18 November 2014, 12:04

In a webinar Julian advocated using the theme in Moodle called Rocket.  He recommended that this theme also be used in Mahara to give student a consistent look and feel--but how??

19 November 2014, 7:29

Hello Scott,

Is the webinar recording freely available so we could hear what Julian said specifically?

I am not aware of a Rocket theme existing. It's not listed at https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Themes/Contributed_themes where we collect all community-contributed themes.

Cheers

Kristina

19 November 2014, 8:22

Go to YouTube and search for Mahoodle.  It will appear toward the top.

I checked wiki.mahara.org as well.  Julian made it look easy to use them in both system (of course, for him it is easy)

19 November 2014, 9:41

Hi Scott,

I guess you refer to http://youtu.be/1L_K6b_g2Ls?t=17m

I can see the Rocket theme in Julian's Github account at https://github.com/moodleman but not a Mahara equivalent. Pukunui / Julian might not have shared the Mahara theme that they created in 2012 when the video was made.

Cheers

Kristina

20 November 2014, 7:20

Hello Scott,

For me, as long as I know, the only theme that is available for Mahara and Moodle, and made by Julian is the theme Essential.

Regards,

-dajan

20 November 2014, 10:31

Scott,

The video you're referring to is from 2012. The Rocket theme for Moodle is somewhat dated and I'm not sure that it's even responsive. Moreover, Julian Ridden has moved to the Canvas camp and does not seem to be maintaining any of his Moodle themes, including Essential. I'm not sure whether Essential is even compatible with Moodle 2.7. Shame really, but that's how things move.

Any progress on getting a Bootstrap v3 based theme for Mahara ? That would be a real breakthrough.

20 November 2014, 14:24

Hi Mark,

I asked Julian on Twitter about the theme. Maybe he still has it stashed somewhere and would consider to open source it. It would not be responsive as he was working with Mahara 1.5 at the time of iMoot 2012. Mahara only got responsive in October of that year with Mahara 1.6.

The Essential theme for Moodle is actually maintained. :-) The Essential theme for Mahara is heavily based on our default theme (the standard green one) and has code in there for the additional images in the CSS. So if you copy that over into the default theme, you can get the functionality of the Essential theme on a current Mahara theme.

We are currently looking into the feasibility of moving away from our custom implementation of responsive theme to a framework. Bootstrap is one possibility, but our front-end dev is also pondering Gumby and another. We will be discussing the move at the next developer meeting next Thursday (27 November 2014). You are welcome to attend.

Cheers

Kristina

20 November 2014, 22:33

Hello,

Responsive themes on Moodle are mainly based on Bootstrap. So supporting Bootstrap on Mahara would maybe help theme designers to foster adapting/developing their themes for Moodle and Mahara.

IMHO

-dajan

21 November 2014, 6:12

Good point Dajan. How similar is the theme design of Mahara to that of Moodle? I think that having similar themes for both platforms would be of great benefit, hence the interest in Rocket & Essential.

21 November 2014, 7:20

Hello Mark,

I'm going to ask our designer. So hold for an answer. I don't think you'll ever be able to take a Moodle theme and just apply it to Mahara because the CSS classes are very different since it's a different application. But you'll always be able to style it similarly like you can also achieve a consistent branded look and feel between Moodle, Mahara and a CMS for example.

Cheers

Kristina