3 <title>Moodle Docs: Current Release notes
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17 <h1>Latest Release notes
</h1>
18 <h3> New in Moodle
1.2 (
13th March,
2004)
</h3>
21 <dt>Major new features
</dt>
24 <li>New support for
<strong>groups
</strong> and cohorts within courses (with many options)
</li>
25 <li><strong>Text filters
</strong> allow arbitrary processing on all text in Moodle, including
<strong>automatic linking
</strong>,
<strong>mathematics support
</strong>,
<strong>multi-language content
</strong> and infinitely more possibilities
</li>
26 <li>A fantastic new
<strong>Glossary module
</strong> (thanks to Williams Castillo!) with many different ways to contruct learning activities based around collecting definitions
</li>
27 <li>A great new
<strong>Lesson module
</strong> (thanks to Ray Kingdon!) easily creates active content with pathways and multiple-choice questions
</li>
28 <li>A new
<strong>Label module
</strong> allows arbitrary HTML in the course page
</li>
29 <li>An improved
<strong>WYSIWYG editor
</strong>, faster and more cross-platform than the old one
</li>
30 <li><strong>Automatic backups
</strong> can be scheduled by the administrator for all courses at once
</li>
36 <li>Activities can now be indented on the course outline, allowing more structure
</li>
37 <li>A new report for Recent Activity makes it easier to see what's happened recently
</li>
38 <li>A new logs button on every activity links to the logs page to show logs per-activity
</li>
39 <li>Restore button now always functional
</li>
40 <li>Improved
"index
" view for all modules
</li>
41 <li>Improvements to participants display, including paging and initial searching
</li>
42 <li>Excel downloads are more compatible with different operating systems
</li>
43 <li>Better error reporting when adding/updating activities
</li>
44 <li>Search box no longer auto-focuses (it was causing annoying auto-scrolling on long courses)
</li>
45 <li>Self-unenrollment link on the course page for students
</li>
46 <li>Change password link on the course page for students
</li>
47 <li>Students can now be allowed to see their own activity reports (course setting)
</li>
48 <li>Teachers can browse the course files for images when using the new editor
</li>
49 <li>New image of empty box as destination when moving activities
</li>
50 <li>Accesses are now recorded by course, so the participant listings make more sense
</li>
51 <li>The activity navbar now has buttons for previous and next activities
</li>
52 <li>File dates were incorrect on some systems - this is now fixed.
</li>
53 <li>Old chat users are no longer shown in the recent activity
</li>
56 <dt>Site administration
</dt>
59 <li>An important security fix preventing teachers from logging in as admins
</li>
60 <li>User's names can now be configured so student's can only see
"firstname lastname
",
"lastname firstname
" or
"firstname
"</li>
61 <li>Individual users can have their email disabled by the teacher or admin (useful for dealing with broken mail accounts that are bouncing)
</li>
62 <li>A new setting
"forcelogin
" can force people to log in before they can see any of the site
</li>
63 <li>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.
</li>
64 <li>Students can be allowed/disallowed self-unenrolling
</li>
65 <li>Moodle cookies can be customised (helps when running multiple Moodles on one site)
</li>
66 <li>Included script for analysing database performance (admin/dbperformance.php)
</li>
67 <li>Included standalone script to check a server for Moodle compatibility (lib/compatible.php)
</li>
68 <li> If a file called cronextra.php exists in the dataroot then cron will run that too. This allows sites to have
"special
" maintenance features.
</li>
69 <li>Course formats are now more like plugins, in separate directories
</li>
70 <li>Users can now be uploaded from text files
</li>
71 <li>If $CFG-
>disableuserimages is defined then user images can not be changed
</li>
72 <li>If $CFG-
>opentogoogle is defined then Google can get in as guest
73 and people referred by google also get in as guest
</li>
74 <li>If $CFG-
>admineditalways is defined then the administrator can edit ANY post at any time.
</li>
75 <li>If $CFG-
>filterall is defined then even little things liks forum subjects and activity names are filtered
</li>
76 <li>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';
</li>
82 <li>Fixes for Internet Explorer can be more robust at using the style sheet
</li>
83 <li>Miscellaneous fixes and improvements to themes - custom themes need upgrading.
</li>
89 <li>New languages: Galego and Lithuanian
</li>
90 <li>Improved language editing interface - it allows the current language to be chosen and allows each file to be edited separately.
</li>
91 <li>The list of country names can now be translated, as can the editor buttons, smiley names and file sizes (Mb, Gb etc)
</li>
92 <li>Language packs can now define the default language direction (RTL or LTR)
</li>
93 <li>Language packs can now define the order that people's names should be shown in
</li>
94 <li>Language files are now written using slightly more efficient PHP code
</li>
95 <li>Finally got rid of the final bogus linefeeds in the multi-line strings
</li>
98 <dt>Backup / Restore
</dt>
101 <li>Automatic backups can be scheduled by the administrator for all courses at once
</li>
102 <li>All needed users are now included in course backups (even if no longer enrolled)
</li>
103 <li>Miscellaneous bugfixes
</li>
106 <dt>Text Filters and Formatting
</dt>
109 <li>Warning: the new text filters can increase the load on your server, particularly when used with complex filters. Use them with caution.
</li>
110 <li>The new
<strong>glossary filter
</strong> can create links to glossary entries from matching words throughout Moodle.
</li>
111 <li>The new
<strong>TeX filter
</strong> can convert TeX code found anywhere in Moodle into true Mathematics notation (GIF format image)
</li>
112 <li>The new
<strong>censor filter
</strong> can be enabled to filter out bad words.
</li>
113 <li>The new
<strong>multilang filter
</strong> allows texts to be entered in multiple languages, and only the best one will be shown to each user (depending on their language setting)
</li>
114 <li>The
<nolink
> tag can be used to prevent autolinking within a passage of text.
</li>
115 <li>More tags are now allowed, including
<acronym
> and all
<math
> tags.
</li>
116 <li>Some areas where text wasn't being filtered before (security risk) have now been fixed.
</li>
119 <dt>Developer API
</dt>
122 <li>A new coding guide is available
</li>
123 <li>A new Philosophy guide is available ;-)
</li>
124 <li>Improvements to the template for new modules
</li>
125 <li>Modules should now specify the minimum version of Moodle they are compatible with
</li>
126 <li>Scripts can specify to print_header() whether the page is pure XML
</li>
127 <li>Any module can save and retrieve user preferences that stay around between logins
</li>
133 <li>Chat sessions can now be deleted
</li>
134 <li>Scheduled chat times now show the timezone to make it clearer
</li>
140 <li>Forum viewing preferences are remembered between logins
</li>
141 <li>"Show parent
" link on all posts for faster navigation around forums
</li>
142 <li>Anchor tags allow individual posts to be referenced in all views
</li>
143 <li>Improvements to cron job when manually run, as well as logging of mailer errors
</li>
144 <li>Only print the ratings button when there are ratings to be made
</li>
145 <li>Vastly improved email text versions of HTML forum posts
</li>
146 <li>When replying, an outline of other replies is shown.
</li>
147 <li>When using the HTML editor to post, other formatting options are no longer provided.
</li>
153 <li>Journal questions can now use the HTML editor
</li>
154 <li>Some fixes to the report page when assessing journal entries
</li>
160 <li>Questions and categories can now be edited without needing to open a quiz
</li>
161 <li>All questions can now use any of the Moodle editing formats
</li>
162 <li>New import format:
<strong>GIFT
</strong> format (this is the new default format)
</li>
163 <li>New import format:
<strong>Course Test Manager
</strong></li>
164 <li>New import format:
<strong>WebCT
</strong> format
</li>
165 <li>New import format:
<strong>Aiken
</strong> format
</li>
166 <li>Short-Answer questions can now use wildcards for matching eg wild*rds
</li>
167 <li>Images now work in questions from external published categories
</li>
168 <li>Improved the overview reports to show more info and allow deletion of attempts
</li>
169 <li>Added a new detailed quiz report for statistical anaylsis
</li>
170 <li>All question types can now have up to
10 answers each
</li>
171 <li>Menus in quiz editing no longer need submit buttons (just select from menu)
</li>
172 <li>Fixed bug that occurred when re-grading SOME quizzes with random questions in them
</li>
173 <li>Fixed bug that occurred in backups of quizzes with random questions in them
</li>
174 <li>Many other small bugs fixed
</li>
180 <li>Teachers can browse files more directly when creating uploaded file
</li>
181 <li>New settings to allow a default URL, a default search page and default popup settings
</li>
182 <li>Uploaded files can appear in popups too.
</li>
183 <li>Much better display of popups when using the navbar to go there
</li>
184 <li>MP3 files are now streamed using a built-in Flash MP3 player
</li>
185 <li>Video files (Media player, Quicktime) are embedded using local plugins
</li>
191 <li>Changes to handling of peer assessments
</li>
192 <li>New assessment phase
</li>
193 <li>New options for the league table
</li>
196 <dt>Miscellaneous
</dt>
199 <li>Moodle now ignores any folders that Frontpage may have added to it (_vti_cnf).
</li>
200 <li>Improved HTML -
> XHTML in many places
</li>
201 <li>Many fixes for non-MySQL databases
</li>
202 <li>A few hard-coded text strings around the place were made translatable
</li>
203 <li>User profile data is now properly cleaned
</li>
204 <li>FIxes for when Moodle is embedded within a frame (eg in Postnuke)
</li>
205 <li>Bug fixes to Wiki mode
</li>
206 <li>Admin can no longer edit external accounts
</li>
207 <li>Qmail users can use
"qmail
" in the smtphosts field for better results
</li>
208 <li>Multiple methods of redirecting, to work around some browser bugs
</li>
209 <li>Small improvements to the display of grades in the gradebook
</li>
210 <li>More student profile fields can be edited, such as department and institution, and these are also written to grade dumps in text or Excel.
</li>
211 <li>When a student is added as a teacher, they are now automatically unenrolled from being a student
</li>
212 <li>Upgraded ADOdb (database layer)
</li>
221 <a href=
"./?file=releaseold.html">Old release information
</a>
225 <p align=
"CENTER"><font size=
"1"><a href=
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</a></font></p>
226 <p align=
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