How to get rid of action menus for activities in Boost

Re: How to get rid of action menus for activities in Boost

by stefan weber -
Number of replies: 6

FINALLY I found the place where icons are defined to be primary (outside of dropdown) or secondary (inside dropdown)

This allows us to put the "edit settings" icon outside of the dropdown menu, where it belongs.

So finally we have a Moodle Boost interface that does not annoy our users:



The solution, for anyone who wants to replicate it, is:


  • in /course/lib.php you can edit which icons are primary and which are secondary, we changed it like this:
    • // Update. -> $actions'update' = new action_menu_link_primary
    • // Hide/Show/Available/Unavailable. -> $actions'show' = new action_menu_link_primary (change both entries!)
    • // Groupmode. -> $actions'update' = new action_menu_link_secondary (whoever made this primary should be excluded from doing any more changes in moodle - seriously what the hell were you thinking?)


  • To put the dropdown menu on the right side of the other icons, change their order in /theme/boost/templates/core/action_menu.mustache so that it looks like this:
    {{#items}}{{> core/action_menu_item }}{{/items}}
    {{#prioritise}}{{> core/action_menu_trigger }}{{/prioritise}}
    {{^prioritise}}{{> core/action_menu_trigger }}{{/prioritise}}

  • To fix formatting of icons for activities without group mode, delete this one line from /theme/boost/templates/core/action_menu_item.mustache:
    {{#actionmenufiller}}<span class="filler">&nbsp;</span>{{/actionmenufiller}}


Hope this helps other people which are unhappy with the state of Boost. I will try and push for this to be included in Moodle core.





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In reply to stefan weber

Re: How to get rid of action menus for activities in Boost

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

  • // Groupmode. -> $actions'update' = new action_menu_link_secondary (whoever made this primary should be excluded from doing any more changes in moodle - seriously what the hell were you thinking?) . big grin - haha - thanks for the morning laugh - though this really isn't actually funny.

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In reply to stefan weber

Re: How to get rid of action menus for activities in Boost

by Randy Thornton -


"

  • (whoever made this primary should be excluded from doing any more changes in moodle - seriously what the hell were you thinking?)

"


Thanks, Stefan.

Completely agree with this. The changes here have been horrible, and part of a disrespectful (I use that word intentionally) tendency to hide things behind multiple clicks.

This is course design mode.  All the primary tools you need in course design should be ONE and ONLY one click away.

Hiding things behind multiple menus that take multiple clicks is making users think more, work harder, and privileges ease of programming over ease of use by users, which in this case is teachers and course designers. 

If your job is course design and you have an 50% increase in the amount of clicks to do the very same thing you did before, that is not just bad design but has a physical impact on you hour after hour, day after day, month after month. A bad physical impact for no good reason at all.

There's a whole section in Steve Krug's classic design book 'Don't Make Me Think' where he discusses how drop down menus are almost always the wrong design choice because their very purpose is to HIDE options and make users work harder to get to them. That is their job.

So never use them for tools for common tasks, duh.

That's why putting the group icon outside the menu is so incredible dumb. This is something you set once and don't change, whereas Edit settings is by far the most used - and in some very important cases like Label and Page and SCORM and Assignment and on and on IS where you do the content itself.

And inadvertently changing groups without any confirmation at all is just irresponsible: it can have an immediate and direct impact on students, content availability, completions and grading, and even security by altering what students can see. 

Maybe someone needs to buy all of HQ copies of Krug's book, obviously no one has read it.




Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Randy Thornton

Re: How to get rid of action menus for activities in Boost

by Mary Evans -

These Edit menus were introduce in Moodle 2.5 or 2.6 (maybe earlier I forget) and I never liked them from the start. They have evolved over time, but are still causing problems for those people who have to use them everyday.

POSTSCRIPT:

You had a choice in Moodle 2.5+ to have the icons rather than the edit menu.
Perhaps that option could be made available for Boost too?

Cheers

Mary

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In reply to Mary Evans

Re: How to get rid of action menus for activities in Boost

by Randy Thornton -


Mary, 

Thanks for chiming in smile Nice to hear one of Moodledom's foremost designers feels the same.

I did not mean to sound really harsh but I have found this a constant source of difficulty for users. It's these little things that really frustrate them. And support staff. 

If there were a way for admins to at least configure this so that the most used items are directly available, that would actually have been helpful: make Edit settings the default but allow an admin to set another default or add others as outside of the menu items. That is sensible and flexible for sites that need alternatives given their usage.

I bet a simple analysis of the frequency usage of the various options on these menus will show you that the overwhelming item is Edit settings. Yet the outside icon is to change the Group mode??? I can only surmise that such a analysis frequency was never done. 

Personally, I would rather have the old icons from before 2.6, since as clunky as they may have been, I had all the options right there on screen. The main issue with the old way of doing it was that the icons were the same size and too close together: Edit and Delete were the same size (at opposite ends if I recall) , but were and are not the same in frequency of use. 

I always wanted an Edit settings icon that was twice the size as the others because I use that 90% of the time. Make the most used options immediately available and the least used only one extra click away.

Interface elements like pulldowns by definition imply all the elements in it are somehow on a par or equal in use or effect or frequency. So, a pull down for a list of state or provinces is usually appropriate use - unless your job required selecting states all day in which case pulldowns would an inefficient nightmare. That's the essence of Krug's observation about them.

But the frequency of tool use here is very different but you wouldn't know from the design. It just went from a row of tiny but visible icons to a row of wordier but invisible items in a pull down. And mobile friendliness is no reason for this. Browsers know what device they are on. Do the right thing and adjust.


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In reply to Randy Thornton

Re: How to get rid of action menus for activities in Boost

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

I would have to add that the Edit Course dropdown is the worst of all - whoever decided that the items in that menu where what we wanted?  It has added extra steps to get to things that teachers and admins need.  Hence, the success of the Fordson theme that gives us those most used links in a nice easily accessible place.

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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: How to get rid of action menus for activities in Boost

by Randy Thornton -


Emma,

Yes, completely agree with that. It makes no sense how those menus are set. Again, no one did any frequency studies on usage, or understands the stages of course building and course running. 

Thanks goodness for Fordson which is a great improvement.


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