Adapt Learning Community: Working with themes in Adapt Author

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Hi,

I have been getting my hands dirty with Adapt Author over the last few days and so far so good. There are a few things that I have got stuck on, but this is one of the main ones. I downloaded the latest repo of adapt-contrib-vanilla and made a copy of it (with name changes etc..) and uploaded it as a new theme with the intention of modifying it as I went. I successfully published it as a new theme in Adapt Author but the difficulty has come with know where to edit my changes and have those come through when I preview and publish the course. I have found two main locations in my 'adapt_authoring' working folder where the theme appears to be present.

1. ..\adapt_authoring\plugins\content\theme\versions\[custom_theme]
2. ..\adapt_authoring\temp\[some random GUID]\adapt_framework\src\theme\[custom_theme]

I would have thought that the copy of my theme in location 1 would have been the one to modify, however it seems that any changes I make there have no bearing on either the previewed or published courses I make.

When I make changes to the one in location 2, those changes come across when I preview and/or publish my course. Also, for the changes to take effect I noticed I had to go back into the theme settings for that course and click 'Save' again.

If someone could shed some light on what I am doing is correct or why there are multiple folders with my custom theme that would be great. It is all a bit confusing at the moment.

Regards

Greg

I have the same problem. Dear Greg, did you find a solution to the problem?

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Not really. I believe that this complication will be addressed in the new version of Author coming out at the end of the month.

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Dear Greg Thank you for your swift response. You highlighted that editing the less file in the temp folder worked for you. Did you have grunt.watch run to compile the less while you were editing it? For some reason my edits are not coming through no matter which less file I am editing.

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To be honest with you, I cannot remember. I haven't looked at this again since a few weeks before Christmas. I don't think I did, I was just editing the less files manually. When I found out they were fixing a lot of this stuff up I have just left it and am waiting for the next major release.

Cheers

Greg

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Hi Greg,

It's great to see that you're getting stuck in to the tool! I'm just posting to clarify why you're experiencing issues with editing the theme.

The Authoring tool is intended for the non-developer audience, and so in-place editing of your theme, once it has been uploaded to the tool, is not really supported (although you can, as you discovered, edit it within the publishing directory for your course). The reason you need to reselect your theme in order for the changes to be seen, is to force a republish of the course, since the first build is cached.

When you upload a version of a plugin - in this case a theme - to the Authoring tool, you're basically adding a production-ready plugin, fixed at a specific version. If you want to make changes to that plugin, you need to make the changes in a local development version of the plugin, create a new release (by updating the version number within the bower.json file), repackaging it, and uploading it to the tool again. See here for a guide on creating a plugin that is compatible with the Authoring tool.

If you are developing a theme, and making changes to js, less, and other files, I recommend sticking with the command line for now.

Hope this helps!

Dennis

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Is there a guide to making changes to the vanilla theme or adding you own themes somewhere? I just want to change some colours but if I make a copy of the vanilla theme to edit it never shows up in the theme picker?

Did I miss a step?

Thanks.

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Hi Helen,

How have you been copying the theme? Currently, the only way to do this is to get a fresh copy of the vanilla files, amend the bower.json and whatever style you want, and then re-upload using the plugin manager.

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I made a copy of the vanilla folder in adapt_authoring>temp>randomnumbersbit>adapt_framework>src>theme

and presumed it would show up in the themes list. Wishful thinking I guess! I didn't think to try adding it in the plugin manager.

I've done what you said, let's see what happens!

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I have followed your steps, copying the theme from the command line, zipping a folder containing the theme folder and I still get the same error (regardless of the 'level' of the folder – and at this point I've tried them all):

Error: Cannot find expected bower.json file in the plugin root, please check the structure of your zip file and try again.

I was able, at least to install the 'responsive Iframe' theme, but now it's not appearing in my list of themes.

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Hi Leonard, have you already found a solution for that? I have the same issue with my project. Using the adapt authoring tool via vagrant and be able to upload other plugins successfully. I've copied my Vanilla-theme, edited the bower.json file but get only this error message while uploading it:

Error: Cannot find expected bower.json file in the plugin root, please check the structure of your zip file and try again.

Already checked my bower.json - everything is fine / different to the original Vanilla theme. Copied the theme in the correct structure, but always get this error message. Maybe any other hints?

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I am looking for a how to in this case.

I have installed the adapt builder tool. I have created a course, and now I want to edit the theme.

where do I go? where do i run the grunt build and grunt server and grunt watch commands (in a cmd-shell, yes, but what directory)

how can i combine a commandline framework approach with the adapt builder approach?

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Another question, the Vanilla 'read me' files say:

"The Adapt framework does not allow the installation of more than one theme at a time. In order to replace **Vanilla** it must be uninstalled."

Do we need to uninstall other themes to get a new theme to work? It doesn't say this in the wiki.

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Hi Leonard,

We work with the Adapt Author, and there you can use multiple themes.

Keep in mind that if you work with the Framework, you are supposed to create only 1 course, hence 1 theme.

John

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hi Leonard

This is a very late reply, but how do you use multiple themes in the authoring tool?

thanks, grtz

Danny

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Danny, you only need to upload/install the theme via plugin manager, then go into your course , click Theme Picker on the left menu and you will see the themes you have installed. click the theme and save to use it for the course. You select a theme for each course you create. but like John said, in the AT you still can only use one theme at a time for a course. To switch a theme just go back to the course menu page and repeat the steps

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