Moodle User Interface Guidelines:Introduction

Moodle User Interface Guidelines > Introduction

These guidelines are to be used as a UI reference library by Moodle developers when creating user interfaces.

It does not catalogue all the elements in use in Moodle, but is intended a reference of reusable elements sharing that common Moodle style. We aim to update this reference as new common practices appear.

The primary purpose is to document what is already there, the parts of Moodle that are proven by practice to work. What is the Moodle style - what is specific about the Moodle UI that makes it Moodlish and is better than any other UI for the purpose it serves? It often seems it is difficult to know how to make an UI coherent with the Moodle style. I have started to find out, and I intend to document it. This way, Moodle can give a more consistent user experience in the future, by helping developers quickly find what there already is. The guidelines under the heading Moodle UI library are meant for this.

All of the guidelines are to have a link to a document called "Examples and Code Samples: [Guideline Name] ", where it is documented where to look for examples on how to implement a given guideline in practice.

The other, and perhaps a longer-term purpose is to have a bit of a reference and a foundation to invoke discussion about usability issues. There are many guidelines that often apply not only to Moodle but also to other web applications. Getting them right also helps to make Moodle more welcoming to people coming from elsewhere on the web, and use Moodle only occasionally. These guidelines are under the heading General design guidelines.