Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

by Chris Kenniburg -
Number of replies: 14
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

GOOD NEWS FOLKS... I found a local plugin that allows you to remove items from the Nav Drawer.  It's great by itself but can be much better when integrated with a theme.  

With integration in a theme we can introduce additional logic to control when to customize the menu.  For instance, you may want the default menu items on the site homepage but hidden once inside a course.  With the current setup I can hide the Dashboard, Private FIles, Calendar, and My Courses with simple checkboxes in the Fordson Theme Admin.  

I plan on adding the ability to further customize the Nav Drawer by adding your own links in a textbox kinda like the custom menu option.  So when I am done you will be able to hide the default items and add in your own items. 

The other thing I have in the works is a "My Course" drop-down that appears with the language drop down in custom menu area at the top of the page. This would be very useful if you turn off the My Courses from the nav drawer.  

The one area I am not looking at changing is the main course menu that appears when you are inside a course with topics, participants, etc.  

Look for this 1.3.0 version of Fordson https://moodle.org/plugins/theme_fordson

Average of ratings: Useful (2)
In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

by Scott Hardwick -

Chris --- 

You are doing exciting work! 

You mentioned:

"The other thing I have in the works is a "My Course" drop-down that appears with the language drop down in custom menu area at the top of the page. This would be very useful if you turn off the My Courses from the nav drawer."

Is this something you think you will be releasing as part of a local plugin, or will it only be available within your theme?

Thanks!

Scott

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Scott Hardwick

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

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

I am going to include it with the theme. It is ready to go and on Github.  Although github will change before release.  

There are three main areas where Fordson controls the menus:

* This Course drop-down

* Boost Navdrawer - Remove defaults and add new menu items

* My Courses dropdown

All settings are on the Menu Tab of the Fordson administration.


The current holdup is a new enrollment plugin we are developing that will be integrated (but not required) with Fordson.  Imagine being able to type a 6 digit code into a searchbox and instantly be enrolled into a course and the associated group!  This functions just like Google Classroom and Edmodo.  

Also imagine being able to have a child/parent scan a QR code via a camera such as a those on a chromebook and instantly be enrolled into a course! (Requires SSL on server)

As soon as we get a working enrollment plugin integrated with the theme we will be publishing the next release of Fordson which will also include the MyCourses dropdown.  Hopefully before the end of the week.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

by p p -

Hi Chris,

Great news! I've been looking into the Fordson Theme and it looks great!

I think the Idea to put the "Turn editing on" button back to the top is a good idea, I've implemented this into the nav drawer(but ofcourse with a core hack sad )

I've made my theme just for the company I work for so I can't really share anything.


Would love to keep up-to-date on the developments of the Fordson theme, what would be the best way to follow the progress?


Best regards,


Paul

Average of ratings: -
In reply to p p

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

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

Glad to hear you like Fordson.  If you like the theme the best way to show the developer is to make it a favorite in the plugin directory.  

I post about our progress and direction of Fordson right here in the forums. Usually in the discussion thread linked from the plugin page.  

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

by Randy Thornton -
Picture of Documentation writers

Chris,

Thanks so much for the ability to hide the items in the Nav Drawer, that solves one of two of the biggest complaints with Boost I have gotten from users.

The other is to put back a direct Course administration link - in the Nav Drawer above Site administration would be perfect, and/or somewhere in the header alongside the This course button or the Turn editing on button you've rescued.

Unfortunately the course admin URL requires the course id parameter, so it's not possible to add it to your cool ability to put custom urls on the Nav Drawer.


Basically every teacher and course designer I work with detests the new course admin layout and all they want is one simple button that will show the entire flat course admin menu with one click.


Thanks

Randy

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Randy Thornton

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

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

Randy,

Great idea!  What if I put it as a custom option in the This Course drop down menu?  

I can probably get it into the nav drawer like you suggested as well.  Let me get a link working and I will see about adding it into the various areas.

You are referring to the page that loads when you click More in the edit gear correct?

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

by Randy Thornton -
Picture of Documentation writers

Chris,

Yes, it's the page that loads when you do Gear > More,  the link structure is %wwwroot%/course/admin.php?courseid=#

The goal, as with restoring the Turn editing on button, is to reduce the clicks to one. 

Adding it to Nav Drawer is great. But when the drawer is closed then having it somewhere else it is constantly available like the Turn editing on button would be perfect. 

The idea is: avoid dropdowns and multi-clicks and restore the same type of direct access as the Admin block -- actually better, because the new flat menu style for Admin menus shows so much more at once and makes many tasks quicker and more direct than the Admin block where submenus had to be opened a lot. But it takes more work to get to the flat menu now.

I've tried showing people the 'This course' menu in the theme but most people react to it with 'That's good but it's yet another place' meaning there are now four places to have to go - Gear, Gear + More, Nav Drawer, This course - and each has different but somewhat over lapping options. It's too confusing.

Having a constant and standard access via the Nav Drawer and one other button to the course admin menu would be clean and simple.


Average of ratings: -
In reply to Randy Thornton

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

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

Randy,

This makes sense to me.  I will see where it might make most sense to put the link.  I have a few projects to get off my plate but will get this as part of the next release.

Chris

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Randy Thornton

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

by Eric Bryant -

This is a really important issue we are facing at our institution too.  I'd like to have simple (e.g. one click) access to turn editing on.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Eric Bryant

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

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

Fordson for Moodle 3.4 and 3.5 has the edit button always visible in the top navbar.  It also keeps the user on the same part of the page after editing is toggled.  We also put course management into a modal window with all the links organized for teachers.  This can be accessed at anytime from any page.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

by Becky Borello -

Hi Chris,


I am very interested in your summer workshop.  I am now following you on Twitter so I will look forward to a tweet about it!  In the meantime, I am struggling greatly trying to make one theme do all the things I am looking for.  I noticed this in your 1.3 release notes:

## Fordson 1.3.0
*Customized Nav Drawer - Add and remove items from the Boost navigation drawer. Ability to have customizations appear on all pages, frontpage only, course pages only. Special thanks to Alexander Bias with https://github.com/moodleuulm/moodle-local_boostnavigation and Carlos Escobedo with https://moodle.org/plugins/local_navigation. I was able to combine these two plugins to remove default menu items and add new menu items. Because this is done with a theme we also added a toggle to allow you to determine where the customizations appear.


Is this still possible in your most recent version?  I would love to remove Private Files from the Nav Drawer.


Thanks,

Becky

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Becky Borello

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

by Becky Borello -

Hi Chris,


You can ignore the above post!  I figured it out using CSS.  


THANKS!

Becky

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Becky Borello

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

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

Becky,

For long term support we ended up removing this from the Fordson theme.  We had plans to expand it but those changed when we took on our Easy Enrollment plugin and Secure Chromebook Lockdown Browser for testing.  Sometimes you bite off more than you can chew.  We decided instead to just use the original plugin: https://moodle.org/plugins/local_boostnavigation

This plugin was what we based our implementation on but then we ran out of time and resources for improving upon it.  They have done an OUTSTANDING job since way back then and took this to new heights that even we didn't consider when we were dreaming of ways to improve upon it within our theme.  I highly recommend you check it out and you can totally remove the private files link along with many of the others as well.  

The tech camp is usually only $100 and includes lunch and ice cream for both days.  We are finalizing the details and there will be 2 separate tech camps this summer.

-Chris

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

Re: Customizing Nav Drawer in Boost

by Alexander Bias -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Thanks, Chris, for the kind words about local_boostnavigation. As the maintainer of this plugin, I appreciate any positive feedback smile

Cheers,
Alex

Average of ratings: Useful (1)