UoM Blackboard theme

This project applies Google's Material Design to the University of Manchester's websites.

This is more than just a theme; it also vastly improves the usability and readability of the websites.

I was originally only restyling Blackboard, but I've since expanded it to other UoM websites.

2024 Update

I've now graduated and will lose access to most of the university websites soon. Therefore, there will be no further development of this project, but the existing feature set should continue to work long after now.

TLDR: Please use, but there will be no new features coming.

Install

Note: If you previously installed this theme via the Stylus and Tampermonkey extensions, you should uninstall them first.

Want to build the extension yourself? See the Building section.

Install on Firefox

1. Go to the Releases page, scroll down to where it says "Assets" and click on the UoM_Enhancements.xpi file.

2. You will see a prompt asking you to add the extension. Click Continue and then Add.

Install on Chrome (and other Chromium-based browsers, like Edge and Brave)

Go to the chrome web store page and click "Add to Chrome".

Update

Both the Firefox and Chrome extensions will automatically update in the future.

Why use this theme?

• Rethemes the Blackboard website
  • Better icons and logos
  • Locate your modules easily with the new grid view
  • When you're in the second semester, first semester modules will be dulled so you can focus on your new modules. (requires script)
  • Assessment/quiz pages have more separation between questions to avoid overwhelming you
• Rethemes the login and duo pages
  • Removes the useless FAQs no-one reads and adds a nice picture of Uni Place
• Rethemes the My Manchester portal including the attendance page
  • (My Manchester is currently offline anyway)
• Rethemes Blackboard videos
  • Captions are more readable with better fonts and a smaller width
  • More readable progress bar
  • Standard keyboard shortcuts are added (requires script)
    • Left and right arrow keys to skip 10 seconds
    • Up and down arrow keys to increase/decrease volume
    • Spacebar to play/pause
    • F key to toggle fullscreen
    • C key to toggle captions
  • Whether you have captions enabled is remembered between videos
  • Double click to toggle fullscreen
  • Built-in volume amplifier (requires script)
• Styling and colouring inspired by Google's Material Design
• Uses better, more readable fonts everywhere

Features marked with requires script require you to install the optional scripts (see the Install instructions above).

Screenshots

Blackboard (Grid view)

Blackboard (List view)

Course page

Assessments

Login

Duo 2FA

Video player

IT Account Manager

Development notes

Building

1. Install the latest version of Dart via https://dart.dev/get-dart. If you have Flutter installed, you already have Dart.

2. Install this project's dependencies (including the Dart Sass compiler) by running pub get in the project root.

3. Build the project by running ./build.dart in the project root. You can run ./build.dart --watch to automatically rebuild the project when you make changes.

4. The result is the UoM_Enhancements.xpi file. It can also be found unzipped in the output folder.

Folder structure

• src/assets/ contains the images used in the theme, including the hardcoded module images.
• src/scripts/ contains scripts that add functionality, such as video keyboard shortcuts and new-tab buttons.
• src/styles/ contains the SCSS stylesheets for the theme.
• src/manifest_firefox.jsonc is the base manifest file for the Firefox extension, updated by build.dart.
• src/manifest_chrome.jsonc is the base manifest file for the Chrome extension, updated by build.dart.
• src/style_injection.js forces Chrome to prioritise the extension's styles over the website's styles.
• build.dart is a Dart script that compiles the SCSS and produces the final xpi file.
• update_manifest.json enables automatic updates for the extension on Firefox.

Adding a new subject to the Module list images script

Unknown subjects are given an image from the Pixabay API.

If you want to add a custom image for your subject(s) to the Module list images script, you can either submit an issue and I'll add it for you; or you can do it yourself and submit a pull request:

1. Identify the module code. An example module code is ABCD10000.
2. Add an image to the assets/subjects/ABCD10000/ folder where ABCD10000 is the subject/module code (you'll need to make this folder). The image must be named ABCD10000.jpg or ABCD10000.png etc. Also add a LICENSE.md file with the image attribution/license.
3. Go to scripts/add_course_images.js and add a line to the knownModuleImages object. For example:

   const knownModuleImages = {
       // ...
       "ABCD10000" : "../assets/subjects/ABCD10000/ABCD10000.jpg",
   };