Book Image

Moodle 1.9 Theme Design: Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Moodle 1.9 Theme Design: Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

Moodle is a highly extensible virtual learning environment and is used to deliver online teaching and training materials. Theming is one of the main features of Moodle that can be used to customize your online courses and make them look exactly how you want them to. If you have been looking for a book that will help you develop Moodle Themes that you are proud of, and that your students would enjoy, then this is the book for you.This book will show you how to create themes for Moodle, change pre-installed Moodle themes, and download new themes from various resources on the Internet. It is filled with suggestions and examples for adapting classroom activities to the Virtual Learning Environment.This book starts off by introducing Moodle, explaining what it is, how it works, and what tools you might need to create a stunning Moodle theme. It then moves on to show you in detailed steps how to choose and change a Moodle theme, and explains what Moodle themes are and how they work. It shows you how to change an existing theme and test the changes that you have made.The latter half of this book will start you off on the road to creating your own themes from scratch. It provides detailed instructions to guide you through the stages of creating a stunning theme for your Moodle site. From planning theme creation, through to the slicing and dicing, and more advanced Moodle theming processes, this book will give you step-by-step instructions to create your own Moodle theme.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Moodle 1.9 Theme Design
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface
Glossary of Useful Terms and Acronyms

Installing Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar


There are hundreds of free extensions available for the Firefox browser. Two of the most useful extensions that concern Moodle theming are the Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug; these extensions will allow you to inspect the HTML code and CSS in detail without having to open the original file. They also provide an astounding array of functionality that makes most web developers and Moodle themers wonder how they ever managed without them. For example, using either of these extensions will allow you to temporarily make a change to the CSS code without having to modify the CSS code file.

So, for this chapter, you will download Firebug to help us work with Moodle's CSS and make the required changes. It can't be emphasized enough how important these Firefox extensions are to the budding Moodle themer. Moodle uses multiple CSS that inherit each other's style declarations. This makes it challenging to follow the cascading effect and accurately change...