Allow wrap-around text for content items in a module

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

 

  Idea will be open for vote Wed. July 1, 2015 - Wed. October 7, 2015  Learn more about voting...

 

Dear Canvas

 

Recently you updated the number of characters visible in the module main page.  Now all of my assignments are truncated and end with ....

 

Why would you do this?

 

Does this look informative to students?  Why is there so much white open and available space between my assignment name and the number of points it's worth?

 

http://puu.sh/ipNcq.png

 

Now, I heard it was to make things easier to read on phones and tablets.  Except it's not. Here's my tablet.  This is awesome.  Totally - I like being able to see 10 letters of an assignment.  And since you can't hover on a tablet, why have you done this?

 

I would like to know who, in their right mind, looked at this and said, yeah.... that looks great!

 

http://puu.sh/ipNmy.png

 

I would like to vote on increasing the display size of assignment names in the modules.  Whatever it was before was even too small.  So I don't know if this is a vote on increasing the allowable text letters, or if it increases the width of the pixels used in that category.  No, I don't use the app for Canvas because I don't like how it's set up or organized.  It looks entirely different than the web based version, nothing is indented and so on, so that's not a reasonable alternative request Canvas.

 

Thanks

 

April

 

  Comments from Instructure

 

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-08-27)

89 Comments
sadenniston
Community Contributor

Having just created some modules for the first time, I noticed how much of a module item is truncated. I Googled for an answer, thinking it might be an issue with our install CSS, but alas, it's baked in.

Google image search results for Canvas modules indicate that text wrap was available in the past:

Screen Shot 2015-11-21 at 6.27.16 PM.png

but not now:

Screen Shot 2015-11-21 at 6.29.53 PM.png

I am confident Instructure will fix the issue as this excessive truncation certainly compromises usability. Fingers crossed it's a timely fix!

Jeff_F
Community Champion

Just a follow up to ask for an update.  Thanks!

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

Thank you for the poke  @Jeff_F ​

We're working to get an update on this one.

csalazar
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Sorry for the delay with the update. I had two engineers look at this issue and after trying a couple things unsuccessfully, we are trying to work with other teams to find the expertise we need to make improvements here. I'm still hopeful that we will be able to fix the UI here.

kmeeusen
Community Champion

Thanks, Cosme! We all appreciate the check-in on this, even if not fixed.

timallen
Community Novice

Please make this a priority!

sadenniston
Community Contributor

Indeed - I don't think this should be viewed as a feature, but a user interface bug. I have teachers using Canvas for the first time and are somewhat disappointed that they can't use text headers in a module as an instructional item due to the excessive truncation. Creating a whole new page for the instruction sends students away from the modules area and leads to an already congested page index for them.

boodym
Community Novice

Please make this a priority!! 

martyn_nash
Community Novice

Yep, thx. Much appreciated.

sadenniston
Community Contributor

It is two months short of a year since this bug was identified; we have yet to hear of what progress is being made. Could we have an update? This is affecting how courses are designed - I am instructing teachers to avoid putting instructions through module headers (the preferred way) and use a page instead, which is not preferred, as it separates the instruction from the instructional (module) items.