Moodle in English: Fordson and Moodle 4

Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - šeštadienis, 2022 balandžio 9, 19:33

Hello All,

We've been following the development of Moodle 4 and want to congratulate the Moodle team for such amazing work and vast improvements. This is a drastic and ambitious release that really points Moodle in a new direction. We love it! The navigation, the UX changes, and many new features make this release shine above others!

Fordson was always about solving issues with Moodle ux more than colors and style. Many of those issues have been addressed in Moodle 4 and the core theme of Boost has also been drastically improved and looks beautiful and clean. We don't think the current state of Fordson fits with the new direction of Moodle or our user's expectations of what an LMS should be and do post covid shutdowns.

However, that doesn't mean we won't release a new Fordson theme but it does mean that we are waiting to see what our users tell us needs to be addressed. Listening to our users has always been what drives our development for Moodle. Let's face it, this is a big change and I am not going to be able to predict what our users might want when presented with all these new and radical changes.

I just wanted to thank the community for all your feedback that helped make Fordson a better theme than what we had even envisioned. We are very happy to have contributed a small part to a larger community and we hope our themes and plugins have helped you educate others.

I guess this is the long and short of a very simple statement that we are pausing development of the Fordson theme while we get feedback on Moodle 4 and devote resources to development projects to enhance other areas of Moodle. If we release a new theme, it will be entirely new and based on Moodle 4 and will better integrate the other plugins we are developing.

Thank you,
Chris

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - šeštadienis, 2022 balandžio 9, 20:16

Thank you for posting this Chris. You already know my initial reaction but your decision does make total sense! I am excited to see what you come out with in the future and am so appreciative for all the work that you put into Fordson. In the meantime, your decision has made me look at my site in a whole different way and I am pushing the limits of my design thoughts to see what I can come up using vanilla boost! Thank you for all your amazing contributions to this community!

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - šeštadienis, 2022 balandžio 9, 21:59

Emma,
Thanks for understanding. We are happy to share our Boost4 preset. We change a lot of the theme just based on the primary color choice. We also make the course content full width and a few other tweaks with the new course index.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - šeštadienis, 2022 balandžio 9, 23:35

That would be awesome Chris - also, I was wondering how easy it is to add another block area to the front page - I can recreate marketing blocks but am really missing the ability to place blocks in the center content area...can that be done in a preset or would it require an actual child theme?

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - sekmadienis, 2022 balandžio 10, 00:52

Adding a new block area would most likely require a new child theme.

You bring up a good point in a simple child theme that might add a few extra block areas.

I can see us needing this too.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - sekmadienis, 2022 balandžio 10, 19:45

Yeah, that was what I thought. I might start playing with that...I need to learn how to make a child theme anyway...

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Gareth J Barnard - trečiadienis, 2022 balandžio 13, 00:55

Hello everyone,

I've realised that this thread has moved away from the OP, and creeped off topic, so have split that to "Moodle 4 and Boost customisation": https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=433574. ; Please keep any further replies here 'Fordson' specific.

Gareth
Moderator

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Rick Jerz - šeštadienis, 2022 balandžio 9, 21:55

Hi Chris, I am tracking with what you have said. I couldn't help thinking about seeing your presentation about Fordson a few years ago at MountainMoot, and thinking, "Moodle 4 has many features built into it that Chris was trying to do with Fordson." In my case, one significant improvement in Moodle 4 is the ability to collapse topics, something that I have been doing with Gareth's plugin (Gareth, I still love you).

I have decided to move to Moodle 4 by starting (somewhat) from scratch. Just yesterday, I finished recreating my main course in Moodle 4. I, too, like what I see.

What Moodle 4 demonstrates is that the Moodle organization is very responsive to community ideas. You and I already know this, but Moodle 4 emphasizes the commitment from Moodle HQ.

I think that I am at the same point as you. Let's transition to Moodle 4, see what we need, and then see what is still needed. So I can appreciate your "pause" for Fordson theme development for Moodle 4.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - šeštadienis, 2022 balandžio 9, 22:14

Rick,
Thanks. I agree with everything you said.

There are some remaining issues but I think Moodle HQ might address those in Moodle 4.1 with activities and the UX for those.

A big one for us is a teacher having to turn editing on. I think more can be done here to fix that where adding and moving course items breaks from how it is currently implemented.

But, for Moodle 4 we have a stellar Boost theme and I actually prefer it over what we were doing with Fordson because it brings together consistency, good design, and better navigation. These 3 things are hard to do without changes to core and Moodle delivered in this release.

Where I can see a new theme might be needed is for a customized login page, possibly a full screen mode for gradebook, and maybe a "teacher toolbox" area to help them manage their courses better.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Rick Jerz - šeštadienis, 2022 balandžio 9, 23:07

Yes, the "edit mode" button is finally in the right place! This was what I recalled from your presentation.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - šeštadienis, 2022 balandžio 9, 23:38

Way back when I had figured out a way to have it default to on when the page loads - did the same for the gradebook but I lost it during the years and haven't taken the time to remember what I did - I know I hacked some core code. I do like the new Edit Mode button (especially the wording - nice job UX team!) - it makes much more sense to me to have it where it is and it will make it easier for the teachers to understand the purpose I think.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - šeštadienis, 2022 balandžio 16, 00:17

While I said we are pausing development of Fordson for Moodle 4 for awhile to get a handle on all these new changes, here's where I see some issues that we might resolve and begin building into a new Fordson reboot:

Remove the course index as an option. I don't think the functionality and utility is there for our users just yet to make it beneficial. If they have to scroll they might as well scroll on the main course page and eliminating it removes some complexity of the page. (In fact, my dev site has this removed now.)
Option to bring back in the activity navigation within an activity to move sequentially through the course.
A custom login page similar to what has been done in the past.
Remove the floating footer ? and bring back the "Back to top" button.
Add a color chooser admin page for the various elements
Add a header image background behind the course title and secondary menu.
Make the new Edit Mode button aware of page location so that when you toggle editing, it returns you to your place on the page.
Marketing blocks near the footer area of the page on the Dashboard and home pages

These couple of things would form the basis of a new Fordson theme for Moodle 4. I've been tinkering but think we are still a couple weeks away from any Fordson theme for Moodle 4.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Rick Jerz - pirmadienis, 2022 balandžio 18, 08:26

Interesting ideas, Chris.

We have had a little discussion about the "?" in the footer and the lack of a "Back to top" button on this topic. The interesting thing is that it appears that some of the logic behind removing the "Back to top" button is justified by now having the course index, which allows a student to navigate to any activity, resource, or topic. If you get rid of the course index, then the need for the "Back to top" button is even greater.

The course index provides somewhat of a "checklist" for the student to see what they have or have not completed. But if one shows this completion information in the course topic, as I plan to do, the value of the little buttons in the course index area is diminished. And now that we can compress topics, the value of the course index to help navigation is lessened. So I think that removing the course index might make some good sense. Let's see if others have any thoughts.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - pirmadienis, 2022 balandžio 18, 18:24

Rick,
Since I had some time over the long Easter weekend I actually started building a new theme. I've completed work on implementing most features mentioned here. I see a great deal of value in eliminating and simplifying the elements presented to the user. One way to do things. Moodle 4 really gets us super close. I'll post some screenshots of what I've developed so far. I do believe it takes Boost over the finish line to bring consistency and structure to the end user.

The one feature we have to get working again is the return to place when you turn editing on. Our teachers hate scrolling after turning editing on. When clicked, the page should return to where you are and allow you to have your editing tools.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - pirmadienis, 2022 balandžio 18, 20:08

If you want someone to help test - please send my way! I am mainly looking for My Courses dropdown and block regions...I think I can make everything else work as is.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Rick Jerz - pirmadienis, 2022 balandžio 18, 21:47

Like Emma, I too might find time to experiment with what you have, Chris. Thanks for your continued work. I would agree, Moodle 4 is very close and just needs a little help. Perhaps your modifications will become the defacto for Moodle 4 Boost, once the developers see the improvements. The developers have made some great changes as they list to us, so I have a lot of confidence. Yet, I know how it goes. ☹️

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - antradienis, 2022 balandžio 19, 04:23

Attached is the login page image. The code is a bit of a mess since I was just tinkering over the weekend. I called the theme "LearnR" as I truly want this theme to be focused on the learner.

Download a rough draft to use on a DEV SITE ONLY:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HCLgKP3pRraHZ4v5Uw0Aqa_zl1Iet0r7/view?usp=sharing

It basically accomplishes the following so far:

Full Width all the time
Hide Course Index option
Marketing Spots
Site Alert message
Frontpage Custom Text Box
Ability to set the size of the course page Activity icons
Color choosers for all main Bootstrap elements and the new Activity Icon sets. (Working on Top Navbar choosers.)
Course homepage condensed information display. Some redundant information is removed.
Custom Page Images for site, login, and courses.

Priedas Moodle-4-0-Dev-Log-in-to-the-site.png

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - antradienis, 2022 balandžio 19, 04:30

Below is a screenshot of the main course page with a custom image uploaded for the course. We tried to minimize how much information is displayed on the main course page so that it functions more like a todo list as much as possible. We think the 2 columns plays better with our users. With three columns you take me back to the days of our evolve-D theme and strictly enforcing 2 columns. With this LearnR theme you get 2 columns: content and blocks.

Priedas Course-Small-Course-Template (6).png

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - antradienis, 2022 balandžio 19, 04:32

I added activity navigation to the top right of the page. This is super nice to breeze through the course looking for an activity or something that you might not have completed. It is also in the bottom as a full menu with the drop down to jump throughout the course.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Luiggi Sansonetti - antradienis, 2022 balandžio 19, 22:34

Hi Chris

You have done and are doing a really great job

For me there are 2 little things missing.

The 1st one is the Tile Style Two for Course Tile Display display of the courses in categories

It should be a good thing to have this setting available.

And the 2nd one, the top course block area

For me, this area is almost exclusively used to place analytics blocks for teachers/managers

Without it taking up too much space in the right column where I put the blocks for the participants.

But it's already great.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - trečiadienis, 2022 balandžio 20, 07:12

Hello Luiggi,
I had really wanted to bring back the 3 column blocks but we really don't know the full direction of where Moodle might go with 4.1 and a focus on Activities and Activity navigation and layout. Some of the styling tweaks and things like that might come later down the road. WIth Fordson you saw us making attempts at trying to fix what could only be done in core. Moodle 4 really delivers on some of what I saw as pretty significant navigation and layout issues. Even the core topics course format was made right with collapsible topics.

This is a time of exciting growth and many new features in Moodle. I do not want to get too far ahead of ourselves and be too far away from what core Boost and Moodle are doing. It is very easy when writing a theme to see a bunch of "feature creep" and before you know it, you lose your direction and cannot adapt quickly to new releases because random things start breaking.

I don't know how long you had been using Fordson but that theme grew as our needs and feedback changed. I suspect the same will happen when we release the new LearnR theme. I guess we have to start somewhere. Honestly, we really love the default Boost theme this time around. The page width narrow and wide layout really drove us nuts but it's a simple fix. The rest of the navigation and everything else looks amazing! We are very excited to upgrade this summer.

If you have any suggestions for a feature please share.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Tanja B. - pirmadienis, 2022 gegužės 2, 18:16

I like to give my vote for both as well

Tile Style Two and the hidden top course block area

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - antradienis, 2022 balandžio 19, 22:59

Great work as always....but....I am not seeing the course navigation - is this specific to a course format? Also, would love to see a dropdown list for the My Courses - that extra page load and click drives me crazy! I would like to see your front page block area back too!! I know, we are all so demanding...lol!

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - antradienis, 2022 balandžio 19, 23:06

Emma,
I am going to have a "Recent Courses" drop down that appears as an icon button next to the Course Titles at the top of each page. This will only display the last X amount of courses (Currently set to 7) and allow a user to hop to the last 7 courses they accessed.

See the screencast: https://watch.screencastify.com/v/Q3gHZ4NDgmbfvDZh5LTN

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - trečiadienis, 2022 balandžio 20, 07:24

Emma,
The frontpage blocks meaning the Marketing TIles? I think there were like 6 of them. I currently have 3 Marketing Tiles built into the theme and was considering adding 3 more.
I discovered that if the Course Index is present, then Activity Navigation within a course is removed. If course index is removed, the Activity Navigation appears. Soon, you'll be able to toggle this on or off in my theme. I just have to build in some logic to do so. Once I do that, you can have both Course Index and Activity Navigation. In the meantime, turn off the Course Index in the theme and then view activities. The Activity Navigation will display.

We are currently trying to see if we can remove the sidebar drawer. If I can do that and have blocks for quiz,book, etc appear right in the page to the right of the main content, then I can possibly move user blocks to a three column layout in the course. How we did this in Fordson was kind of clunky and I'd like to see if it is possible to accomplish this more eloquently.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - trečiadienis, 2022 balandžio 20, 08:48

So this is super super cool! A quick glance into the code and I think we might be able to do some SUPER cool stuff with regards to blocks in course pages and in activities. I'll have to do some more testing but it seems really easy to move things around. This can open up a whole bunch of creative things we can do. I'll have to tinker a little more. I am really excited about this!

So this might make bringing back the 3 column block panel a reality.

Priedas Course-Small-Course-Template (7).png

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Blocks are TURBOCHARGED in Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - trečiadienis, 2022 balandžio 20, 09:23

I just figured out something AMAZING for theme developers. In the past, each time you added a block they would appear in just one default region. Usually "side-pre". Well, with a little bit of trickery, I think I can have an "add block button" in each block region and it will add a block to that specific region.

Stay tuned... my Moodle 4 theme is going to do some impressive things with blocks!

Here is a screencast I did demonstrating this new capability.

https://watch.screencastify.com/v/iBulDUiKaWLotWnS46Kf

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Re: Blocks are TURBOCHARGED in Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - trečiadienis, 2022 balandžio 20, 19:56

This is very cool! It makes it much more intuitive...

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Re: Blocks are TURBOCHARGED in Moodle 4

Gareth J Barnard - ketvirtadienis, 2022 balandžio 21, 01:41

Neat idea Chris, and it does work.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - ketvirtadienis, 2022 balandžio 21, 10:11

I worked on some things and have a good start on adding in some more block regions on the course home . There is a "course dashboard" toggle at the top and 3 columns in the footer.
I also added the ability to turn off both the course index and block drawer. This puts the users focus front and center on what is displayed in the page.
Here is a screencast of today's progress. https://watch.screencastify.com/v/E0mCA2H27cfTPHdHkEmQ

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Luiggi Sansonetti - ketvirtadienis, 2022 balandžio 21, 14:44

Great Chris, very good point for this "course dashbord" toggle 🤩

I'll can use it for analytics and course/students reports for teacher (and manager/admin).

I have always the V4.0-r1 version, so can I have :

course index
core blocks (for students)
course dashbord (LearnR)

at the same time ?

Or LearnR settings turn off core blocks area ?

(in other words, can I test a new version 🙏 😁 ?)

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - penktadienis, 2022 balandžio 22, 06:34

Hello Luiggi,
I'll certainly share an updated version. We are fine tuning some things. To answer your questions, you'll be able to turn on and off features as desired.
You can turn on all three items you mentioned.

There are also 3 columns in the footer area of the main course page for blocks.

One of the things we are going to explore is not having to turn editing on. I should be submitting this to the plugin directory soon. A few more tweaks to polish things up.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - penktadienis, 2022 balandžio 22, 09:52

So it would be awesome if you put this on GitHub and let all us Fordson/Kenniburg junkies play along with you as you make changes!!!

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - penktadienis, 2022 balandžio 22, 10:25

Emma,
You read my mind! I plan to put this on github friday or Monday. I'll also be pushing this out to the plugin repository too. I think I have the majority of the features in place now and most of the issues worked out. I feel confident in publishing it now.

One of our developers really wants to eliminate having to turn editing on. This is a project we might tackle over the summer and it would be part of the LearnR theme. We have some ideas on how we might try to accomplish this but are open to any and all suggestions or help in taking this on.

The other big project we are doing is trying to make the Parent role useful and that means avoiding the clumsiness of the mentee block and how the parent can get lost just trying to view their child's information and maybe be able to interact with teachers in the course. So having a better experience for the mentor/parent role is going to be a focus. Our theme might further enhance that and help provide a better integration of parents in Moodle.

Here is a pretty good overview of the theme admin settings and what you can do with what I've developed so far. We just started this in earnest on Good Friday, so it's only been about a week.
https://watch.screencastify.com/v/ihNuFKUAKpbXTDFx1ezx

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Luiggi Sansonetti - penktadienis, 2022 balandžio 22, 15:17

Hi

Thanks again Chris

And your last screencast is perfect

The last wish : have Tile Style Two for Course Tile Display display of the courses in categories 🙏

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - penktadienis, 2022 balandžio 22, 19:43

Awesome - let me know when it is up. I am working on a total refresh of my main website right now and trying to decide on a theme (probably LearnR or Foundation) or creating my own. Obviously much less work to use someone else's but my own is intriguing enough that I keep bouncing back to that too..I guess we are all really lucky that two of the best theme designers already have themes in the works or out for 4.0!

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - penktadienis, 2022 balandžio 22, 23:19

I might have missed it in this thread but a back to course button on the activity pages is really needed - currently the only way back seems to be the breadcrumb that I can find and that is not handy at all...(though I am also seeing that it hasn't ever been there - seems like a big oversight in my mind)

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Randy Thornton - trečiadienis, 2022 balandžio 27, 02:59

Agree with Emma, of course. The breadcrumb is just a remnant of its former self, but it is the only way to get back to the main course when in activity.

In the other Boost thread suggestions for that are make the secondary navigation fixed, then the "Courses" link will still show. But i am sure there are other solutions too. It just needs to be consistently placed wherever it goes.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - trečiadienis, 2022 balandžio 27, 05:32

For now, I am putting a block in the activities with a Back to Main Page button - clumsy but works for now. The problem is apparently with some LTI activities that want to return people to the external page and not the Moodle course but my thought is that if it was consistently worded (return to Course Main page) or something, anyone that struggled with it could either hide it or reword it to something that is more suiting for their needs.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - trečiadienis, 2022 balandžio 27, 05:37

Here is the tracker I started - https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-74554

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Randy Thornton - trečiadienis, 2022 balandžio 27, 23:18

Interesting about the LTI. To me that sounds more like an issue that needs to be fixed with how it works.

I did try the block method with a link to the course with id using Filter codes, which works, but as you say, is clumsy now since you have open up the block drawer (which is a feature RemUI has had for a long time and so I know this is navigation issue having seen the complaints about that for several years already.)

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Garth Brady - trečiadienis, 2022 balandžio 27, 18:44

Just wanted to share that Fordson has been a staple for my classroom for years and I have truly appreciated Chris' efforts here to create a UI that, in my opinion, elevates Moodle above all other LMSs for its ease of navigation and visual complex-simplicity (granular settings for an Admin while retaining a simplified UI for the student). When my site auto-upgraded to M4, the FIRST thing I did was go hunting for this thread

Many thanks for Fordson, Chris. I'll be watching and testing this thread with great respect for your work.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - ketvirtadienis, 2022 balandžio 28, 08:08

Thanks Garth! That was much appreciated. We have some things planned and a new theme in the works. But, we are starting over and plan to take our time to really see what areas need improvement. Moodle 4 solves many of the issues Fordson tried to correct. Keep an eye out for the LearnR theme. That will be our next theme.

Thank you,
Chris

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Garth Brady - ketvirtadienis, 2022 balandžio 28, 08:31

Yup, already downloaded and installed

Was hoping teachers would be able to use their course 'banners' (course images) but I suspect this feature is not yet functional, correct (I enabled it in the theme's settings but it didn't take)? They really enjoy this ability to customize their courses.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - penktadienis, 2022 balandžio 29, 17:53

Garth,
The course image will be displayed in a new way in ver 1.4 at the top of the page with the header blocks. I'll be posting that later today along with a Section Style Chooser.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Garth Brady - šeštadienis, 2022 balandžio 30, 19:32

Loving Learnr, Chris - thanks for all your work here and I get that we don't want to go too far down the rabit hole without seeing where m4's UI is headed... I also don't want to be a pest. At the moment, courses look like img#1 with a course image. Is the eventual goal to look more like img#2? Just wondering about direction so I can do some planning

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - šeštadienis, 2022 balandžio 30, 20:05

Hello Garth,
I do like your rendering of what it should look like! I'm wondering if you purge moodle cache if things look better. There should be a course drop down to the right of the course title. I'll be doing some additional cleanup of the styling over the weekend as time allows. The image should have a minimum height set but it could also be used as a block region. Check back on GitHub Sunday or Monday.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Garth Brady - šeštadienis, 2022 balandžio 30, 20:52

Yeah, I styled the navbar #fff and it nuked the fa colors... I'm with you in that I like a clean, non-cluttered look. I think Apple in particular really nails this approach nicely. Here's a concept of what I'm current thinking, though there are too many shades of grey here...

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Frank Schuenemann - pirmadienis, 2022 gegužės 2, 02:07

Hi Chris, hi All !
First, Chris I am a happy Fordson user since a while and I want to say thank your for all your work in the past, now and future ! THANKS !

I like your new theme !
But maybe I can add a wish ...

Luiggi Sansonetti - pirmadienis, 2022 gegužės 2, 22:56

I agree that this button should be enabled by default when I am a teacher.

Perhaps to avoid ambiguity and development, we could just customise the {editmode/} string locally with "teacher view".

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Randy Thornton - pirmadienis, 2022 gegužės 2, 23:17

Chris

+! on this. The "turn editing on" concept is a relic of the earliest systems when there was no real interface ability: you pressed a key (commonly Escape) to go to "Command mode" and type commands, then pressed it again to go back to "Edit" (or whatever it was you were actually doing) mode.

I think Gareth and Emma that it makes a really good point that sometimes we do want a way to "protect" ourselves from accidents: changing something inadvertently when the course is no longer is "build" phase but in "running" phase. You aren't changing activities just grading and monitoring, etc.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Richard van Iwaarden - ketvirtadienis, 2022 liepos 14, 15:33

Here's an idea that has both: our SIS uses courses in 'concept' and 'final' mode. So a course is being set up and at some point, usually some weeks for summer holiday, the course is set to 'final' and starts running. It can be set back to concept, but that takes an extra click.

What Moodle could do is introduce this 'course state'. If the course is in concept mode, teachers will always be in editing mode. If the course is set to 'final' mode, teachers need to turn on editing first (or set it back to concept mode).

Best of both worlds?

I see advantages in both, but the 'always editing mode' for teachers I would not like. Teachers can accidentally drag things around. Also, the interface is less clean, there are many extra unnecessary icons on your screen when you don't want to edit but just monitor/teach.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Przemek Kaszubski - penktadienis, 2022 liepos 15, 17:28

What I like about this is that Editing would not necessarily be enabled everywhere but, perhaps, on a course-by-course basis? The "protected" state for a course is a feature I would find quite useful. I would probably not want to automate it, unless the course start date (and end date) really become visible parameters in the course view - for both teachers and students.

I like the current behaviour of Moodle 4 enough, and the Edit switch now always being accessible is sufficient for me. The thing I'd yet add is what Fordson once introduced - the return to the same place after turning editing on and off and reloading the page. That behaviour of Moodle is a real pain.

Two other ideas (for Advanced features at first?):

Since there are users and admins who find the Edit mode switch obsolete, perhaps its presence could be configurable globally by an admin, with the default Enabled? Disabling the Edit mode switch by the Admin would mean that whenever / wherever a user has editing rights, they would be able to just start editing.

Another idea - the teacher might have the Edit state saved in between sessions if he/she so desires - possibly a profile preference setting?

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Séverin TERRIER - antradienis, 2022 gegužės 3, 16:39

Like Gareth, i think that teacher have two use cases, and always being able to add/move things could let several teachers accidentally break things because they didn't see they clicked on something (or at least be surprised to have things show when they click somewhere).

I can understand the old way to activate edit mode was not ideal, but i think the Moodle 4.0 always here, at the same place, and easy to use (a simple click) provides both a protection and a simple way to access edit mode when needed, i really like it.

And i also suspect that having edit mode capabilities (activated) implies bigger pages and longer load times.

And when you really want to update your course(s), i think you can do one more click (two if you count edit off) !

Séverin

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Luiggi Sansonetti - pirmadienis, 2022 gegužės 2, 14:36

Hi Chris

Thanks for your theme

I'm testing the 1.4 version, and I'm a bit sad because the collapsible course dashboard disappears...

It's ok for the course header with course image, but a dedicated blocks area was really a good thing to gain in usability, without disturbing the course display...

If you don't want to change everything, would it be possible to put this element in option ?

We like this theme so much that we certainly ask a lot of it 😅

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - pirmadienis, 2022 gegužės 2, 18:40

The course dashboard just got renamed to header block panel and it's not collapsible anymore. We added a new setting to show or hide blocks in that panel as well The thought was a teacher would use this area to display quick notes or short term blocks and when not displaying blocks it would display the course image.

So how did you envision using it? Would that area just be for teachers and just display an image for students?

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Luiggi Sansonetti - pirmadienis, 2022 gegužės 2, 19:21

Indeed, I have a use case that exploits this collapsible area solely to provide teachers and admin with a set of blocks for student tracking and course reporting.

This area is off course invisible to the students
And for teachers, this area being collapsible, does not interfere with the course overview.

The "classical" area of blocks on the right is reserved for blocks that are useful or necessary for all.
If I add all teacher blocks, teacher needs to scroll to see them...

The footer area would then be dedicated to "informative" blocks in addition to the classic area

That's why I focus a lot on this collapsible zone to gain in ergonomics and functionality.

This zone can be just below the header image for example, like on Fordson
And that would handle all the cases:

student: course image
teacher : course image + course dashboard collapsible
...

I removed the course menu and turned it into a gear... I envision this content appearing in a pop-up as Fordson once did (a brilliant move in my opinion)
I combined the space currently allocated to the Course title and the image to 1/2 the height required for both
I moved my courses up by the other personal icons (profile, notifications
I didn't adjust the size of the Section headers or line spacing, but I'd consider doing this as well to reduce scrolling and try to limit the SOD.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - ketvirtadienis, 2022 gegužės 5, 05:43

Garth,
I like your ideas! I'm considering the change in image location, however, we most likely will not be using any drawers and I'm not sure how my collapsible block area will work in your rendering. We would never go back to the gear menu. That was why Fordson had the teacher dashboard! But, I do like trying to save space and combining the image with the header area to be from the secondary menu and above. I worry about the location of collapsible button.

Also, ideally the my courses drop down would be part of core and included as part of that primary menu with a configurable number of recent courses to include. That is ultimately what I'd like to see. I'll just need a bit more time to dig through code if it is even possible.
I do not like that latest courses is a duplicate feature that competes with the Primary My Courses menu item. In my mind, this feature only makes sense as part of primary. I might hack the menu for version 1.6.

As you can tell, we are very much open to suggestions and not afraid to change course with our plans and layout ideas when they make sense for us. We are more concerned about solving issues and removing friction for users.

For LearnR version 1.6 I hope to have 2 items: better my courses with latest course drop down integration and the back to top button implemented for course pages.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Garth Brady - ketvirtadienis, 2022 gegužės 5, 10:11

I am all for removing 'clutter' and agree with you whole-heartedly. Simplifying enhances the user experience. That's why I don't understand the need to have that whole menu system 'Course, Settings, Participants, Grades...' laid out there below the course header image... This takes up quite a bit of room, I think. Moving its contents (since most links are used sparingly) makes a lot of sense to me. This makes even more room for course content, which is in my view the most important substance of the course page. Most of these menu items are either duplicates or could be relocated to something like the Fordson Course pop-up, I think (which is what I meant, not the 'classic' Moodle gear menu), or maybe into the main navbar at the top of the webpage. Thanks for all your work here - I really like the direction you're taking!

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - ketvirtadienis, 2022 gegužės 5, 19:36

Gareth,
I'd agree the content is most important, but I also think that content extends to the tool itself. That secondary menu is needed for the operation of the course work and should not be hidden. If hidden, a user must discover it or be shown. Hidden things make a tool confusing and difficult because once a user knows 1 thing is hidden, they assume they cannot find the next link because it too, is hidden. Thus, you setup a pattern of thinking the tool is difficult to use. Even if there was no link to do a task, the user believes it might just be hidden and directs their frustration at the tool. Often times it was hidden and layers deep into the gauntlet of the gear drop down. Moodle 4.0 breaks this cycle and I love it!

We are trying to use our theme to guide and direct the user and to allow them some comfort in using the tool to be successful. We want one way to reach a destination and common areas of where to look for things if you feel lost. It's why we have concerns about hidden elements such as course index and block drawers. Even our own solution to blocks requires a hidden element but it is located in the main content and we think there might be benefit to that.

Also, great discussion over in the User and Accessibility forum where I relate my thinking to a quarterback moving the team down the field. The plays are the activities. You execute the play and then go back to the huddle to learn the next play. This is the concept of course home -> activity and back to course home. The course index introduces a no huddle offense and most teams would only do this at the end of the half or end of game. They don't play the game in no huddle offense.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - ketvirtadienis, 2022 gegužės 5, 23:10

I agree that the course header should be able the tab menus but think the tabs should stay (however, I wish we had the option to select which items we wanted in the primary tabs). I also think the My Courses tab belongs in the Navbar. Interestingly enough I have just surveyed my teachers on how they navigate to our trainings on my Event Management Moodle. Half of them use the Calendar (which is due to my specific site setup) and almost a third of them use the My Courses dropdown. I thought that was interesting feedback.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Garth Brady - šeštadienis, 2022 gegužės 7, 19:03

You both make salient points. I agree very much with what you're saying - we need to balance usability and prioritize features to enhance the UX. Perhaps I'm arguing for a more 'experienced' user UX

For example, a lesser experienced user or noob to Moodle (teacher or student) should have the full Course menu displayed all the time. Here we need to prioritize navigation over content for rookie users who aren't yet moodle-fluent. However, students/teachers who've been in it for years would already be familiar with the contents of the moodle Course menu and how to use it benefit from the Fordson modal icon which displays a beautiful 3-column course menu of options. Here we're prioritizing content over navigation for experienced and more advanced users to allow them to display more of their course, but I feel it's earned.

In each case, the prioritization makes sense. Perhaps a toggle that allows this option would be beneficial to novice/advanced users with the default set to 'Always show course nav bar' or something similar?

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Randy Thornton - pirmadienis, 2022 gegužės 9, 23:22

Garth,

"Perhaps I'm arguing for a more 'experienced' user UX"

Yes, it think that sums it up.

Most of my client sites are managed and courses built by people who have lots of hats to wear and Moodle is only one of them. For users like that it is imperative that the interface show them the various options and tools that are available to use. So, UI like tabs are much better than hiding them in a select menu; persistent navs are better than drawers; breadcrumbs are better than nothing, but buttons are better than breadcrumbs. Etc. For users like this, the typical multiple and confusing Boost gears and drilling down menus was very unfriendly. Some aspects of 4.0 help, like primary and secondary nav menu, but some are actually worse, like the select menus instead of tabs.

For professional full time course designers and builders, the problem is they don't have a very efficient interface. I mean it is practically an intercontinental voyage for them now to get to tools like Import and Backup.

Ideally, just as you say, there would be two modes: full mode that shows lots and terse mode that shows the essentials. But what is "essential" depends on the context of the course in addition to the skill of the user.

One solution is to build a "palette" full of relevant short cuts for the most commonly used tools. Something like the Admin Bookmarks block, but for Teachers in courses. Then they could put into it links to the tools most commonly used for the tasks they are doing, which differ markedly between building a course and managing a running course with students in it.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Fabian Glagovsky - pirmadienis, 2022 gegužės 9, 17:54

Chris, I just want to say thanks for your work. Our University uses Fordson and it has been great.
Now we will need to think about how to move forward when we decide to upgrade to 4.X
Best,
Fabian

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris Kenniburg - antradienis, 2022 gegužės 10, 07:11

That's great to hear Fabian! Moodle 4 is really going to shake things up. Moodle 4.1 even more so with activities. I hope we settle into a good UX after that for the next 4.+ run.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Fa Ahmed - pirmadienis, 2022 birželio 6, 15:15

Can the following capability be added in a newer version of fordson in moodle 4..
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=350518
Users can only view their category or courses, only admin can view all courses.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Fernando Pita - trečiadienis, 2022 birželio 15, 06:06

Dear Chris, I love Fordson theme. We have not updated our moodle site to 4.0.1+ because it does not work with fordson.
I hope you release an updated version of fordson for moodle 4.0.

Thank you very much.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Tanja B. - trečiadienis, 2022 birželio 15, 19:52

Dear Fernando,

as far as I understood, there will be no Fordson for Moodle 4. I faced the same situation.

But Chris already developed a new theme, in which you find many similar options and which runs great on Moodle 4. The name is LearnR and you can find it here: https://moodle.org/plugins/theme_learnr

I hope that helps 🙏

many greetings, Tanja

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Fernando Pita - ketvirtadienis, 2022 liepos 14, 23:33

Thank you very much Tanja. I will try this theme. Your answer is very helpful.

My best wishes,

Fernando

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

zeinab khadem - pirmadienis, 2022 rugpjūčio 22, 17:13

Chris, I also just want to say thanks for fordson, learnr and all your efforts on moodle .

Be happy...😃

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

German Bobadilla - penktadienis, 2022 gruodžio 30, 03:51

Hi Chris!

Any update on the development of Fordson 4.1?

Future updates for 2023?

Great theme, btw.

Thank you!

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Acqua Alta - sekmadienis, 2023 sausio 1, 02:20

You should look at this post:
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=433845#p1758979

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris van der Westhuizen - penktadienis, 2023 vasario 17, 02:42

Good day Chris
Thank you for an excellent Fordon theme that I used on a few educational moodles for some years. I chose Fordson because it has a great rating and a lot of users and active development. I never thought that I would ever run into the situation where the development would stop. This leaves me in a very bad situation.
I am one of the users who have my hopes high hoping you can still maybe make some fixes on the Fordson version to bring out a version for Moodle 4. My problem is that one client of mine developed a lot of training videos while using the Fordson template. Now I upgraded to the latest version of Moodle 4, and did not pay attention that Fordson is not compatible with Moodle 4. They used the Moodle as is and only later realise that they cannot see the downloads button for documents in assignments. Now I need to fix it, and I cannot. I cannot load a backup since it is too long ago, we will loose to many data. I can also not downgrade. So I am stuck. And they now tell me I will have to pay for the re-development of all their video material if I cannot fix it and change to another theme, And I can really not afford it. I hope your learnR has the same look and feel. I am going to try it. But I am at a loss.

So I have my hopes high that enough users show interest for you to still maintain Fordson.
Blessings to you
Chris vdw

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Emma Richardson - penktadienis, 2023 vasario 17, 03:41

Moodle 4 was a huge UI overhaul which you should have been aware of and made your clients aware of before upgrading. Chris was very open about his plans and, while several of us mourn the loss of Fordson, LearnR is a very good theme and there are other great themes out there too. I am using Foundation on one site and LearnR on another. I am not sure what you are referring to with a download button missing but you really cannot expect Chris to develop something to cover your mistake. Not trying to be mean (we have all done stuff like this!)

At this point, you probably need to hire someone to develop a theme that will match the functionality and look of earlier Moodle or, my suggestion would be to try some of the other themes out there and try and get as close as you can to what you had before and hope your clients will accept it.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Gareth J Barnard - penktadienis, 2023 vasario 17, 03:59

Or Chris, you could hire somebody to make Fordson work with M4.x. The code is open source after all. However, given that Fordson is a child theme of Boost, then it is likely to inherit some of the user interface changes, which could invalidate the videos anyway.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris van der Westhuizen - šeštadienis, 2023 vasario 18, 19:52

Thank you Gareth

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Chris van der Westhuizen - šeštadienis, 2023 vasario 18, 19:53

Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Nepal B - pirmadienis, 2023 vasario 20, 22:05

Dear Chris,

Thank you for all these information.

Am I understanding right that you are not developing LearnR further more (for the moment)?

But rather put your energy into adding features to Boost Union now?

If so, I would make the step now away from LearnR and look into Boost UNion as well. Thank you so much for all your work you share with us,

Tanja

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Nepal B - pirmadienis, 2023 vasario 20, 22:55

Dear Chris,

one more question - do you think that there is any possibility to bring into Boost Union your Course Category Styling from Fordson?

I am especially interested in Style #2.

If there is a way, I would very much appreciate to know how to add it.

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Fa Ahmed - ketvirtadienis, 2023 liepos 6, 19:04

We have been using Fordson collapsible topic format for the past year, and now we need to migrate to Moodle 4.1. However, the plugin we have been using is only compatible with version 3.11. Although Moodle 4.1 has a collapsible topic format in its design, we need a progress bar that is included in this plugin. Is there any way to obtain the progress bar feature in Moodle 4.1?

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Re: Fordson and Moodle 4

Kilian Gandos - trečiadienis, 2024 sausio 24, 17:06

Hi Chris.

I have a moodle 3.9 version with the most of courses with the fordson with collapsable. For the last two years we didn't upgrade the version because we tried to do it in local and see that after upgrade to moodle version 4 the theme go broken. We have not been in a rush to update since we did not have any problems with that version but we will not be able to delay updating much longer. This is also a question for anyone who has been using Fordson and is running into the same problem. Is there any theme that in version 4.0 of Moodle has the possibility of being able to drag the Fordson functionalities without having to make too many arrangements?

Greetings.

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