grouphomepage and dashboard views don't use themes, but can be set

[Andrew Nicols]

When editing a grouphomepage or a dashboard view type, you can set the theme for the view, but when viewing the group/homepage, the theme isn't used.

Options are:
a) Don't allow them to choose the theme; or
b) Have the relevant pages respect themes.

Option a is obviously pretty easy by modifying view/blocks.php to only assign viewthemes if the view isn't in array('grouphomepage', 'dashboard'),
Option b may be preferable long term.

[Richard Mansfield (richard-mansfield)]

Yeah, I agree, I'd go for option a.

[Andrew Nicols (dobedobedoh)]

Added a function View->is_themeable() which checks whether the current theme type is not in an array.

If other view types are added in the future which don't respect theming, then they'll need adding to the array in View->is_themeable().

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

What is the reason for not allowing learners to choose a theme for their dashboard / group homepage?

[Richard Mansfield (richard-mansfield)]

I can't remember exactly. One reason is probably that it wasn't straightforward and I was lazy.

But I think another reason is that the view is not the whole page for the dashboard & group homepage; it's only used for part of the page. To fit in with the normal site navigation, those pages really need to use the full header rather than the small header, and when you're using the full header, going from one page to another with a different theme can give you a bit of a nasty surprise, especially when the menu switches from the right to the left for example.

You can always test this effect out by turning off small headers in site options, and then navigating to a view that has a different theme from the site.

It would be nice if we could leave the header always showing one theme, and only change the view's theme for the view's portion of the page, but because of the way css works, that would have been a lot of work.

[Craig Eves (craig-flexible)]

A request I have been asked for is for the dashboard view to be by default - content from the user's institutes.

There is an institute view that is able to be created - the dashboard would be a good place to include this view - it doesn't seem to be used elsewhere.

The institute admin would select this option in the same place they select the institute theme.