Latest Release notes

New in Moodle 1.3 (21st 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.

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
• A new Resource filter will automatically add hyperlinks to resources throughout Moodle.
• 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 support for SCORM, Wikis, Hot Potato Quizzes and many others.

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)

Major new features

• 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)

Moodle Documentation

Version: $Id$