Moodle 1.9 Theme Design: Beginner's Guide电子书

Moodle 1.9 Theme Design

Table of Contents

Moodle 1.9 Theme Design

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

Preface

What this book covers

Who this book is for

Conventions

Time for action—heading

What just happened?

Pop quiz—heading

Have a go hero—heading

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. An Introduction to Moodle

What are Virtual Learning Environments?

Importing/exporting and/or creation of course materials

Delivery of course materials over the Internet

Communication and collaboration between students and educators

Online tracking and assessment of student progress

Modularized activities and resources

Customization of the interface

What types of VLEs are there?

What are the advantages of using a VLE?

What is Moodle?

Why should I use Moodle?

Features

Philosophy

Community

Free and open source

What will you be doing?

What skills will you need?

Tools for the job

Hardware

Software

Adobe Photoshop

Firefox

FileZilla

Other web browsers

Summary

2. Moodle Themes

Important preliminary points

What is a Moodle theme?

Browsing and selecting a Moodle theme

Time for action—browsing and selecting a Moodle theme

What just happened?

Have a go hero—choosing a few other themes

Theme types

Theme priority

Parent themes

Theme directory

Time for action—browsing the 'Standard' theme folder

What just happened?

The pix folder

config.php

meta.php

doctyles.php

screenshot.jpg

favicon.ico

README.html

header/footer.html

styles_moz.css

styles_ie6.css

styles_ie7.css

styles_fonts.css

styles_color.css

styles_layout.css

rtl.css

Searching for and downloading Moodle themes

Time for action—searching for Moodle themes

What just happened?

Installing a new Moodle theme

Time for action—downloading a new Moodle theme

What just happened?

Time for action—extracting and installing your Moodle theme

What just happened?

Have a go hero—download and install another theme

Have a go hero—find and install some other themes

Moodle's theme settings

Time for action—forcing users to use your theme choices

What just happened?

Theme settings list

Theme list

Allow user themes

Allow course themes

Allow category themes

Allow users to hide blocks

Show blocks on module pages

Hide activity type navigation

Pop quiz

Have a go hero—you are on your own

Summary

3. Customizing the Header and Footer

Important preliminary points

Customizing the header

Time for action—making a copy of the standard theme

What just happened?

Adding your own logo

Time for action—copying your logo to your mytheme directory

What just happened?

Time for action—adding the logo code to your header.html file

What just happened?

Have a go hero—adding another logo

Time for action—adding the logo code to your header.html file again!

What just happened?

Have a go hero—putting back the inner page title

Making your own Moodle logo visible

Time for action—changing the title text

What just happened?

Customizing the footer

Removing the Moodle logo

Time for action—deleting the Moodle logo

What just happened?

Removing the login info text and link

Time for action—deleting the login info text

What just happened?

Have a go hero—adding your own copyright or footer text

Time for action—adding your own footer text

What just happened?

Have a go hero—adding your own footer logo

Browser compatibility—checking whether your changes have worked

Time for action—installing Mozilla Firefox

What just happened?

Time for action—checking whether your changes have worked

Recommendations

Have a go hero—downloading Google Chrome

Pop quiz—doing the thing

Summary

4. Adjusting the Colors and Fonts

Important preliminary points

Installing Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar

Time for action—installing the Firebug extension for Firefox

What just happened?

Cascading Style Sheets and Moodle

Time for action—creating a new Cascading Style Sheet

What just happened?

Changing the default font

Time for action—changing the default font by using Firebug

What just happened?

More on Firebug

Time for action—making our changes permanent

What just happened?

Setting the font color and size

Time for action—changing the font color

What just happened?

Changing the default font size

Time for action—setting the font size

What just happened?

Setting the link colors

Time for action—changing the link colors

What just happened?

Changing the background

Time for action—changing the background color

What just happened?

Have a go hero—change the background and font color and font type

Have a go hero—change the background color of the sideblocks

Accessibility and Moodle

What is web accessibility?

Moodle and web accessibility

What does this mean to us?

Does this affect the theming process?

What can we do to ensure that our themes and Moodle sites are accessible?

Online Web Accessibility testers

Tools

Reference Sites

Pop quiz-

Have a go hero—add a border to the blocks

Have a go hero—customize the block header

Have a go hero—browser compatibility

Summary

5. Changing the Layout

Full screen versus reduced width theme

Time for action—choosing a reduced (fixed) width theme

What just happened?

Setting a theme's width

Time for action—changing your theme to a fixed width design

Time for action—adding a border and some padding to your theme

What just happened?

Fixed versus liquid designs

Fixed width designs

Liquid or relative widths

What type of layout should you use?

Have a go hero—set some different widths

Changing the block's column widths

Time for action—changing the width of the block columns

What just happened?

Setting the minimum and maximum width of the blocks

Time for action—changing our theme back to a liquid layout

What just happened?

Time for action—setting the minimum and maximum block widths

What just happened?

Have a go hero—change your sideblocks again

Pop quiz

Summary

6. Planning your Moodle Theme

Important preliminary points

Know your audience

Design wise

Technology wise

Some questions before you begin

Theming for education

Time for action—downloading and installing a theme for children

Time for action—downloading and installing themes for those above 12 years old

Time for action—downloading a Moodle theme for higher education

What just happened?

Theming for disabilities

Gathering our assets

Some more questions to ask

The pix folder

Designing your design

Time for action—looking at other Moodle sites

Creating our design on paper

Creating a wireframe

Creating a mockup using software

Creating a design using graphics software

Time for action—creating the header, footer, and menu in Photoshop

What just happened?

Time for action—creating the logo, menu text, and login info text

What just happened?

Time for action—creating a block graphic by using Photoshop

What just happened?

Have a go hero—you are on your own

Have a go hero—filling in the gaps

Have a go hero—making the other blocks

Summary

7. First Steps: Creating your First Complete Moodle Theme

Creating a new theme

Time for action—copying the standard theme

Time for action—setting a parent theme

What just happened?

Have a go hero—choose another parent theme

Copying the header and footer files

Time for action—copying the header.html and footer.html files

What just happened?

Theme folder housework

Time for action—creating our stylesheet

Time for action—deleting CSS files that we don't need

What just happened?

Let's make some changes

Time for action—checking our setup

What just happened?

Time for action—one more change

What just happened?

Another theme setup

Time for action—preparing our new theme

What just happened?

Have a go hero—more advanced theming

Summary

8. Creating your Moodle Theme from your Mockup: Slice and Dice

Creating the header

Time for action—setting the header size and background color

What just happened?

Time for action—setting the margins and adding a logo

What just happened?

Have a go hero—moving the login info link

Have a go hero—making the inner page headers the same as the home page

Creating the menu

Time for action—creating the menu.php file

What just happened?

Time for action—creating the menu block

What just happened?

Creating the footer

Time for action—creating the footer bar

What just happened?

Setting the font and link styles

Time for action—setting the body font

What just happened?

Have a go hero—styling the login info link

Time for action—changing the link styles

What just happened?

Time for action—changing the menu font style

What just happened?

Changing the icons

Time for action—changing the icon set

What just happened?

Changing icons one at a time

Time for action—changing icons one at a time

What just happened?

Have a go hero—adding some padding to the page

Have a go hero—testing your changes

Summary

9. Under the Hood: Style your Navigation, Login Screen, and Blocks

Changing the login splash page

Time for action—opening the login page

What just happened?

Adding a border around the central box

Time for action—changing the border around the central box

What just happened?

Changing the width of the sideblocks

Time for action—copying and pasting the width code from index.php to config.php

What just happened?

Changing the appearance of the blocks

Time for action—creating the block header background

What just happened?

Time for action—changing the block header background

What just happened?

Changing the sideblock footer

Time for action—reducing the rounded content corners

What just happened?

Creating the content background

Time for action—creating the sideblock content background graphic

What just happened?

Time for action—changing the block content background

What just happened?

Styling the breadcrumb trail

Time for action—copying a style from another theme

What just happened?

Have a go hero—correct the padding on the breadcrumb trail

Testing your changes

Microsoft's Windows Internet Explorer 8.0

Microsoft's Windows Internet Explorer 7 (8 in compatibility mode)

Apple Safari 4 for Windows

Google Chrome

Have a go hero—changing the login info text

Have a go hero—fixing the issue in IE 8 (compatibility mode)

Summary

10. Under the Hood: Theming Core Functionality and Modules

Theming the central area of our Moodle site

Adding a course category and a sample course

Time for action—adding a new course category and course to Moodle

What just happened?

Theming the course category section

Time for action—changing the background color

What just happened?

Time for action—changing the header fonts

What just happened?

Theming the course view

Time for action—changing the font color

Time for action—changing the background color

Time for action—copying the show/hide icons

What just happened?

Changing the appearance of the core modules

Forum module

Time for action—changing the forum summary box

Time for action—customizing the forum

What just happened?

Time for action—customizing the forum posts

What just happened?

Glossary module

Time for action—creating a glossary

Time for action—customizing the glossary resource

Have a go hero—adding a gradient background to all posts

Summary

A. Further Enhancements

Some further small changes

Changing the buttons

Changing the drop-down fields

Changing the form fields

Rollover menu

Creating a rollover menu

Creating a drop-down menu

Consolidating your CSS code

Grouping styles

Creating CSS shorthand

Correcting some problems

Fixing the .generalbox problem

Downloading the Moodle features demo

Installing the Moodle features demo

Testing all of the features with our new theme

Creating a separate course theme

Why would we do this?

How do we do this?

Checking our theme against W3C validators

What validators do we check against?

Where can we find them?

Moodle for mobile devices

The Orangewhitepda theme

How do we use it?

Adding a theme splash screen

How do we do this?

Adding a theme screenshot

How do we add a theme screenshot?

Changing the column order

Left, right, and middle

Summary

B. Glossary of Useful Terms and Acronyms

C. Pop quiz—Answers

Chapter 2

Moodle Themes

Chapter 3

Customizing the Header and Footer

Chapter 4

Adjusting the Colors and Fonts

Chapter 5

Changing the Layout

Index