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About this theme

• @package theme_flexibase
• @author 2015 Richard Oelmann
• @copyright 2015 R. Oelmann
• @parents Bootstrap
• @copyright 2014 Bas Brands
• @credits Essential - Julian Ridden, Gareth Barnard;

•         Elegance - Julian Ridden, Danny Wahl;
  

•         BCU - Jez H, Mike Grant
  

•         Decaf - Paul Nichols
  

•         Many others for non-specific but vital inspirations,
  

•         suggestions and support
  

• @license http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU GPL v3 or later

This is the flexibase theme for Moodle. It is a Bootstrap3 theme, but uses flexbox to create the layouts, rather than the bootstrap grid.

This theme depends upon Bas Brands bootstrap theme for bootstrap3.

The aim of the theme is to provide an experimental format for making use of the flexbox css layouts to provide greater options for administrators and to simplify the layout code when considering rtl languages, editing on/off, use of side-bars and docking as well as other factors which influence the layouts. The theme allows administrators to choose layout structures for set page layout types (standard pre and post, 2 pre, 2 post etc) from a settings page without the need to edit theme files. To supplement the layouts, the theme has a wide range of additional block regions - page top and page bottom, main content top and bottom, and main content left and right. While it is not anticipated that all of these block regions will be used on a single page, they provide a huge amount of flexibility for the course creator.

The theme also makes use of less compilation on the fly through its settings pages. It has a range of colour and branding options which affect the less variables, but also makes use of a 'CustomLess' setting in the same manner as many themes have a 'CustomCSS' (as flexibase also does). It should be noted that the LESS compiler is not as error tolerant as most css and if there is a simple typo, this can cause the page to be served with no css at all. In this instance, simply backtrack your latest change to the LESS and you will restore the less/css styling.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Older versions of IE do not support any version of the flexbox format. So, although provision has been made for vendor prefix support in some older browsers, as well as support for legacy versions of the flexbox structure itself, older IE versions do not support either (IE 9 and below - IE 10 supports legacy, prefixed forms and is supported). This means that elements of this theme, including the main layouts will not work as expected in IE9 and below. They do give a similar look and layout to the small screen responsive view, along with identifying the browser as not supporting flexbox in an alert warning. Suggested workarounds: Update the browser - any PC using IE9 is capable of running IE10/11 or FF/Chrome - given that some IT departments in some institutions do not support this option and remain with IE8 and other older options. Alternatively, make use of the device detection features in Moodle theme settings and set a device as /MSIE 9/ and use that to add a separate legacy theme for those users. This may make this theme unsuitable for you if you have significant users on older versions of IE.

As a secondary consideration, this theme is also being used to develop several of the features as 'plugable' options for other themes, which you can find in the 'plugins' folder of flexibase. Each component comes with its own set of instructions, but these can vary according to the theme the component is being added to - as folder structure, existance/inheritance of layout files, lib.php etc will all have a bearing on implementing these components. The plugins have been tested on Clean and should work on any reasonably modern theme.

A readmes folder is also provided which contains some of the theme support materials - in this case a text version of the base css and less that is used to create the theme. The less file in particular is useful as a starting point if editing the customLESS setting as it allows you to copy and paste the existing LESS which can then be edited, without necesarily searching for it in the parent theme or bootswatch. This folder also contains a demo course backup. This can be restored to any Moodle3+ site and will give an example of some of the layout options as well as some documentation about the theme and its settings pages.

I hope you find the theme useful. Please submit any comments and feedback via the moodle.org forums or any bugs via the github issues page https://github.com/roelmann/theme_flexibase/issues

Richard

CHANGELOG:

3.0 - (There is no 2.x release - major version numbering updated to match Moodle) - Course page header images - Course grade display on course header - 'theme feature plugins' development feature added (including example 'cleanplugged' theme suing those features) - example course backup added to readmes folder to demonstrate some features and provide documentation for theme - Various minor style developments - No major changes to flex layout or bootstrap upstream code

1.1 - Update for 2.9 - Update parent requirement for changes to Bootstrap parent

1.0 - Initial Release