Hide side navigation even from admins when loaded in wrapper

We've got a very locked down environment. We have 1 course for our online students, 1 course for our 1st year on site and one for 2nd year on site. They only see what I let them see in joomla, so I don't need ANY moodle navigation. I'm using the joomdle moodle template, so for students, it's GREAT. They access the class from a joomla menu item in the side bar, and it loads perfectly in the wrapper.

But for admins, the nav loads in the wrapper. I've created a joomla menu that loads the full moodle admin with a specific template, and have instructed them to use that when grading, checking attendance, etc, but it's a bit annoying when loading the class inside [strike]moodle[/strike] joomla (if you just want to scan the assignments and look at the list closer to the way the students see it)

Since I know how to force moodle to load with a specific template when I need to, I think the solution might be to completely remove the nav side bar from the joomdle template, but I wasn't sure if there was some other trick to try before resorting to that.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

I think I know what you are trying to achieve yet your title of this post is to hide navigation (moodle) when in wrapper and then the para says remove nav from joomdle template. There really isn't a joomdle template.

Since you are looking to hide moodle navigation you should be looking at the moodle templates.

Sorry, the confusion comes in the fact the I'm using the "joomdle demo" theme for moodle. That's the theme that would need editing.

I also added to confusion by mentioning moodle at one point instead of joomla. You'll see my correction in the original post.

Hi there,

At this point Joomdle (Joomla front end) has been written primarily for students using a 80-20 rule of thumb. There is very little functionality if any that has been written for teachers / moodle admin due to the special needs they have such as course creation. As such we normally recommend teachers and admin login into moodle directly rather than through the Joomla front end or by providing a link for teachers which opens moodle in another window rather than the wrapper to keep the navigation.

Should you wish to hide the moodle navigation, you would need to edit the moodle themes and perhaps some code (not sure at this time as we have not attempted to customise for teachers). You would also need to be cautious of the times when you actually do need the navigation. Ie If you edit the theme for teachers what happens during those occasions when they actually require the navigation?

Of course the other option would be to have some Joomdle (Joomla) specific views for teachers. We have thought about this a number of times but so far there has not been enough requests to place this near the top of the new features queue. If this is something you would like to sponsor we could look at your specific needs and if appropriate develop the views in Joomla avoiding the issues and possible conflicts of modifying the moodle teacher's template.

I trigger a new window with the url that loads a full moodle theme for the instructors. It's completely moodle an not wrapped. It's ony when they view it in the joomla wrapper that it has that extra nav bar. They don't know how to access moodle without triggering the link and in fact they can't get to it without loging into joomla first. So, there's no reason I couldn't strip the nav from the joomdle theme. I just need to know where to look and what to remove or comment out I think.

Thanks!

Sorry I am still confused by your post - actually even more so than before Now I understand there is an extra nav bar only when I Joomla thus provided by Joomdle. Can you take a screen shot of what you are referring to so that we can provide you with better guidance.

I'll try to post a screen shot tomorrow. Let me start over:

Moodle by itself= fine (loading fadeback template for admins only, no students see it)

Moodle inside Joomla using joomdle and loading joomdledemo theme for students = great!

Moodle inside Joomla using joomdle and loading joomdledemo theme for admins = side bar nav appears

All the admins/teachers use the FULL moodle to do any work, and they don't use the joomdledemo theme at all there.

When an admin loads the class page in joomla (which uses the wrapper) instead of seeing what the students see, they get the side nav bar also loading. The wrapper scrolls both horizontally and vertically. It's not a huge hassle, but it's annoying if you simply want to check the class assignments and see what the students see (well, you also see hidden items, but that's expected)

So, I guess I need to just remove the side bar completely from the joomdledemo theme. Again, NO admin uses that theme when working in Moodle. I control how they get to moodle, and I force fadeback to load for them.

Hopefully that makes more sense

thanks!

Thanks. This is pretty much what I had expected / do expect. End of the day, students see different stuff than admin / teachers as defined by moodle. Thus when logging in as a teacher from joomla, moodle will still put the "requried" stuff for teachers based on your template. For admin similar. In fact for admin we specifically do not wish them to come in through Joomla as they need additional stuff thus we do not syncronise their data between joomla and moodle.

The joomdledemo theme, is just a hack of the default moode theme by removing headers/footers, navigation, etc. As you know this was done for front end access by students although teachers can still login to the front end. My assumption is that to achieve something similar you would need to modify your fadeback theme. What to modify is really beyond our knowledge as we have not played with the other themes nor explored the various possibilities with the moodle themes. In fact, we only did it for our joomdle demo and then everybody kept asking for it, so we made it available. But the focus was on student access although when logging into the joomdle demo as a teacher, you do not see the moodle navigation.

You may wish to compare the default moodle template against the joomdledemo template to see what was done and then do likewise for fadeback.

I'm reading your post and you make this statement:
"But the focus was on student access although when logging into the joomdle demo as a teacher, you do not see the moodle navigation."

Maybe the misunderstanding is that our admins (they are set as admins not teachers because otherwise they show up in the activity completion chart!) DO see the nav inside the chart. This is the root of the problem. That nav bar clearly shows up inside joomla. Not for students, but for the admins/instructors/

Maybe that's the issue here, maybe it doesn't show up for "teachers" but it does show up for "admins" and I didn't realize there was a difference.

anyway, the fadeback theme is fine, the admins only see it when they are in the full moodle. All I want is for them (and me) not to see the side bar in the wrapper-which is the joomdledemo theme.

So again, when the teachers/admins see fadeback, it's fine. It's when they see the joomdledemo theme inside the Joomla wrapper that I wanted it to not load the side bar for them.

Funny thing is, I realize after all this, if the teacher logs into joomla and then goes into moodle right away, and then comes BACK to Joomla, they're going to see fadeback inside the wrapper and it defeats the whole purpose. This is most likely due to cookies and the way moodle handles themes, so there's no way around it

HERE'S THE POSSIBLE SOLUTION TO MY ISSUE I THINK:
If I'm right in finally realizing that Moodle "teachers" DO NOT see the nav bar in the joomdledemo theme, then I just need to wait until moodle fixes the issue with the activity completion chart so that teachers don't appear in the chart as if they were a student. If that gets fixed, I can make all the instructors "teachers" in moodle (instead of admins) and the side bar won't show. Is this correct?

I hope that makes sense. Thanks for all your help!