Moodle JavaScript Cookbook

Make Moodle e-learning even more dynamic by learning to customize using JavaScript. With over 50 recipes, this Cookbook allows you to add effects, modify forms, include animations, and much more for an enhanced user experience.

Overview

• Learn why, where, and how to add to add JavaScript to your Moodle site
• Get the most out of Moodle's built-in extra—the Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI)
• Explore a wide range of modern interactive features, from AJAX to Animation
• Integrate external libraries like jQuery framework with Moodle

What you will learn from this book

• Get started with the Yahoo! User Interface Library
• Add validation features to your Moodle forms
• Retrieve and process data from external sites in a range of formats using AJAX
• Add feature rich spreadsheet-style data tables—sorting, paging, and inline editing
• Add auto-complete functionality to text boxes and combo boxes
• Make use of advanced navigation controls—drop-down menus, tabbed panels, and modal windows
• Use animation techniques—fading, scrolling, and resizing
• Integrate external libraries such as JQuery framework, MooTools framework, and Dojo framework
• Initialize a YUI DataSource

Approach

This is a cookbook that contains a list of recipes explaining step-by-step how to use JavaScript in Moodle. The first two chapters concentrate on the basics of how to start working with JavaScript and the YUI while the later chapters show how to use these techniques as a basis for implementing more complete functionality.

Who this book is written for

This book is aimed at developers and administrators comfortable with customizing Moodle with the use of plugin modules, themes, and patches who want to make their site more dynamic. If you have prior knowledge of HTML, PHP, and CSS and a good working knowledge of the underlying structure of Moodle, then this book is for you. No prior experience with JavaScript is needed.

In Detail

Moodle is the best e-learning solution on the block and is revolutionizing courses on the Web. Using JavaScript in Moodle is very useful to administrators and dynamic developers as it uses built-in libraries to provide the modern and dynamic experience that is expected by web users today.

The Moodle JavaScript Cookbook will take you through the basics of combining Moodle with JavaScript and its various libraries and explain how JavaScript can be used along with Moodle. It will explain how to integrate Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI) with Moodle. YUI will be the main focus of the book, and is the key to implementing modern, dynamic feature-rich interfaces to help your users get a more satisfying and productive Moodle experience. It will enable you to add effects, make forms more responsive, use AJAX and animation, all to create a richer user experience. You will be able to work through a range of YUI features, such as pulling in and displaying information from other websites, enhancing existing UI elements to make users' lives easier, and even how to add animation to your pages for a nice finishing touch.

Alastair Hole

Alastair Hole is a web software developer, currently specializing in educational software—particularly that which pertains to Further and Higher Education in the UK. His web development experience began in the post dot-com boom era, working on business-to-business e-commerce web applications in the publishing industry with a focus on back-office integration. He has since then transferred his talents to the educational sector, and has created projects that have gone on to receive awards from bodies such as The Times Educational Supplement and the IMS Global Learning Consortium.Alastair is the author of the award-winning Moodle IMS Content Package repository plugin 'MrCUTE - Moodle Repository: Create, Upload, Tag & Embed' [http://www.mrcute.co.uk] which is an Open Source project commissioned by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) that has seen significant usage in Moodle sites worldwide, from Scotland to Australia.Alastair maintains an interest in free and open educational software, and is currently involved in a number of bids for JISC funding to further develop repositories to provide easy access to learning materials in the UK Further and Higher Education sectors.