TOPIC:

I'm been tasked with finding how much tweakery I can do within a Xerte project.
Having been pleased to find I can add my own javascript and iframes within the HTML editor, I've now moved on to custom css.
To add some extra custom styles I've simply created a .css file offline, imported it via project properties, copied the url then added a stylesheet link to that in the HTML editor on my page in the project.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that it works, and that in-body stylesheet links are, apparently, permitted in HTML5.
But are there any pitfalls in this approach? ie will things break horribly down the line? I accept that I'll have to use add the link to all my HTML items, but that's not a major problem. Is there a better approach?
Thanks
- Paddy

There is no need to add a stylesheet link in the HTML editor.

There are optional properties at project/LearningObject (LO) level and for the Nottingham template on page level to add css directly in a textbox, and/or add a css file. Xerte will make sure that the css is loaded with the highest priority, so it will not get overruled by Xerte's own css.

Having said that, each upgrade potentially can negate your work, and so you will need to do some basic checks whether your customisations still work after an upgrade. We do our best to try to keep things working, but sometimes we have to change the structure to get forward.

If you are doing a lot of customisations, you should definitely consider to create your own theme. These are much easier to maintain. A change in a theme will work immediately on all the LO's that use the theme. If you do a lot of customisation in the LO's themselves and for whatever reason need to change some of it, you would potentially need to edit all the LO's.

Thanks - I hadn't been aware of all the different options at Learning Object level; that's what I was looking for.

Just to add to this, I do a lot of customisation to our Xerte resources (being fully aware, as Tom mentions, that there is the potential for things to break when updates are made). To give you an idea of the types of customisation, here are some examples:

• Report writing - xerte.cardiff.ac.uk/play_15406
• Critical appraisal - xerte.cardiff.ac.uk/play_11989
• Referencing examples - xerte.cardiff.ac.uk/play_4069
• Welcome to the library - xerte.cardiff.ac.uk/play_4219
• Digital learning at Cardiff University - xerte.cardiff.ac.uk/play_12804

These Cardiff resources are very cool!