Just thought I'd point to work going on to integrate LESS into Moodle so that it can be (re-) compiled on the fly.
https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-44357
It's got some interesting potential for themes.
I have to say though that I'm a bit ambivalent about this. I had hoped that LESS would become an option, rather than a requirement to style Moodle, and that constraining Moodle to work with upstream's vanilla Bootstrap CSS would help to tame some of the, err, exuberance and diversity, of Moodle's current front-end CSS/HTML/PHP.
Hopefully the work that would simplify and standardize the font-end will continue, even as the workaround becomes easier, and people writing CSS for modules and plugins use this new power responsibly rather than adding yet more complexity.
David Scotson
Příspěvky uživatele David Scotson
Mary, I think I agree with your point that most plugins shouldn't be themeing themselves, they should fit in with Moodle by using standard conventions.
Though like with the core styles, the first step should probably be to delete all the broken, duplicate, contradictory, unnecessary, outdated, non-mobile friendly and/or simply ugly CSS so that we can get a clear idea about what's left to be done.
This might be a useful tool for this process as you can, instead of deleting these lines, simply move them to a style_base.css so that "legacy" themes remain unchanged but modern themes can only inherit the actually useful styles.
Oh, and there's also work being done or server-based LESS compilation, which seems to be working in the same space as this, and might (at least in very hopefuly theory) simplify the styles that plugins need to write.
Though like with the core styles, the first step should probably be to delete all the broken, duplicate, contradictory, unnecessary, outdated, non-mobile friendly and/or simply ugly CSS so that we can get a clear idea about what's left to be done.
This might be a useful tool for this process as you can, instead of deleting these lines, simply move them to a style_base.css so that "legacy" themes remain unchanged but modern themes can only inherit the actually useful styles.
Oh, and there's also work being done or server-based LESS compilation, which seems to be working in the same space as this, and might (at least in very hopefuly theory) simplify the styles that plugins need to write.
Unrelated to Elegance, but there's some weird HTML on that plugin DB page. I was initially wondering why the tabs weren't calling the standard tab function, which in a Clean-derived theme should return standard Bootstrap tabs, but also noted the drop down at the top is in a div.li inside a div.ul for some reason.
Hopefully it will. Web technology doesn't stand still and there's lots of exciting new technologies coming down the pipeline, and new best practices to adopt as people get more familiar with building websites for phones and tablets. Having nearly the entire web development community contributing and testing these things out together is an amazing "force multiplier".
I'm not sure i'd describe Bootstrap 2.3 -> 3 as a "complete change of direction" though, more an "easily manageable transition to a newer version with several major benefits" so another one of those would be welcome, I think.
I'm not sure i'd describe Bootstrap 2.3 -> 3 as a "complete change of direction" though, more an "easily manageable transition to a newer version with several major benefits" so another one of those would be welcome, I think.