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) 

[cms_hickss]

Hi  @Renee_Carney ​, I'm glad you asked that question because I saw the demo and the system is doing what was shown. The demo I saw allowed a teacher to set a "course card" image that all participates in the course could see; it did not have the teacher's (overlay) color choices overriding that of the students, TAs, or other teachers in the course.

[stuart_ryan]

Egggsellent

[rgibson1]

Renee, it was the product demo tent outside the main auditorium building at Keystone where the graphics cards was introduced. I was stoked...only to be completely discouraged when the overlay was released in its place 2 months later.

[tsawicki]

I would like to see this as a lower priority, It seems to me there are functionality issues that are more important than aesthetic issues such as this.

[laurakgibbs]

The overlay color right now interferes with the functionality of the calendar, like people who use a white overlay, not even realizing that it is going to hamper the calendar. I'd say that makes it a serious issue, especially because when you change the color overlay on the card, you might not even realize (I did not at first) that you are changing the default appearance of your course events on your students' calendars.

[Renee_Carney]

laurakgibbs​

This is a very important element of the feature that I was not aware of either.  Thank you for sharing it here.

[johnmartin]

If it's a simple fix, I think it makes sense to just do it. (But agree that there are plenty of big issues for Instructure to deal with).

[rgibson1]

While I don't disagree  @tsawicki , the fact remains that Instructure already had a functioning prototype that seemed to be perfect. What happened is that they changed it up on everyone....leading to this mess.

[Stef_retired]

I hope that anyone who is interested in customizing Dashboard course cards will join me for a CanvasLIVE​ quick demo, Add Images to Your Course Cards, coming up on Thursday, January 19, 2017. Teachers and admins who are already familiar with the process of adding images to course cards will find this to be a quick refresher; those of you who haven't yet tried this will learn the how-to's, and will also pick up some tips and tricks on image selection and sizing. RSVP “yes” to the event if you will be there--and if you’re interested, but your schedule doesn’t allow you to attend in real time, RSVP "no" or "maybe" to receive all event updates. Your RSVP ensures that you will receive a notification should the event be cancelled or changed.

[Renee_Carney]

Greetings all.

I know that some of you in this thread have used white as a work-around to showing your image.  However, white has an unintended consequence in the calendar (highlighting events in white with white text).  Please take a look at recent Release Notes​ where white will no longer be an accepted color.