Freeze top, left, and side banners of Canvas.

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the  Canvas Release Notes (2021-10-16) - Instructure Community

 


I have suggested this in the past but it didn't seem to gain traction so I thought that I would bring the idea up again.  It is just a very annoying feature that could be correct rather easily I would imagine.  It would be nice if Canvas froze everything but the interior page.  In other words, let's say you are in the "Modules" page. When you scroll down, the way it is now everything scrolls and you lose site of your courses, grades, calendar, etc. as well as all of your global settings.  Depending on how long your "Modules" page is, for example, you even lose sight of the left hand navigation tabs as well (Home, Assignments, etc.)  I think that those should be stationary, just as if you were to lock columns or rows in Excel.

Please also refer to this closely related idea: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/6112-make-course-menu-sticky

 

97 Comments
BKINNEY
Community Contributor

What kind of mouse do you use?

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Wow,  @apetersen , thanks for posting this! Live and learn. My mouse doesn't actually do that, exactly, but I just discovered that if I'm on a page with a horizontal scrollbar, if I push the wheel slightly to the left or right, a little indicator pops up on the browser, and then, just by moving the cursor, I can scroll the screen horizontally or vertically.

scottdennis
Instructure
Instructure

Nice!

hensonj
Community Novice

The best mouse ever:
MX Master

Instead of using the main scroll wheel to move horizontally it actually has a second scroll wheel in the thumb position.

The best though is the ability for a click scroll wheel to  automatically start smooth scrolling when flicked. This allows me to scroll to the bottom of incredibly long pages more quickly even than using the scrollbar.

BKINNEY
Community Contributor

I had never seen the buttons fail to wrap, and then, a couple of days ago, there it was. A colleague had magnified her view, and both rows of buttons had separate horizontal scrollbars. So glad I remembered seeing your post.

ronmarx
Community Contributor

I'd like to endorse James R Henson's comment above in response to your idea, not because we've tried this yet, but because it seems like the way to customize Canvas for your particular instance.

Initially, and still now, I find it annoying that the edit mode Save/Cancel button doesn't float up and down the page for an easy click instead of having to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to dispatch changes. I hope Henson's css/js suggestions will address that. Of course, and Instructure wants to know this, Canvas should be anticipating its designers' work space and routines to make course design as quick and easy as possible. (This way, we can focus on the more important pedagogical aspects of our designs.)

Also, we're going to try Henson's idea in order to automatically hide the secondary menus (right of main, and on left) in order to maximize screen real estate so our users won't have to scroll around horizontally within an LTI iFrame. That's pretty annoying too, and doesn't do anything to encourage students to spend time in a friendly, easy-to-use learning environment.

Cheers,
iRon_Mrx
 @ronmarx ​

hensonj
Community Novice

The above mentioned fix really only applies to the left hand menu.

The full available width fix works only in a page's normal state and not in edit mode

It shouldn't be hard to get the save/cancel buttons to do what you want though

ronmarx
Community Contributor

Thanks, we are going to look into this and other issues on our "punchlist," especially when we sit down with the Instructure system integrators.

BTW, can you tell me how to get access to the CanvasHacks Classroom that's been discussed here?

Thanx,

iRon

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

 @ronmarx , to access the CanvasHacks course, post your request to join along with the email address you use to access Canvas, specifying whether you would like to be added as a teacher or a student, to this discussion--CanvasHacks Classroom --and  @kmeeusen  or  @scottdennis ​ will add you to the course. (Of course, since I've tagged them here, they might go ahead and add you anyway. Smiley Happy )

kmeeusen
Community Champion

 @ronmarx ​

Shoot me your email Sir, and I'll hook you up with CanvasHacks.

KLM