamic system like Moodle, the same URL often leads to a new or changed page. So is potentially very misleading.
If you want it, however, you can use the feature of web-browsers that allows you to force a CSS stylesheet on a website. I'm sure it's available on most modern web-browsers. For more advanced magic, you can use Greasemonkey too. Cheers.
how about a functions called , Search in this group only, as google did in google.groups ;)
Or how about posters rate themselves "novice" or "expert" or somewhere in the middle, and then a search function, "see only novice questions", "exclude expert answers" etc etc....?????
Then someone beginning with Moodle could, say, search for (eg) "problem attaching file Internet Explorer" and filter to "see only novice questions", to see if anyone else has asked the same thing, just as a way of cutting down the number of search results, apart from anything else...???
Or, for example, (opt to) filter out all the "expert" replies if and when those are going right over his/her head...???
Tom
Then someone beginning with Moodle could, say, search for (eg) "problem attaching file Internet Explorer" and filter to "see only novice questions", to see if anyone else has asked the same thing, just as a way of cutting down the number of search results, apart from anything else...???
Or, for example, (opt to) filter out all the "expert" replies if and when those are going right over his/her head...???
Tom