A Lick of Digital Paint (MOLE 2 Gets a Makeover)

As part of the summer upgrade to MOLE 2, the most immediately noticeable change will be the new visual appearance of the system. I thought it would be good to share a sneak peek of it ahead of that though - so... here we go...

2012 Home Page

While it does look pretty different from the old theme, this brand new '2012' theme might completely changes how MOLE 2 looks but doesn't change how it works.  Which basically means that you don't need to worry that all the buttons will have suddenly moved to a completely new place or that they do different things!

An Organisation

One of the things that stands out particularly for me is the fact that courses can now be grouped by their term, making it easier to manage the list. Though you have to switch this feature on to make use of it you'll see information on how to do this in MOLE 2 when the upgrade has completed.


Having worked with the new look MOLE 2 over the past few weeks, I have to say that the new interface is much cleaner and simpler.  Some elements, like the context menus, are now hidden until you hover the pointer over the item, at which point the menu appears - and this makes for a cleaner look and is the way that people are increasingly used to experiencing sites on the web. You'll also notice that there's more space now, and it gives the whole of MOLE 2 a feeling that it's fresh and in 2012.

The Course Theme Picker

Another thing worth flagging is that there is now a feature for instructors to change how a course looks, with a new course theme picker. This has a preset list of course 'themes', which apply a change to colours and backgrounds with one click. We haven't designed these themes, and you can't add your own...  but if you don't like them (and I'm not keen on some personally), you don't have to use them. The great thing about these is it's really easy to apply the theme to your course and you can change them or revert back to the default theme with one quick click of the mouse. You can still change the colours of the text and buttons in the course as well, so if you want more personalisation, that's still possible.

Overall, I think this new theme is great, and makes MOLE 2 feel much nicer to work in.

Funny what a lick of paint can do.

Danny