Flash menu in Moodle?

[nyiss]

hello!

I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with embedding a flash navigation menu onto the front page of Moodle? I'm almost there with our new Moodle but it still needs tweaking so may display wrong in some browsers. I’m keen to get this sorted but am unsure on the best way to set up the navigation and it would be easier to sort that first. If you would take a look at Woodlands moodle I would appreciate any input.

 

Basically we made the leap from our VLE to Moodle which is still very new to me (Thank god for the IT guys at Prenton!) This is the VLE the school was using before I joined them Woodlands old VLE The majority of the staff hated using it and the youngest kids had trouble with the usability of it. So with the new Moodle I am trying to make it more user friendly and more appealing for them to use. We have a lot of EAL kids in our school so I have purposely tried to use image & text links where possible and give it a similar sort of design to other sites they use frequently. I have already made a few flash games to go up on the site and had no problems with getting them on when I tested it so I doubt it would be much of a hassle to do the same on the front page?

 

The staff that have seen our Moodle at its current state are having some trouble grasping the idea of Moodle’s courses. so.. I am considering a flash menu on the front page which points them to the places they will need in 'simple terms'. I’m worried that doing so may result in there being too much going on which might contradict the idea of making it more user friendly. I have explained this so badly, but what I'm looking for is some advice from other schools using Moodle, especially primary schools on how they went about making their moodle navigation work for them and whether a flash menu seems like it would make things easier or if it isn't worth doing?

Edited February 23, 2012 by nyiss

[InterwebsGuy]

My advice would be to avoid Flash where possible for things like this - it is not the best way of achieving something like this.

Obviously I haven't seen the menu you want to create in Flash, but I can't imagine why this couldn't be done using standard HTML elements with a bit of JavaScript. I have always found it simple enough to embed DIVS and UL's etc into Moodle then just link in additional JS and CSS files into Moodle's theme header area.

[nyiss]

Thanks for the tip, atleast now I know that it is easy enough to do, as i mentioned moodle is still shiny and new to me so im not 100% on what works best. The reason I was leaning more towards flash is simply because i'm used to it, and have more confidence in it and to be honest I just like to play about with it I surpose though my main point is just wether to add in the menu, come up with a different way of displaying the links to make moodle...a bit less like moodle or just leave it as is. But I fear leaving it as it is, whilst fully usable, will cause headaches from the tech phobes amongst the staff.

[pete]

++ on "not flash"

 

Should the kids being using fondleslabs or similar product to access to VLE from home, certain popular products don't support flash.

 

Lose the balloon owl on the right (and place news links there), make your orange bar wider and buttons more distinct? In general give up some owl-space for usable more obvious navigation.

 

i.e "click the compass to get to maths" etc.

 

Am I right in thinking the names of the quizzes on the left correspond to owls?

[InterwebsGuy]

Thanks for the tip, atleast now I know that it is easy enough to do, as i mentioned moodle is still shiny and new to me so im not 100% on what works best. The reason I was leaning more towards flash is simply because i'm used to it, and have more confidence in it and to be honest I just like to play about with it I surpose though my main point is just wether to add in the menu, come up with a different way of displaying the links to make moodle...a bit less like moodle or just leave it as is. But I fear leaving it as it is, whilst fully usable, will cause headaches from the tech phobes amongst the staff.

If you are using Moodle 2.x - which I'd imagine you are - and the menu you are wanting to add is just a basic drop down one, I believe Moodle can already do this. I have certainly seen one of the standard themes with a drop down in it, with the entries coming from within the Moodle admin area where you can specify them. I am not 100% familiar yet with Moodle 2.2 so I can't be too specific here though.

 

I don't know if that would do what you want, if it does, all is good, but if not, as I said before it is fairly straight forward to add whatever you like into Moodle's themes.

[nyiss]

++ on "not flash"

 

Should the kids being using fondleslabs or similar product to access to VLE from home, certain popular products don't support flash.

 

Lose the balloon owl on the right (and place news links there), make your orange bar wider and buttons more distinct? In general give up some owl-space for usable more obvious navigation.

 

i.e "click the compass to get to maths" etc.

 

Am I right in thinking the names of the quizzes on the left correspond to owls?

 

 

It isnt a high proirity for us to have the kids use the site from home since atleast half our kids have no internet access outside of school so the teachers will just use it as a guiding tool in school hours but stupid as it sounds I had overlooked the idea that they would have to then navigate differently outside of school -.- thankyou for pointing that out I think im in permanent monday mode atm!

 

The balloon owl is actually to hide the calendar once its coded since we dont want it viewable all the time. when you click on the owl the calendar fades in behind it and the owl 'floats' off the screen. So the calendar space will be free and the google map is being moved to the info page soooo Im thinking it might be better to have quick links there instead.

 

the names do correspond to the owls yep but they arent all quizzes, they are links to school clubs or activitys . It was an idea to get the kids more involved in moodle. Each owl was named after a tree and has a 'hobbie' like arts or sport etc. you see them intergrated with things all over the school and we have little plush toys of each owl which the kids can earn as rewards, a sort of collect them all job.

 

 

A drop down box would be really helpful for the teacher resources since theres just to many to list but I think I will definatley drop the flash menu and shift things around on the front page to make way for the links I wanted there instead since then I can still use image links which the SEN teachers had a preference for.

 

Thankyou both very much for the help, I think I am starting to get my head around moodle now