Having spent some time this week looking at one excellent Moodle2 theme, i decided to have a quick look at all the currently available themes. One thing about themes is that they provide the sample screenshot and I always like to test them on the same course layout to compare.
So, I first compiled a list of ones I could find and installed them all onto my test site. Using the same Demo course I have taken a screenshot of each theme and put them together on a page. I dont have time now while I am reviewing modules, but it would be good to maybe have a functional review of whether these work well on modules etc.!
I have taken the screenshots in Firefox 4.0 and I searched the Moodle.org Themes download database for seeing what was available. If I have missed any, please let me know!
Aardvark Lite
Aardvark Makeover
Arctic
- bright drop
Broad Study
créatif (ver 1)
Dark Blue
Decaf
Discuss
flexi
flexi_ii
krystle
lamplite
metal
moodlebook
Ocean Blue
Simplespace
Skyhigh
Université
This is good, it would be nice if there were a ‘gallery’ option of the Moodle themes repository to see themes in several different layouts/pages.
Also, can I recommend the FireFox plugin “Screen Capture Elite” – it’s really easy and would make automating what you’re doing a lot easier.
There is a nice plugin which allows easy swap between themes on same Moodle site. Its the block that appears on some bottom right. http://www.somerandomthoughts.com/blog/2011/03/03/theme-switcher-block-for-moodle-2-0/
So perhaps would be nice to have a demo site 1 course and all themes installed with this block to swap back/forth easily.
One thing I did find, was the sometimes a theme would crash due to memory (even with 512M assigned) due to my site having a few courses, with a LOT of entries/topics/items in each, and however they parsed it, it died. So a demo site could have same issue, and ultimately you need to test it out on a test copy of your site to see if its okay.
Thanks for plugin recommendation, will try it out tonight.
Thanks for all your hard work and making it easy to see the different themes for 2.0 + . Do you know if there are any themes that use tabs or menus so you don’t have the scroll of death in the middle?
Hi Vicki,
Tabs or Menus are really related to the course format rather than a theme.
There are some very interesting formats or plugins to address this issue.
I like the course menu block as a way to provide strong in-course navigation and focus on one topic at a time, and this does not interfere with the format.
The Slides course format is a good option too.
I must do a section just with the course formats reviewed in more detail.
Gavin.