Hello All,
In case you haven't heard, Moodle 3.5 includes some amazing updates to core Boost and Bootstrap and with these changes it can break many things in themes. Luckily people like Richard, Bas, and Mary, are here to help in the forums. Fordson had some issues with how SCSS is processed with the new Boost updates. These issues have been addressed and we are back up and running with Fordson and Moodle 3.5.
However, the new Boost styling and overall appearance has changed drastically (for the better). What this means for Fordson is that many of the previous work in styling certain elements is now broken.
Here is how I am addressing the update to Moodle 3.5 and if you have concerns please post them here as I will monitor this discussion as I get ready for the Moodle 3.5 release of Fordson. Since this is such a drastic change it has given me pause to see about how we want to move forward and this is what I have so far...
- We got Fordson working with Moodle 3.5 and the default look and feel of Boost. Yes, if you like the simplicity and clean layout of Boost you can now utilize all the great usability features of Fordson and maintain the same exact look of Boost.
- Fordson is now compatible with all the Moodle Boost Presets ( https://github.com/bmbrands/Moodle-presets ) which will open up new opportunities to expand and use the Fordson theme beyond the couple of presets that came packaged with Fordson. This is a good move and one that will help end users further customize and expand the styling of their Moodle site.
- Preset styles are being examined to see how many I want to support and ship with Fordson. I am a one-person developer and this is only a part of my job so I have to be careful about how big the theme gets and how many different looks and styles I have to test against when we add new features.
- Color Choosers will be simplified to change the core elements of Bootstrap such as primary, info, success, etc, etc. I will also include content background, page background, drawer background, and a couple of other elements of the page design. This will offer better compatibility to change the colors of other presets you might upload.
- We want to further enhance the theme but might need to scale back some other elements. The one thing I want to do is explore how to best handle blocks. Do we simply add in a right-side drawer to show and hide the blocks or do we expand upon what they can do and maybe build a 3 column "dashboard" of sorts for blocks within a course.
I am focused right now on getting the basics worked out and will update this post as we make progress.