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

Time for action—creating the sideblock content background graphic


  1. 1. Open the design mockup in Adobe Photoshop.

  2. 2. Make sure that all layers are hidden except for the block border and header as seen below:

  3. 3. Zoom in to 200% by pressing the Ctrl and + keys. Make sure that you can see the whole sideblock.

  4. 4. Click on the Rectangular Marquee tool, and then select the inside of the content area of the sideblock.

  5. 5. Go to the menu bar and choose Layer | New | New Layer, and then click on OK on the new layer palette.

  6. 6. Click on the gradient tool on the tools palette.

    The gradient palette should sti ll be set as it was before, but if it isn't, then you will need to make sure that the color chooser has the following colors set:

    foreground color:#ffffff
    background color:#dddddd

    The gradient palette on the menu bar looks like the example in the following screenshot:

  7. 7. Take the cross hair cursor and drag a marquee from the top of your selected layer to the bottom, ensuring that you have a completely...