So, after the November updates to version 2.8 was exactly half a year, we recall that Moodle HQ on schedule lays out a new release every six months, in November and May. Thus, May 11, 2015 is now available for download the new version of Moodle 2.9.
This release incorporates a large number of innovations: closed about 370 «tickets» from Members, which offered certain ideas, as well as programmers who pointed out an error in the system codes. Updates touched appearance (UI) as well as system messages, navigate through the LMS, tests and lessons. The best part for developers and web designers is starting the full support of jQuery, as well as the integration of javascript-templating mustache.
YouTube playlist from the Moodle team describing innovations
Still, let’s look at the new version in more detail.
1. Navigation and interface
All courses are on the same page
On the page of the user menu «Grades» is now displayed all the courses for which the student is enrolled, and if the user is the creator or instructor of a course, he can see a list of such courses on the same page.
Homepage became the main page
In the tracker 48936 users asked to combine the Homepage and «My homepage», because, really, there is difficult to understand how they differ for novice. Moodle developers made an automatic redirect for logged users on their «homepage» (moodle-url/my/
) with the content of enrolled courses.
Redesign and user page modularity
The real revolution in Moodle! There is a new section for complete user profiles view: it shows all the active or reference to the relevant activity of the user, for example:
- Short personal information about the user: Country, City, interests, etc.
- Enrolled courses
- Links to view user activities: blog posts, forums posts and topics
- Recent sign logs
But the main thing — now profile page became a customizable, it is possible to develop additional modules / plugins / blocks for Moodle and output to specialized information, to put it simply — to add new units.
Preferences settings
User settings page /user/preferences.php
allows the user to quickly change an own settings. The link is available from the top right menu, select «Settings».
What can be configured on this page:
- Preferred language — note that a change in the preferred language will affect only the interface of Moodle, but not on the course content.
- Forum preferences
- Email digest type — this parameter determines how you will receive messages from the forums you are subscribed to that will receive messages individually or daily
- Forum auto-subscribe — This option allows you to choose a way to automatically subscribe to messages from the forum. If you set an automatic subscription by adding messages, when new messages notification will come to you in the mail
- Forum tracking — Enabling this option will allow to track messages forums that you have not read
Clearing Moodle «header» data to a single standard
Previously, during the transition between the sections in Moodle, depending on the content of sections and subsections in the header can vary, ie there was no single structure, now it has led to a uniform format. This applies to user pages, subpages, «breadcrumbs», common menu tree.
2. Improvements in appearance
Drag and drop images into Atto
If you use a modern browser, your work with the visual editor Atto has become much easier in terms of downloading pictures into editable content. Introduced convenient option drag-n-drop uploads, which makes it easy to upload images to the content area of the visual editor without further action select the file in the folder of your computer.
Instant messages
AJAX is increasingly integrated into Moodle interface. If settings allow users to send messages to each other, then you can send messages from a user-friendly interface in a popup window, ie without page reloading. Messages / Alerts can be sent to the following sections administration panel:
- section Navigation > Current course > Participants
- as an administrator in the «Bulk user actions». You must select a user / users and in the «With selected users…» select «Send a message».
Search for the uploaded files
There is a new search function for searching uploaded files at Moodle files manager, now a teacher, leading some courses, it will be easier to search for files used in its old courses.
3. Improvements in course management functionality
Course delete function directly from the homepage
Moodle 2.9 adds the ability to quickly remove the course from the page of the course, without much navigation screen control courses.
New block
A new built-in block with the data passed on the results of a particular user content. To activate the block go into customize mode / settings and add a new block. The block can be configured: for example the number of results displayed in the block, also set the activity in which the report will be displayed.
Images export / import
Earlier in the glossary export/import to XML, there did not inserted information about the attached images if the ones are inserted from outside sources. Now Moodle developers to correct this omission.
Simply return to the course from the subscription page
Added button to return to the course from the students course subscription page, it is again make easy navigate on Moodle.
4. Moodle administration
Plugin type autodetection on it is uploading
Now the uploading plugin type detecting automatically through the Moodle plugin uploader, based on the parameter $plugin->component
of necessary Moodle plugin file: version.php
.
Resistance from the server fall when history exports
The largest amount of active Moodle contains a table of logs, since almost every action of any user logged into the database and, for example, exports of these data, the system could «fall» due to the fact that server did not have enough RAM to handle this kind of request. Tracker 48595 this issue was raised and successfully solved.
Page of active user sessions
In Moodle 2.9, there is a new page to view active user sessions. This solves some security issues: You can see the IP address of the user and does not use check whether any part of the person another session. It is also useful for monitoring and verification of controversial issues of the student and the teacher.
Link
Team Moodle has been incredibly busy for the past few months bringing together another major release of Moodle.