Forum Discussion
New in Rise 360: More Course Customization with Themes
I’m so excited to share our latest release with you. Today, we shipped a huge update to Rise 360 that gives you more creative ways to customize the look and feel of your projects. Rise 360 now includes a variety of scroll-stopping themes—all created by award-winning designers—with more themes coming soon. Apply themes in just a few clicks, or, for that extra-personalized touch, we’ve added the option to customize many theme elements.
The possibilities are endless, so let’s take a closer look at all the latest Rise 360 goodness.
New Themes
Rise 360 has always been a great option for quickly creating beautiful, responsive courses. And with the addition of Rise 360 themes, you’ve got brand-new ways to add your own unique spin to projects.
Here’s a quick rundown of each theme:
- Rise—our original theme—is modern and clean-lined. It’s a tried-and-true design choice that never goes out of style.
- Apex makes a bold, contemporary statement with striking, angular flourishes.
- Horizon is a great choice when your project needs a design that’s elegant, sharp, and stylish.
You can see all three styles in the image below.
And these stunning new themes are just the beginning. We’ve got even more theme designs in development.
New Theme Customization
Before, Rise 360 theme customization options were found under the Settings menu. Now, we’ve pulled theme settings into a new Theme menu, as you can see below.
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BEFORE
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AFTER
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This change streamlines course creation by nesting all of the theme customization options in one spot. Under the new Theme menu, you’ll click to choose your desired theme and then click Save to apply it to your project. It’s as easy as that.
These striking themes were designed to be used as is to simplify and speed the course creation process. But for that extra-personalized look and feel, we’ve added more options to customize elements like cover page layout, navigation type, lesson headers, accent colors, font pairings, button styles, and more. With so many flexible options, you can style your theme to better meet your learners’ needs and easily create more cohesive, branded learning experiences.
To give you an idea of how these new themes can be customized, explore the following examples. We applied each theme to the same course content—and we customized each version with unique colors, navigation, and lesson header styles.
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What’s your favorite combination? Leave me a comment below.
Summing It Up
The new Rise 360 themes feature opens up a whole new world of possibilities. And we’re just getting started. There are more stylish theme designs in the works and we’re making progress on giving you the ability to create your own custom themes as well. We’re excited to continue delivering features that empower you to create eye-catching, unique learning experiences in record time.
Want to try out Rise 360 themes for yourself? Head over to your Rise 360 dashboard and start with a new course, a course template, or any existing Rise 360 project. Don’t have Rise 360? Start your free 30-day trial of Articulate 360 now.
Be sure to keep an eye on our Articulate 360 feature road map and the What’s New page to stay up-to-date on what we’re working on.
- Hi there!Good news! You can now use theme color contrast to make sure that text or icons that appear on top of a theme color meet contrast guidelines automatically.To use this new feature, simply go to the Themes tab, select Colors and choose one of the following options:
- Auto: Turns text and meaningful graphics to black or white automatically depending on your accent color to meet the minimum accessibility contrast requirements.
- Dark: Turns text and meaningful graphics to black.
- Light: Turns text and meaningful graphics to white.
Once you’ve given it a try, we’d love to hear what you think! Hi David!
We've heard similar feedback from authors who prefer to use a theme color instead of a cover image.
We’re working on disabling course images from showing on your dashboard when you have the course accent color selected for your cover image layout.
We'll let you know as soon as we make that change!
Hey, Brandon!
We'd love to take a closer look at how the new Themes feature is affecting your continue button. Would you mind sending us your course Share link?
If that works for you, please open a case here, and drop your Share link in the case description. We'll do all we can to help!
This is a great update, thank you! Is there any information on if/how the different themes and various options within them impact accessibility?
Also, it would be great if in the colors section you could also set the overall text color.
Thanks, Kristina! We're excited, too. One notable enhancement that the Theme feature brings is improved text contrast. At the lesson level, you'll see text change from white to black depending on what your course theme color is -- lighter theme colors will see black text, and darker theme colors will continue to see white text. Currently, the text changes happen on the Start button, cover image, lesson title, and course navigation elements.
We are going to extend these changes to the lesson level as well. There aren't other changes to overall text color planned at the moment.
Where has the course navigation setting gone in Rise 360?? It was under settings and the options were free or restricted. With the addition of "themes" I cannot find that navigational feature for my courses now. Help!?
Karen Palleschi
Where has the course navigation setting gone in Rise 360?? It was under settings and the options were free or restricted. With the addition of "themes" I cannot find that navigational feature for my courses now. Help!?
Hi Karen, the navigation setting you are looking for has been moved to the new Themes > Navigation page (Restrict Navigation ON/OFF).
Karen Palleschi
Where has the course navigation setting gone in Rise 360?? It was under settings and the options were free or restricted. With the addition of "themes" I cannot find that navigational feature for my courses now. Help!?
Hi Karen! You'll now find navigation settings within the Theme menu. We've got a few detailed articles on the enhancements that the theme feature includes in the Rise 360 User Guide section: Customizing a Course. Currently, only course owners (and not collaborators) will have access to the Theme menu.
Now located under Themes, Navigation
Trying to find a link where anyone can view the intro to themes video? The only one I can locate is only accessed by the owner of the module. Is there an acccessible video for everyone?
Sharon Jensen
Trying to find a link where anyone can view the intro to themes video? The only one I can locate is only accessed by the owner of the module. Is there an acccessible video for everyone?
Hi Sharon, you can use this link to show the promo video of the new theming features on Youtube (Thanks Adam).
Thanks Philip. And here's an even better link on YouTube.
As Dan mentions, only the course owner can change the course settings, including theme, navigation mode, and collaborators. We've made updates in this user guide on how to collaborate with other authors.
Thanks for sharing your feedback on the impact to your collaboration workflow. If we make any changes, I'll share here!
Echoing what others have already posted regarding removing Theme settings from Course Managers. This presents a real issue for organizations that have delegated course development to the manager role. Please explain Articulate' s thinking on this change which - as mentioned by others - creates an immediate workflow problem for orgs using this model. Please consider resolving as soon as possible.
Thank you again, folks, for your honest feedback. We've made changes to the cover image behavior that was released with the new Theme features.
Course cards on your dashboard will reflect the option you've selected for your cover page layout. We've also removed the cover image from the outline when editing your course.
This means that if you've selected an option without an image, you won't see any cover image we've suggested on your course cards. I hope this helps, and we'll keep you posted on any changes to collaborators' permissions.
Please let us know how the Theme features are working out for you!
gee that was quick - haha - added my post them when I saved it the thread was updated with the fix - great work!
Hi Still the page level Theme is not implemented to the latest release , do we have any update if the page level themes like black theme option can be release soon?.
It looks like the "Details" button that was at the top next to the Start button is missing in this new version. Was it removed? Gone for good? There is nothing about this in the release notes.
Hey there, Nejc. Yes, the details button has been removed from the course cover page.
Your details text appears front-and-center on your main page, making it easy for learners to read more about your content. You can even apply and preview different themes to see how the details are displayed with a different layout!
