Martin Dougiamas

Interesting ideas.  I guess anyone can be experimenting with those ideas in alternative course formats and themes, and sharing the results back.  

I just keep coming back to this attached image though:

I really think it's going well enough to be default. 

Ideally our PHP code is completely separated from HTML, this is why we have renderers and templates. It's by design.  It's what allows us to have a theme based on Bootstrap 4 without breaking all themes.

You do have to be careful with what you put in style.css yes (hopefully nothing!).

Putting the settings link in a deliberate top-level place is very common on mobile apps (which is where the action is these days).

Yes, we've had quite of bit of user testing these past few months, but there's a limit to what that can achieve.

To get the most useful feedback, I'm convinced you need 

• a really functional interface,  
• people who really want to use it to do real things, and 
• some time for them to get used to it so they really understand the pinch points.
  

However, this means you also need to build something.   So please consider Boost in 3.2 that first functional version, a usable preview, that our community and UX team will do detailed user testing with so we can keep improving Moodle along these lines.

We've deliberately kept away from changing Clean and core pages in 3.2 (so there is no effect on existing themes), but detailed testing may (and I would guess WILL) require deeper changes that will start affecting all themes.   

That's when the REAL commitment to a new UI begins (in 3.3 and beyond) - the point where we need a consensus that it makes sense to start deprecating older ways of doing things.