I would like to be able to alter the dashboard so that it uses only the user's first name as a greeting, rather than the nickname. It would also be useful to be able to remove the waving hand icon.

(I know I can hide the icon with CSS. However, CSS should be used for styling, not for hiding system functionalities. If the only way to hide a feature/tab is to use CSS, then that is a flaw in the system's architecture. CSS should not be seen as a solution for these matters.)

Yes, what I am requesting is the ability to make this come from another field rather than display_name.

This is a greeting, usually it would use a first name, rather than the full display name. However, for administrative purposes, most schools would like the student's full name to be used in the rest of the system. Since the system seems to use display_name for everything, then it would seem like a good idea to keep using display_name for most things (i.e. less changes) and use first_name for the greeting, instead.

Well, besides the lack of customization regarding which field it uses, there are other problems with this dashboard_intro:

• There is a space intentionally added between the "Hello" and the comma, which is grammatically incorrect.
• The "Hello" and the user's name are styled with two different heading styles, H3 and H4.
• The use of a hard-coded image character instead of an actual image makes it impossible to hide using CSS.

Hi Ripul -

We have currently chosen to hide the whole dashboard_intro instead, since we couldn't control what went into it. Nevertheless, some ideas would be:

• Use the same styling for the "hello" message and for user.displayname. In fact, these should both be under the same heading/tag, so they don't get split up artificially.
• Consider allowing the user to set the value used for the greeting. For example, a text field in the admin area could allow the greeting to be "Hello, student", "Hello, friend", "Hello, David" (using the first name variable), or just "Hello,".
• Either use a theme image for the waving hand, or do away with it entirely. The playful element might be welcome in certain types of use cases, such as an elementary or middle school, but in others, such as a university environment, it might not be as appreciated or appropriate. There should be an easy way to opt in/out of this (even if it is by CSS), and the use of the Unicode character makes this impossible.

Cheers,

- David

Hi Ripul:

1. What if you want to change the string but keep the site in English? It doesn't make sense to force someone to create an English translation for an English site. Currently we have translated the string to Portuguese, in our case. But that doesn't help your English users.
2. Thanks for the span tag to the hand. Did you also include the "Hello" string and the user's name within the same header tag, for styling?

Thanks,

- David

Hi Alex -

1. Then you are forcing the user to install and use another plugin (for translation) to provide a flexibility which should be implemented in the system itself. And also using a translation for a purpose for which it is not intended. Sure, it works and there may be little load involved, but it's just not proper/good system architecture to outsource such a simple customization to this kind of a workaround.
2. The problem is the greeting and username are split into two different header tags which makes the person implementing the system have to jump through CSS hoops just to get them to be on the same line and in the same font/size. It's unnecessary work which could just be solved by having them both in the same tag.

I get that you are hesitant to make any changes at all once you have chosen to implement something in a certain way. We will keep this feature hidden by CSS until it can be customized with user.firstname, rather than user.displayname.

- David