Remove colour overlay from course cards that have an image

[stuart_ryan]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Howdy all,

Firstly I have to say the new course cards image feature is awesome and a great leap forward. I have been using it a bit now and have a small request for a future revision.

When a course is given an image for the course card on a user's dashboard, I would really like to see the colour overlay removed (so that the image does not looked washed out with the user selected colour).

Ideally, I would love to see this configurable on an account level rather than an individual course level, but that is just from an administrator's perspective.

Just to visualise this more, the current behaviour with a couple of different colours:

And the ideal/requested behaviour:

Additional thoughts:

I do realise the colour is important for a few different areas in relation to the course, so perhaps the bottom bar could be extended as a border around the entire card (just as one example).

Many thanks  team,

Keep up the awesome work!

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-05-13) 

[James]

I tried Flickr the other day when I couldn't get it to work. Today, I tried dragging onto the window that said "drag and drop your image here" and "browse your computer". I even resampled an image to the desired size and turned off all my user scripts to make sure it wasn't a conflict there.

Flickr works, but I shouldn't have to upload my picture there in order to use it.

I just discovered it works okay in Chrome, but not in Firefox. Hopefully my mime file isn't messed up already, I just reinstalled Windows and all my software a couple of weeks ago. Uploading the same image to the Files section using Firefox works correctly, just not from the Course settings page.

For the information that it returns, it adds an "image_download_url" to the course information when you use the include[]=course_image. That is null if it is not being used.

[laurakgibbs]

Oh, I agree about not having to upload to Flickr. I was using other people's nice images. 

As for browsers, I am not just all-Chrome all-the-time. I like my Chromebook life. 🙂

[johnmartin]

 @kevin1  and laurakgibbs,

This is perfect! What a great end-of-course assignment!

1. Assignment: compile everything this course is about and distill it into a ~200x300 pixel Course Card. 
2. Students vote for winner.
3. Winner gets bonus points.
4. Course Card is used for the next version of the course.

Legacy!

[laurakgibbs]

YES!!! I think that would be great fun for all concerned. Branding-for-students-by-students! 🙂

[Sylvia_Ami]

Thanks  @stuart_ryan ‌ for suggesting this. I see this in Beta now. What do you think?

[sstramos]

Can I be unsubscribed from the “Canvas Colour Overlay” thread? I do not want to unsubscribe form the Canvas community, just this thread as I am not involved.

Email: sstramos@bridgeport.edu

[SHEBENE]

You can do that by going to the discussion and then at the top right corner under "Actions" uncheck the ones under "Following in".

[stuart_ryan]

 @Sylvia_Ami ‌ I think we are 50% of the way there, I like the look once the colour overlay has been deselected. However, I have to admit that I am disappointed that the default is still to have it on. When I logged the feature request initially, I titled and targeted it as 'Remove colour overlay from courses with an image' and that it should (preferably) be configurable at the account level.

My concern with the current implementation is that the experience with the colour overlay is (in my opinion, my learning designers opinion, and anecdotal comments from our UX specialist) an inferior experience, and we would like to turn it off by default, system wide. In the current implementation, every single student at our institution will need to be told of the feature, and informed they can deselect it. Rather than the colour overlay being disabled (or non-existant), which was how many of us imagined it would behave originally.

Obviously that is just my 2c, but I am *very* much hoping we are given another iteration as another option before this gets moved to production, as (for me) Instructure hasn't quite hit the mark (yet).

[stuart_ryan]

 @Sylvia_Ami ‌ I would also point you to https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/8611-new-color-overlay-feature-should-have-a-way-to-change-def...  which is a feature request to extend this and request the specific desired functionality of enabling us to remove the colour overlay by default, at our choice.

[Renee_Carney]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-05-13)