Old Release notes

New in Moodle 1.3.4 (11th August, 2004)

Updates

Some compatibility was added for handling glossaries and resources from Moodle 1.4.
Forbid restricted users from changing enrolments

Bug fixes

Fixed a reported vulnerability involving arguments to forum/post.php file
Fixed a possible vulnerability involving strings in Moodle texts
Fixed a rare glitch with attempt numbers in quizzes
Fixed a bug with regular expression logic in short answers
Fixed a typo in the PostgreSQL install
Fixed some documentation links

New in Moodle 1.3.3 (16th July, 2004)

Updates

The ADOdb library was upgraded to a version compatible with PHP 5.0
Improvements to the detection and conversion of URLs in backups

Bug fixes

A possible vulnerability involving arguments to the help.php file was fixed.
A possible vulnerability involving language setting was fixed.
Fixes for the editing of lang strings with double quotes in them
Several small problems fixed in Glossary
Some minor issues fixed in the Scorm module

New in Moodle 1.3.2 (9th July, 2004)

Updates

The SCORM module is now included as standard
Some new languages (Malaysian, Estonian)
Many more existing languages are now completed up to 1.3.x

Bug fixes

A possible front page vulnerability with Moodle servers on some old PHP versions was fixed. If you are using a version of PHP previous to 4.3 then it might be a good idea to upgrade to this version of Moodle.
Important fixes to logic when forums are used for group activities
Editing teacher profiles are visible even to separated groups in a class
Subject lines in multibyte languages in recent activity are no longer broken by wrapping function
A few issues related to glossary export/import were fixed
Backup is now better at managing it's temporary files
Other small fixes here and there

New in Moodle 1.3.1 (4th June, 2004)

Bug fixes

Some HTML code affecting stability of HTML editor under IE6 on some pages was fixed
Some bugs were fixed in several auto-linking text filters
Improved-looking navigation bar (using the » character)
Flash files now have their own icon
Adding course links using HTML editor now fixed for teachers
Section links block now preserves focussed view
Sites files now respect forcelogin setting
Upgrading blocks without database functions now works
Language updates

New in Moodle 1.3 (25th May, 2004)

Major new features

New Calendar feature (thanks to Jon Papaioannou and the Greek School Network!)
New Blocks feature, allowing blocks to be added and moved around on course pages (thanks to Jon Papaioannou, Eloy Lafuente and others!)
New RSS System allows Forums and Glossaries (and later other modules) to publish RSS feeds (Thanks, Eloy!)
Mediaplugin filter now supports auto-embedding of Quicktime, Flash, and Windows Media files.
A new Activity Names filter will automatically add hyperlinks to other activities in the same course whenever their name is mentioned.

Other new features

New resource type "Directory" will display a whole directory of uploaded files (including subdirectories)
Resources that are files (uploaded, or webpages) now show the relevant icon on the course page
Most internal HTML links within forums and resources are now preserved during backup/restores
It is now possible to pass normal http arguments to files in the Files section. This allows some fancier HTML and Flash in resources.
$CFG->forceloginforprofiles can be set to prevent guests from seeing site-level user profiles (including Google).
When Google access is enabled, then Google web page translations now work too.
Sessions are now stored privately in the Moodle data directory - this makes Moodle work better on clusters, and solves some session timeout problems when using Moodle on shared web hosts
User pictures can now be easily deleted from the profile editing page
Talking in Chat now appears in the main logs.
Hidden sections in courses can now be completely hidden from students (course setting)
Improvements to text inside graphs for some non-English languages, using Unicode fonts.
Improved interface for managing Scales, as well as better handling in mulitlingual sites
All students can now be unenrolled with one button (on the Students page)
Subscribers to forums can now be manually subscribed or unsubscribed in groups
Better handling of some European characters in filenames and usernames
Feedback notices for a hidden assignment aren't mailed out until it's unhidden
Expanded support for importing Blackboard quizzes
The cron script can now be run using a PHP binary from any directory
The HTML editor has been further improved and streamlined.
The default recent activity display is now calculated from the last access to that course (or two days, whichever is more recent). Previously it was from the last login to the site.
Confirmation emails are now in HTML and Text, to help prevent breaking of confirmation link.
New languages: Farsi, Latvian, Norwegian Primary School, Unicode version of Traditional Chinese.

Bug fixes

Hundreds of small bugs were fixed in all areas, generally improving appearance and robustness.
As always, if you find bugs in Moodle, please report them to our Bug Tracker!

Finally, don't forget to look at some of the many optional modules under development, including the SCORM module, the Wiki module, the Hot Potatoes module and many other innovations.

New in Moodle 1.2.1 (25th March, 2004)

Various small bug fixes

Fixed some bugs that were causing survey graphs and results not to display in some circumstances
Improved security in the cron script
Fixed WebCT quiz import to deal with missing images, shortanswers and escaped characters
Fixed formatting on editor dialog to insert links
Prevent glossary from adding links to activity names that are already links
Fixed some timezone calculations when user isn't present
Characters like :( in Javascript code within filtered HTML are no longer converted to a sad smiley
Improved handling of ratings for single forums when secureforms is on.
Multichoice question creation now defaults to a single correct answer format
Guests can no longer see email addresses if "show only to course participants" has been set by that user
Primary admin is now the lowest-numbered entry in user_admins, rather than the admin with the lowest userid.
Modified flash MP3 plugin to improve brightness of Play button on darker screens
Various polishing and improvements in many language packs

New in Moodle 1.2 (20th March, 2004)

New support for groups and cohorts within courses (with many options)
Text filters allow arbitrary processing on all text in Moodle, including automatic linking, mathematics support, multi-language content and infinitely more possibilities
A fantastic new Glossary module (thanks to Williams Castillo!) with many different ways to contruct learning activities based around collecting definitions
A great new Lesson module (thanks to Ray Kingdon!) easily creates active content with pathways and multiple-choice questions
A new Label module allows arbitrary HTML in the course page
An improved WYSIWYG editor, faster and more cross-platform than the old one
Automatic backups can be scheduled by the administrator for all courses at once

Courses

Activities can now be indented on the course outline, allowing more structure
A new report for Recent Activity makes it easier to see what's happened recently
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

Site administration

An important security fix preventing teachers from logging in as admins who are students in their course
New setting "forcelogin" can force people to log in before they can see any of the site
New setting "opentogoogle" allows Google and people referred by Google to get in as guest
New setting "timezone" allows a default timezone to be set for the whole site
New setting "deleteunconfirmed" specifies the time we'll wait for email accounts to be confirmed
New setting "allowunenroll" enables/disables students from unenrolling themselves from courses
New setting "fullnamedisplay" allows override for the formatting of user full names so students can only see "firstname lastname", "lastname firstname" or "firstname"
Individual users can have their email disabled by the teacher or admin (useful for dealing with broken mail accounts that are bouncing)
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.
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 (in config.php) then user images can not be changed
If $CFG->admineditalways is defined then the administrator can edit ANY post at any time.
If $CFG->filterall is defined then even little things liks forum subjects and activity names are filtered
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';

Themes

Fixes for Internet Explorer can be more robust at using the style sheet
Miscellaneous fixes and improvements to themes - custom themes need upgrading!

Translations

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
Courses can now "force" a language on all users

Backup / Restore

Automatic backups can be scheduled by the administrator for all courses at once
Logs are now fully restored
All needed users are now included in course backups (even if no longer enrolled)
Miscellaneous fixes and improvements

Text Filters and Formatting

Warning: the new text filters can increase the load on your server, particularly when used with complex filters. Use them with caution.
The new glossary filter can create links to glossary entries from matching words throughout Moodle.
The new TeX filter can convert TeX code found anywhere in Moodle into true Mathematics notation (GIF format image). There is also an algebra filter with a simpler input format (more like calculators).
The new censor filter can be enabled to filter out bad words.
The new multilang filter allows texts to be entered in multiple languages, and only the best one will be shown to each user (depending on their language setting)
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 properly filtered before (security risk) have now been fixed.

Developer API

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

Chats

Chat sessions can now be deleted
Scheduled chat times now show the timezone to make it clearer

Forums

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.

Journals

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

Quizzes

Questions and categories can now be edited without needing to open a quiz
All questions can now use any of the Moodle editing formats
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
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)
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
Many other small bugs fixed

Resources

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

Workshops

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

Miscellaneous

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)

New in Moodle 1.1.1 (10 September, 2003):

General Fixes

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 in Moodle 1.1 (28 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 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)

Courses

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

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

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

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

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

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: $Id$