From: moodler Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2004 13:52:47 +0000 (+0000) Subject: Latest release notes for 1.2. Phew, this took me most of the day! X-Git-Url: http://git.mjollnir.org/gw?a=commitdiff_plain;h=8b7fb26f2cb6f2f96d16622fce01fec4ec0b0eb7;p=moodle.git Latest release notes for 1.2. Phew, this took me most of the day! --- diff --git a/lang/en/docs/release.html b/lang/en/docs/release.html index 9951de116a..3671f9b138 100644 --- a/lang/en/docs/release.html +++ b/lang/en/docs/release.html @@ -1,365 +1,224 @@ -Moodle Docs: Release notes +Moodle Docs: Current Release notes +--> + -

Release notes

New in Moodle 1.1.1 (10 September, 2003):

Latest Release notes

New in Moodle 1.2 Alpha (Due soon, in mid February, 2003):


General Fixes

Major new features

Translation improvements in many languages
Frame fix when switching languages in documentation
All short PHP tags removed ... short_tags is no longer a requirement
Forum search results link using anchor tag for better context
Removed target from "delete" link on user editing page
'Search' on social format moved closer to the top to prevent browser - self-scrolling
Page redirection is faster and no longer causes intermediate page - to be stored in IE history
Course listings improved when courses are displayed, including more - information
Category listings show courses in full when there are under ten courses
Invisible courses are always shown last in My Courses
Course creators can now see all hidden categories and courses
Styles added for category and course names
Removed tags from question text on quiz 'simplestat' report
Added percentages to downloaded data from 'simplestat' report
Allow external deep linking using guest account ?username=guest
Any admin can now add/remove course creators
Primary admin can now update own username/password even with external authentication
Quizzes can now be specified as having "no grade" and no grades will be shown
When editing a language, missing strings files are created if possible
Fixed bug in weekly journal date calculations
Fixed bug in config.php that made error_reporting not work
Fixed bug when editing user name with quotes in it
Fixed bug in email obfuscation for email addresses with numbers in - them
Fixed missing PostgreSQL schema for chat module
Fixed several typos in PostgreSQL upgrading code
Fixed some uninitialised variables
Several bugs fixed in Workshop module
New support for groups and cohorts within courses (with many options)
A fantastic new glossary module (Thanks to Williams Castillo!)
An improved WYSIWYG editor, faster and more cross-platform than the old one.
Text filters allow arbitrary processing on all text in Moodle
New label module allows arbitrary HTML in the course page
Automatic backups can be scheduled by the administrator for all courses at once

- - - -

New in Moodle 1.1 (28 August, 2003):


Major Changes

Courses

A completely new backup system for backup and restore - of courses (Thanks, Eloy!)
A new workshop module for peer grading (Thanks, Ray!)
A new chat module for synchronous discussions
All-new course manager to handle very large numbers - of courses (tested with 3700)
Custom-defined grading scales that can be used throughout - a course
Performance improvements in many areas
Activities can now be indented on the course outline, allowing more structure
A new logs button on every activity links to the logs page to show logs per-activity
Restore button now always functional
Improved "index" view for all modules
Improvements to participants display, including paging and initial searching
Excel downloads are more compatible with different operating systems
Better error reporting when adding/updating activities
Search box no longer auto-focuses (it was causing annoying auto-scrolling on long courses)
Self-unenrollment link on the course page for students
Change password link on the course page for students
Students can now be allowed to see their own activity reports (course setting)
Teachers can browse the course files for images when using the new editor
New image of empty box as destination when moving activities
Accesses are now recorded by course, so the participant listings make more sense
The activity navbar now has buttons for previous and next activities
File dates were incorrect on some systems - this is now fixed.
Old chat users are no longer shown in the recent activity

General

Site administration

Clean up of the whole admin menu organisation to make it clearer
Categories can be nested and sorted alphabetically or manually
Courses and whole categories can be hidden from students
Course descriptions and names can be searched for keywords
Large categories are now completely paged
Improved web caching for stylesheets and images
"My courses" display on the home page when logged in.
Inclusion of non-linked page to display ALL user pictures at once - (see /userpix)
The "secureforms" feature now defaults to OFF.
Moodle now doesn't care if "magic quotes" is on or off.
Images in /pix were rearranged and tidied up
HTML email is better formatted for wider compatibility
Mail bounces are now sent to the admin user
Better cron tasks (less CPU used) and duplicate enrolments are now - cleaned
Improved display of logs with infinite paging and increased flexibility
User log graphs now work at site-level (showing ALL logs on the site)
People with manual accounts can now recover their password
Improved system for defining/printing help files for major activity - modules
Activity modules can now have settings
Email addresses are all completely obfuscated (to fool web spiders)
There is now an index to the help files
Library (Mark Kimes' add-on) is now supported if it is installed (see Moodle contrib for Library source)
An important security fix preventing teachers from logging in as admins
User's names can now be configured so student's can only see "firstname lastname", "lastname firstname" or "firstname"
A new setting "forcelogin" can force people to log in before they can see any of the site
Upload sizes can now be controlled throughout Moodle using "maxbytes". There is a site limit (bounded by the current PHP limits), which itself is the upper bound for course limits, which is the upper bound for activity limits.
Students can be allowed/disallowed self-unenrolling
Moodle cookies can be customised (helps when running multiple Moodles on one site)
Included script for analysing database performance (admin/dbperformance.php)
Included standalone script to check a server for Moodle compatibility (lib/compatible.php)
If a file called cronextra.php exists in the dataroot then cron will run that too. This allows sites to have "special" maintenance features.
Course formats are now more like plugins, in separate directories
Users can now be uploaded from text files
If $CFG->disableuserimages is defined then user images can not be changed
If $CFG->opentogoogle is defined then Google can get in as guest +and people referred by google also get in as guest
Support for restricted demo users (eg the teacher demo on Moodle.org) - usernames can be added to a list of names in config.php. eg $CFG->restrictusers = 'teacher,fred';


Courses

Themes

Teachers can now have their course editing privileges removed
Teachers can now manually enrol students if they want to
Teacher management is now all combined in one interface
Activities can be moved any distance with two clicks
Topics/weeks can now be moved up and down
Pop-up menu to quickly switch between topics/weeks when collapsed
When self-enrolling, students are notified and given a chance to cancel
Teachers and students see list of "My Courses" on course - home pages.
Grades can be hidden from students if not needed
Fixes for Internet Explorer can be more robust at using the style sheet
Miscellaneous fixes and improvements to themes - custom themes need upgrading.


Languages

Translations

Hungarian and Greek have been added, - and there are lots of other updates. As usual, the language packs within - this release may not be fully completed yet. You can always download - the newest language packs from http://moodle.org/download/lang/.
Updates and fixes to most languages
Languages now have a parent language (for displaying missing strings)
Some fixes for locales and time display in several languages
es_mx is being phased out in favour of "es" (International - Spanish)
New languages: Galego and Lithuanian
Improved language editing interface - it allows the current language to be chosen and allows each file to be edited separately.
The list of country names can now be translated, as can the editor buttons, smiley names and file sizes (Mb, Gb etc)
Language packs can now define the default language direction (RTL or LTR)
Language packs can now define the order that people's names should be shown in
Language files are now written using slightly more efficient PHP code
Finally got rid of the final bogus linefeeds in the multi-line strings


Forum

Backup / Restore

Much improved searching, with multiple keywords, paging etc
Forum grading can be either off, used by everyone, or used only by teachers
Forum grading can use custom scales or numbers
A date range can be set to restrict the posts that can be graded.
Admin now has access to some settings via Admin -> Modules -> Forums
After editing a post, user is returned to post in context
Attached images are displayed inline
Email copies in plain text format now print URLs nicely
All needed users are now included in course backups (even if no longer enrolled)
Miscellaneous bugfixes

Quiz

Text Filters and Formatting

New question type: Embedded Answers (Cloze) - allows text passages - with embedded answers
New question type: Numerical - allows a range of numerical answers - to be entered
New question type: Description - not a real question, it allows text/graphics - to be inserted anywhere
Expanded quiz reporting with modular report plugins
New feature for repeat attempts, where each attempt builds on the - last
If the quiz is closing within the next 24 hours, a small countdown - clock is shown in the title bar and alerts warn at ten minutes and zero - minutes.
Some refactoring to the quiz code to make it easier to extend with - new question types
Warning: the new text filters can increase the load on your server, particularly when used with complex filters. Use them with caution. For now, filters need to be enabled by manually editing the config.php file. See the Modules Download page for details of other filters in development, including some exciting ones for creating and displaying mathematics formulae as cross-platform GIF images.
The new glossary filter can create links to glossary entries from matching words throughout Moodle.
The new 'censor' filter can be enabled to filter out bad words.
The <nolink> tag can be used to prevent autolinking within a passage of text.
More tags are now allowed, including <acronym> and all <math> tags.
Some areas where text wasn't being filtered before (security risk) have now been fixed.


Resources

Developer API

Web links can now be in very customisable pop-up windows.
Admin now has access to some settings via Admin -> Modules -> - Resources
A new coding guide is available
A new Philosophy guide is available ;-)
Improvements to the template for new modules
Modules should now specify the minimum version of Moodle they are compatible with
Scripts can specify to print_header() whether the page is pure XML
Any module can save and retrieve user preferences that stay around between logins

Some of the more annoying bugs recently fixed

Chats

Moving posts now also moves attachments
No more warnings when looking for uploaded files in an empty course
Students no longer always get plain-format mail on force-subscribed - forums
Cookies can no longer interfere with the admin setup during installation
Effectively no limit to the number of activities per section
Several fixes when dealing with zip files, especially on Windows
Admins can now edit accounts created from external databases
Session no longer conflicts with other software
Excel files now work on non-Intel machines
Chat sessions can now be deleted
Scheduled chat times now show the timezone to make it clearer

New in Moodle 1.0.9 (29th May, 2003) :

General

Various optimisations and significant performance enhancements

Several obscure security fixes

Moodle is now well-behaved when enclosed within a frame

Richtext editor can now be used in more text-editing fields

New format "Plain text format", useful when posting code or HTML.

New format "Wiki format", allows Wiki-style tagging in most places

New popup allows emoticons/smilies to be inserted by clicking on images

Ability to specify permissions of new folders and files created on the server

Some fixes for servers running in Safe Mode (some file problems remain)

Various fixes for cleaning some external text of quotes, etc

Various fixes for PostgreSQL 7.3 compatibility

Started migration of HTML code towards XHTML Transitional

Countless other little fixes all over the place

Languages

10 new language packs! Argentinian Spanish, Czech, Portuguese, Slovakian, Romanian, Danish, Russian, Polish, Chinese Traditional and French Canadian.

Fixes and upgrades to almost all language packs

Language can be specified for the current session (see menu on home page and login page) and can be changed on any page by something to the url, eg: http://moodle.org/?lang=ru

Language menu can be restricted to a subset of languages and even removed. -

Truetype fonts are now part of the language packs

ALL dates/times can now be reformatted as part of the language pack

A small but annoying bug was fixed with the web-based language editor on Windows servers that caused language files to grow

Developers

Global debug variable gives more feedback about uninitialised variables and the like

Various fixes to tidy up and further standardise some of the PHP code

Various fixes for robustness (ensuring variables are always initialised)

Admin

Some changed options and code in config-dist.php (if upgrading, compare with your current config.php or rebuild your config.php from scratch)

Many changes to themes - authors of custom themes should read theme/UPGRADE.txt

New moodle.org registration function for security notifications etc

Admin directory can be moved from /admin to something else (see config-dist.php)

User listing is now paged, and can now be searched for strings

Module management: activity modules can now be individually disabled or deleted completely

Improvements to the language editing page

Better checking of PHP environment during installation, with warnings

Cleaner installation procedure.

User management

New role: Course creator - just like teacher but can also create new courses

New authentication plug-in named "manual", prevents users from creating their own accounts

"Forgot Password" routine now uses an email confirmation before resetting password

Courses

Activities on the course page now have a little button to hide/show that activity to students

Whole topics/weeks can also now be hidden or shown

The list of participants now has some paging, to cope with very large classes

Zip/Unzip is now supported by an internal zip library, removing - the dependence on external programs to do this. This also means that - zip/unzip now works on Windows.

Assignments

Forums

Assignment submissions can be sorted

Assignment notification mail isn't sent to unenrolled students

Forum viewing preferences are remembered between logins
"Show parent" link on all posts for faster navigation around forums
Anchor tags allow individual posts to be referenced in all views
Improvements to cron job when manually run, as well as logging of mailer errors
Only print the ratings button when there are ratings to be made
Vastly improved email text versions of HTML forum posts
When replying, an outline of other replies is shown.
When using the HTML editor to post, other formatting options are no longer provided.

Forums

Journals

Display of forum discussions list is greatly improved

Whole discussions can be moved to any other forum with a single click

Date/time of posts is now "last modified", not "created"

Blank subject-lines or messages are now prevented

More intelligent parsing and display of text in posts

Force Subscribe now works on the "Site News" forum (mails all active students/teachers)

Better handling of mailouts to prevent the possibility of double copies - that sometimes happened with very large classes

Journal questions can now use the HTML editor
Some fixes to the report page when assessing journal entries

Workshop Assignment module (not included: available soon as a separate download)

Quizzes

A very interesting new module contributed by Ray Kingdon,

A flexible tool that implements a variety of peer-grading and - example-setting schemes that involve a whole group in examining - and grading pieces of work.

Fixed bug that occurred when re-grading SOME quizzes with random questions in them
Fixed bug that occurred in backups of quizzes with random questions in them
New import format: GIFT format (this is the new default format)
New import format: Course Test Manager
New import format: WebCT format
New import format: Aiken format
Short-Answer questions can now use wildcards for matching eg wild*rds
Images now work in questions from external published categories
Questions and categories can now be edited without needing to open a quiz
Improved the overview reports to show more info and allow deletion of attempts
Added a new detailed quiz report for statistical anaylsis
All question types can now have up to 10 answers each
Menus in quiz editing no longer need submit buttons (just select from menu)
Many other small bugs fixed

Quizzes

Resources

New question type, Random Question (selects from all questions in the same category)

New question type, Matching Question (student must match answers to questions)

New question type, Random Matching Short-Answers (randomly creates Matching Questions - from the available Short Answer questions in the same category)

Quiz question import from text files (modular design allows expansion to new formats - a beta Blackboard module is included)

'Create multiple questions' wizard to quickly create a random quiz

Quiz questions may be randomly shuffled

Quiz answers (multiple choice, etc) may be randomly shuffled

Fixed off-by-one error when "Save Grades" button wasn't used.

Regrading works properly if the quiz has been changed

Editing a question after it's already been used in a quiz no longer affects quiz results

Multiple choice answers are labelled a,b,c not 1,2,3

Teachers can browse files more directly when creating uploaded file
New settings to allow a default URL, a default search page and default popup settings
Uploaded files can appear in popups too.
Much better display of popups when using the navbar to go there
MP3 files are now streamed using a built-in Flash MP3 player
Video files (Media player, Quicktime) are embedded using local plugins

Resources

Workshops

Better performance when editing large text or HTML resources

Plain images are now display centered within a proper web page (not raw).

Wiki format added as a new option for Resource pages

Changes to handling of peer assessments
New assessment phase
New options for the league table

Custom Themes

Miscellaneous

A number of new styles have been added to all built-in themes. Some of these are ESSENTIAL - to viewing some of the new features. PLEASE SEE - theme/UPGRADE.txt - TO SEE THE CHANGES YOU WILL HAVE TO MAKE TO OLDER THEMES.

Custom themes now have the capability to re-define all the little button graphics. - There is a new entry in theme/x/config.php ($THEME->custompix) and a new - optional subdirectory "pix". See the theme cordoroyblue for an example.

Moodle now ignores any folders that Frontpage may have added to it (_vti_cnf).
Improved HTML -> XHTML in many places
Many fixes for non-MySQL databases
A few hard-coded text strings around the place were made translatable
User profile data is now properly cleaned
FIxes for when Moodle is embedded within a frame (eg in Postnuke)
Bug fixes to Wiki mode
Admin can no longer edit external accounts
Qmail users can use "qmail" in the smtphosts field for better results
Multiple methods of redirecting, to work around some browser bugs
Small improvements to the display of grades in the gradebook
More student profile fields can be edited, such as department and institution, and these are also written to grade dumps in text or Excel.
When a student is added as a teacher, they are now automatically unenrolled from being a student
Upgraded ADOdb (database layer)

- -

Older releases can be seen in the Moodle.org announcement forum. - - +

+Old release information +

Moodle Documentation

Version: $Id$