Creating a Theme

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Contents

• Introduction
• Name
• Color
  • Hue
  • Custom Colors
  • Rainbow
• Logo
• Cursor
• Icons
  • How Custom Icons Work
  • Creating a Custom Icon Set

Introduction

Welcome to the Schoology Plus theme editor! You can create your own themes to style the Schoology interface to your liking. Custom themes have many features, all of which are outlined below. To get started, follow these simple steps:

How to create your own theme:

1. Open the theme editor (See Accessing the Theme Editor)
2. Click the "New Theme" button
3. Click the "Create Theme" button. You are now in "edit mode".
4. Modify the different options in the "Properties" section. More information on each one is listed below.
5. When you're satisfied with the theme, click "Save Theme" or "Save and Apply"

If you want to discard all changes to your theme, click the "Discard Changes" button.

Name

Every theme is required to have a name at least one character in length. The name of your theme is used for display and identification purposes only. Make it short and simple while still capturing the main features of your theme.

Color

There are three methods of setting the colors of the Schoology interface in your custom theme:

Hue

Pick a color hue if you want an interface with a simple set of similar colors. A hue is a number from 1 to 360 from the HSL (Hue-Saturation-Lightness) method of defining colors. The saturation and lightness values are fixed for each of the interface elements.

To set a color hue:

1. Make sure the "Color Hue" button is selected under "Color"
2. Drag the slider to pick the color hue you like best

The default value for Color Hue is 210, which is used by the default "Schoology Plus" theme.

Custom Colors

Use the custom colors setting to get more control over the colors of individual interface elements. You can set four different colors with this setting.

To set custom colors:

1. Make sure the "Custom Colors" button is selected under "Color"
2. Use the color selectors to select the following four interface colors:
   • Primary Color
     • This is the main interface color, used for the navigation bar and as the primary color for buttons and dialog boxes
     • This color should be dark enough that white text is visible on top of it
   • Background Color
     • This color is the background of the settings dropdown button on the navigation bar, next to your name in the upper right
   • Hover Color
     • This color is the background of buttons and other interactive links when you hover over them, and the border color of the settings dropdown button on the navigation bar next to your name in the upper right
     • This color should also be dark enough that white text is visible on top of it
   • Border Color
     • This color is the border color for buttons

Use the theme preview on the right side of the theme editor to see how changing each color affects the interface.

Rainbow

NOTE: Rainbow colors are an advanced feature and have many complex components.

Use rainbow colors to animate the colors of the Schoology interface. You can choose to animate any combination of the hue (base color), saturation (how intense the color is), and lightness (how bright the color is) of the interface color. For each of the components (hue, saturation, lightness) you can choose to either animate the component or keep it at a static value.

To animate a color component:

1. Check the "⬜ Animate" check box under the color component you wish to animate
2. Use the sliders and check boxes to configure the following options about your animation:
   • Animation Speed
     • This slider controls how fast your color component animates, with higher values being a faster animation
   • Range
     • This controls the range of the animation
     • For example, if you set the range of the Hue component from 0 to 55, the hue would cycle from red to yellow only instead of through the full color wheel
   • Alternate
     • If this is not checked, when the animation reaches the end of the range it will loop back to the beginning of the range and start again
     • If this is checked, the color animation will bounce back and forth through the range rather than looping back to the beginning
   • Offset
     • The offset allows each component to start at a different value
     • For example: let's say you have a theme where you are animating both saturation and lightness across the full range (0-100) at the same speed. If you leave both offsets at 0, the saturation and lightness at any given time will be equal since they are animating at the same speed. By changing the offset of one of the components (for example, saturation) to 50, the saturation will always be 50 higher than the lightness.

Click here for a video example of all the options

Notice:

• The rate of colors changing increases when the speed is changed from 50 to 100
• When the range is modified to start at 283, the colors only cycle from pink to red
• When alternate is checked, the color no longer resets to pink after reaching red, and instead animates in the other direction, back to pink

To keep a color component at a static value:

1. Ensure the "⬜ Animate" check box under the color component you wish to keep static is unchecked
2. Use the "Value" slider to set the static value of the color component

Logo

The logo is the image that is displayed in the upper left corner of the interface.

The default value for Logo is Schoology Logo, which is used in the default "Schoology Plus" theme

There are four possible options for the logo:

Option	Preview
Schoology Logo
New LAUSD Logo
Old LAUSD Logo
Custom Image	See Below

NOTE: The "Schoology Logo" image has a transparent background, while both LAUSD logo images have a colored background as shown above.

You can use your own custom image for your theme's logo. The image should be 160 pixels by 36 pixels or smaller. If the image is a different size it may cause display issues.

Using a custom image for your theme's logo:

1. Select the "Custom Image" option for logo
2. Drag-and-drop, paste, or enter a direct link to the image in the "Logo Image URL" textbox
3. Make sure your logo looks good in the preview pane!

An example of a (really ugly) custom logo:

Cursor

You can set a custom image to replace your cursor when using your theme. The only restriction is that your image must be less than 128 pixels by 128 pixels, otherwise your browser won't display it. In practice, you probably don't want any image larger than 32x32, and even that is still rather large for a mouse cursor.

NOTE: The custom cursor only replaces the default cursor (the one that looks like an arrow). The "pointer" that appears when you hover over links and other types of cursors are unaffected by this setting.

To use a custom cursor:

1. Drag-and-drop, paste, or enter a direct link to an image in the "Cursor Image URL" textbox under "Cursor"
2. Make sure your cursor looks good in the preview pane!

The "Toy" theme uses a custom cursor

Icons

NOTE: Icons are an advanced feature that makes use of Regular Expressions (RegEx). If you don't know how regular expressions work, this feature may not be easy to understand. To learn more about regular expressions, visit Wikipedia or this tutorial site.

Custom course icons are powerful feature of Schoology Plus themes, but are also the most complicated feature. Let's go over how they work.

How Custom Icons Work

Custom course icons are defined as a regular expression and an associated icon image. If a course name matches a regular expression, the associated icon image will be used.

When choosing the icon to display for a given course, Schoology Plus takes the following steps:

1. Schoology Plus attempts to match a full course title (ignoring nicknames set by the user) to the icons defined in the current theme
   • The regular expressions are checked in order from top to bottom
   • If at any point the regular expression matches the course title, the icon associated with that regular expression is used as the course icon
   • For this reason, you should use as strict of a regular expression as possible
2. If no match was found in the currently selected theme, Schoology Plus will attempt to match the course title to the default icon set

Creating a Custom Icon Set

To create a single custom icon:

1. Enter edit mode (see Introduction for a new theme or Editing a Theme for existing themes)
2. Select the "THEME ICONS" tab in the preview pane
3. Click the "Add New" button on the right side
4. Enter a regular expression into the box labeled "Class Name Pattern" in the "Class Name Regular Expression" column
5. Drag-and-drop, paste, or enter a direct link to an image into the "Icon URL" box
6. If done correctly, a preview of your icon should appear to the right of the URL in the "Icon" column

To create more icons:

Repeat steps 1-6 above

To re-order icons:

Click the "Move Up" button to move a row upwards.

Click the "Move Down" button to move a row downwards.

REMEMBER: Regular expressions are matched in order from top to bottom

To delete an icon:

Click the "Delete" button to delete that row.

To create a default icon:

Create an icon with the regular expression . (a single period) and move it to the bottom of the list. This regular expression will match any class name, and since it's at the bottom of the list, all other icons will be tried before it. This will also prevent Schoology Plus from using the default icon set.