Addition May 2010: Note that the solution presented here is problematic with touch screens where there is no mouse hover so the UI can not be activated.
Wondering about various switch controls and how to give guidelines for their use, I ended up designing an alternative UI for editing the course page (discussion and related cross post).
As the plans to usability test a part of Moodle as a part of this project have not become reality as easily as I hoped, I was wondering if testing this idea would take on. So I needed a prototype, and then I remembered Shoes, which I had hoped to try out. It seemed like a toolkit to build something pretty quickly.
I needed something to tinker with in midst of my flu since I could not do anything very intensive, so I started playing. And now I have something of a prototype. And it works out of the box in Windows, Linux and OS X. \o/ Plus, I have learned a bit of Ruby, though umh, in a somewhat unorthodox manner. Including tweaking, all this took me a couple hours of coding during three days, plus a fourth day to start learning the thing.
I am not sure how to combine object-oriented programming with Shoes’ way of outputting things, to iterate over the code, so I only have one ‘resource’ so far. I will have to figure out how to fix that. An upside is that he code is so ugly and unmaintainable that hopefully no one would ever consider growing production software out of a quick prototype built with that…
I am so exhausted. Next: staring at the ceiling for about 36 hours.
joseph thibault 9:18 pm on July 21, 2009 Permalink |
hey, those screens you show really are an improvement on the current UI of Moodle. So don’t give up! I’d be happy to give you feedback on using it if you ever get it up on a site live.
I really thought the tabs helped to organize the content better…it’d be a great way to cut down on drop downs on the main page of the course as well…
eager to see more,
Joe
Olli 8:09 pm on August 3, 2009 Permalink |
Thank you Joe! That is indeed encouraging. I continued the discussion in the above forum thread so we will see what happens.
Olli
Dominique-Alain JAN 7:17 am on August 6, 2009 Permalink |
Hi,
I looked at your an ‘alternative UI for editing the course page’ (MDL-19868). I agree with you that an AJAX presentation directly on the page is a much direct and better experience than having a new web page for setting up a resource.
I disagree with you in having a button to delete the resource in the set-up box. I suggest to have in line the actions for the resource (e.g. Move, Edit, Duplicate [yes we need to duplicate sometimes], Delete); and having the information about its content and its behaviour in the setup window.
Olli 4:32 pm on August 7, 2009 Permalink |
Yes, that delete button is a tricky part and I was wondering if anyone would comment on that. Now you did :).
Duplicate would be great but that is not directly supported by Moodle technically, I think. Duplicating would also be required by http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Quiz_Usability_portal/Attempted_quiz_enabling .
The thing is, there is little horizontal room to include that delete button there. My hunch was that it is not used that frequently, and as it is still a button it is recognizable even if it is in the settings form. Of course we could change the buttons to just use the icons that used to be there, to make more room. Since the non-command buttons are not confusing users there anymore, that could work.
pilpi 6:44 pm on May 19, 2010 Permalink |
@moodledan also, comments or ideas why http://www.pilpi.net/software/moodle/200... got a silent reaction are welcome :)
via Twitoaster
MoodleDan 6:49 pm on May 19, 2010 Permalink |
@pilpi perfect post will digest!
via Twitoaster
Olli 10:03 pm on May 19, 2010 Permalink |
Some interesting related discussion, featuring a request to have version control for the course front page:
http://bettween.com/moodledan/josephthibault
http://bettween.com/moodledan/ghenrick