ELMS uses a region based approach to interface design. The region approach to interface design forms a type of wrapper that sits on top of the traditional interface, allowing the user to perform various operations in a consistent manner.  This also allows ELMS to utilize any Drupal theme because the user interface has been completely abstracted from theme design.

Each region of the interface bundles together specific types of operations and are organized as follows:

  • The top region has three areas that help provide context about what you are viewing. The top left is always the current path to where you are in the system.  The top right can optionally display notifications such as warning and error messages.  The top right corner displays the currently logged in user and a menu of additional displays for information specific to the user.
  • The left region always contains operations that can be executed at the current page.  In the case of a system display, this will display system options such as adding new courses or sandboxes.  While viewing a piece of content in a course this will display the different actions you can perform on the page (such as checking accessibility or editing the content).
  • The bottom region always displays navigational or display actions.  This is things like pagination between pieces of content in an outline, as well as book mark, printing and page scaling options.
  • The right region optionally displays additional content that has been associated to the content currently being viewed.  It is meant to help provide additional context about the information being displayed.  This contextual information can include things like a list of terms used in the content, a map of locations associated to the content or a timeline visualizing important points in time.  There are many other types of associations that can be made to material, which content authors can activate in the instructional design toolkit.