Kris,
Sorry for the delay in replying. Every time I start a reply I get distracted. Its actually a really really good question so I don't want to give you a two line answer. It highlights what you can do as a LAMS sys admin to make LAMS better for your users without having to do any programming.
First up, is this a big issue for anyone else? If it is, and my suggestions below won't fix the issue to your satisfaction then we can look at addressing it better in future releases, so PLEASE post here with a "me too" message.
At present, the simplest way is to modify the css files. But that will increase the font size across all of LAMS, not just for the Multiple Choice questions.
To explain some of the css files from lams_central.war\web\css
- defaultHTML_learner.css: this is the stylesheet used in most of the Learner windows. Its used in a few other bits of the system as well (I think the admin screens use it too!). This is probably the only file you need to change.
- defaultHTML.css: this is the stylesheet used for all the "tabbed" pages like in authoring, plus some of the other one off pages like the login page.
- The ones marked "rtl" are used for right to left languages, so no point changing them.
- ie-styles and ie7-styles are Internet Explorer specific hacks, so don't touch them unless you have a particular issue with IE.
Now, if you do change these files make sure you keep a backup of the changed version, as any new LAMS releases will overwrite the files.
The other things you could do is start to develop your own theme/skin. The support this is in 2.0.1 and LAMS International have done this for a customer who has a customised LMS and wanted LAMS to match. There are some details on doing this on the Theme page on the wiki.
It doesn't require any programming ability, but you need to be able to do stylesheets and manual database updates. You don't repeat all the entries in our css files - you just create new css files that override our existing styles. That way, when you install a new version of LAMS, your changes to the stylesheets won't be lost. Both our stylesheets and your own stylesheets will be included on each page.
So you could gradually customise LAMS if you wished
- start by creating your own theme and switch yourself to it
- find the body tag in defaultHTML_learner.css and make the font bigger. Problem is, the answers will get bigger too!
- add your own custom style as you suggest - and yes that will mean adding them each time.
- once you are happy, switch over your other users to your custom theme.
Then as you find other things you want to customise - maybe the colour scheme to match your LMS - you can modify your custom theme. It won't make any difference to the Flash parts, just the HTML pages.
Now, as for avoiding having to set the style each time - that's a little more difficult to fix. As a default, we don't set any styling whatever on the questions so that authors have complete control on how it appears using the HTML editor. We can add a special style for the questions if lots of other users out there want it - anybody else want a special style for questions in multiple choice?
To make it easier for authors, you could change the default content for multiple choice. Log in as sysadmin and go to Edit Default Content. Select Multiple Choice. You will be presented with the Multiple Choice tool's authoring screen. Edit the sample question to set the font size on the question. You can add more sample questions if you want. Then save.
Then next time someone goes into a new Multiple Choice in authoring, the sample question will already be formatted correctly, so it is a matter of changing the existing text rather than assigning the style. If the author wants to add further questions, they will need to use copy and paste to copy the formatted text from question to question.
You can change the default content for any of the standard tools in LAMS. So if your college happened to have a policy of defaulting to Welsh, you could change all our default content to Welsh. But you can't have two lots of default content - so either Welsh or English, not both.
Hope something here helps!
Posted by Fiona Malikoff
