|
Name |
YUI Menu |
|
Module type |
Block |
|
Author |
Alan Trick |
|
Released |
2007 |
|
Maintained |
Very actively |
|
Languages |
English, French, Chinese (Traditional) |
|
Compliance |
Good |
|
Documentation |
Online documentation, |
|
Errors |
Issues with YUI Library |
The YUI Menu block allows students to navigate around the course main page and to access common activities and resources directly. This block duplicates the functionality of the People block, the Activities block, and the functionality of the Administration block as used by students. So with this block in place, those other blocks can be turned off and precious screen real-estate can be saved. Unfortunately the block does not replicate Administration functions for a teacher. If you do remove the Administration block, you will have to add it again when it comes time to alter course settings, conduct backups, restores, or imports, run reports, or access the files area.
Unzip and copy the block directory into the /moodle/blocks/ directory and visit the Notifications page.
Add the block titled Course Menu from the Blocks menu. You may need to turn editing off before it performs correctly.
There seems to have been an ongoing battle for the block developer to keep up-to-date with changes in the Yahoo User Interface (YUI) library, which is used to achieve common JavaScript and Ajax functions in Moodle. If you do not see the tree menu, you may have a conflict between the version of the YUI library and the block. There are a number of fixes suggested on the Moodle Modules and plugins database page for the module.
When the block is added, you can configure what appears in the block and in what order the items appear. After turning editing on, click on the block's configuration icon and the following settings will appear.
Clicking the up and down arrows allows you to reorder topics. Clicking the eye icon for a topic allows it to be hidden or shown. These changes happen without reloading the page, but you will have to click the button labeled Save changes for these changes to take effect.
There are three settings at the bottom of the configuration page. The Length of section intros refers to the number of characters that are shown before a title is truncated. You might want to change this setting if your theme font has wider characters. When a title is truncated it is replaced with a three full-stop ellipsis "..." by default, but this can be changed by altering the second setting.
The third setting allows you to determine what happens when a link to a course topic or section is clicked. The default, labeled Hide other sections means that the page is reloaded, showing only the selected section with other sections hidden. The default behavior for a course is to show all topics, so it can be disconcerting for students when the page reloads showing only one section. To reverse this singular view, the user must click the icon to show all sections, which might not be intuitive for students.
The second option for this setting Scroll screen to section changes this behavior. With this option selected, clicking a link scrolls the page so that the section is moved to the top of the page.