Moodle Docs: Release notes

From 609b4625a4ad6735616addd11ded2f05ecd009bc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: moodler Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 17:46:23 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] More info about the release --- lang/en/docs/release.html | 521 +++++++++++++++++++++++++------------- 1 file changed, 339 insertions(+), 182 deletions(-) diff --git a/lang/en/docs/release.html b/lang/en/docs/release.html index 1855cadac5..242ad8bd0a 100644 --- a/lang/en/docs/release.html +++ b/lang/en/docs/release.html @@ -1,182 +1,339 @@ - - Moodle Docs: Release notes - - - - - - -

Release notes

- -

Coming in Moodle 1.1 (20th August, 2003):

This summary is in progress and still to be finalised.: -
Completely new chat module for synchronous discussions
-
Completely new workshop module for peer grading
-
Completely new system for backup/restore of courses
-
All-new course browser (handles large numbers of courses)
-
Courses and categories can be hidden from students
-
Activities can move any distance with two clicks
-
Topics/weeks can now be moved up and down
-
Pop-up menu to switch between topics/weeks
-
THREE new quiz question types: Numerical, Description and Multianswer (Cloze)
-
Expanded quiz reporting
-
Lots of new languages
-
Languages now have a parent language (for displaying missing strings)
-
Web links can be in pop-up windows
-
Consistent grading scheme throughout all modules (tbd)
-
Better control over peer-grading in forums (tbd)
-
Ability to add text between activities in course display (tbd)
-
Ability to indent activities in course display (tbd)
-
Improved program resources, allowing more variables and control (tbd)
-
Many more improvements and fixes yet to be listed
-

- -

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: -
Assignment submissions can be sorted
-
Assignment notification mail isn't sent to unenrolled students
-
Forums: -
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
-
Workshop Assignment module (not included: available soon as a separate download): -
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.
-
Quizzes: -
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
-
Resources: -
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
-
Custom Themes: -
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.
-

- -

- - -

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

Moodle Documentation

Version: $Id$

+ + Moodle Docs: Release notes + + + + + + +

Release notes

+ +

New in Moodle 1.1 Beta (20 August, 2003):


Major Changes

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

General

Clean up of the whole admin menu organisation to make it clearer
Categories can be nested and sorted
Courses and whole categories can be hidden from students
Course descriptions and names can be searched for keywords
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
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


Courses

Topics/weeks can now be moved up and down
Activities can be moved any distance with two clicks
Pop-up menu to switch between topics/weeks
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
When self-enrolling, students are notified and given a chance to cancel
Teachers and students see list of "My Courses" on course + home pages.


Languages

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)


Forum

Forum grading can be either off, used by everyone, or used only by + teachers
Expanded quiz reporting with modular report plugins
Much improved searching, with multiple keywords, paging etc
Admin now has access to some settings via Admin -> Modules -> + Forums
After editing a post, user is returned to post in context

Quiz

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


Resources

Web links can now be in very customisable pop-up windows.
Admin now has access to some settings via Admin -> Modules -> + Resources



Workshop

Web links can now be in very customisable pop-up windows.

Some of the more annoying bugs recently fixed

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

+ +

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: +
Assignment submissions can be sorted
+
Assignment notification mail isn't sent to unenrolled students
+
Forums: +
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
+
Workshop Assignment module (not included: available soon as a separate download): +
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.
+
Quizzes: +
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
+
Resources: +
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
+
Custom Themes: +
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.
+

+ +

+ + +

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

Moodle Documentation

Version: $Id$

-- 2.39.5