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Moodle 2.7 release notes: Difference between revisions

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===Themes===
===Themes===
   
   
All standard themes present in earlier versions, except the Clean theme, have been removed from Moodle 2.7. If you wish to continue using one of these themes then you will need to reinstall it explicitly *BEFORE* running the upgrade.
All standard themes present in earlier versions, except '''Clean''', have been removed from Moodle 2.7. If you wish to continue using one of these themes then you will need to reinstall it explicitly before running the upgrade.


See the upgrading notes for [https://docs.moodle.org/27/en/Upgrading#Themes theme upgrades in Moodle 2.7] for further information.
See the upgrading notes for [https://docs.moodle.org/27/en/Upgrading#Themes theme upgrades in Moodle 2.7] for further information.

Revision as of 14:54, 8 May 2014

Releases > Moodle 2.7 release notes

Release date: Expected in May 2014

Here is the complete list of fixed issues in 2.7. See New features for a user-friendly highlights tour with screenshots.

Server requirements

These just the minimum supported versions. We recommend keeping all of your software up-to-date.

  • Moodle upgrade: Moodle 2.2 or later (if upgrading from earlier versions, you must upgrade to 2.2.11 as a first step)
  • Minimum PHP version: PHP 5.4.4 (always use latest PHP 5.4.x or 5.5.x on Windows - http://windows.php.net/download/)
  • Ghostscript should be installed for pdf annotation.

Database requirements

Moodle supports the following database servers. Again, version numbers are just the minimum supported version. We recommend running the latest stable version of any software.

Database Minimum version Recommended
PostgreSQL 9.1 Latest
MySQL 5.5.31 Latest
MariaDB 5.5.31 Latest
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Latest
Oracle Database 10.2 Latest

Client requirements

Browser support

Browser Minimum version Recommended version Notes
Google Chrome 30.0 Latest
Mozilla Firefox 25.0 Latest
Apple Safari 6 Latest
Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 Latest Version 10 is required for drag-and-drop upload of content from outside the browser into Moodle

Screen reader support

We now support and test on two screen reader configurations (MDL-44002).

Browser Screen reader Minimum version Recommended version
Microsoft Internet Explorer Jaws 15 Latest
Mozilla Firefox NVDA 2014.1 Latest

Before you upgrade

Questions engine upgrade

When upgrading to Moodle 2.1 or 2.2 it was possible to delay part of the Question engine upgrade. You must complete this upgrade before upgrading to Moodle 2.7. You can check if this was completed at the bottom of the Environment page.

For further information, see the upgrading notes to complete the Question engine upgrade before Moodle 2.7.

Themes

All standard themes present in earlier versions, except Clean, have been removed from Moodle 2.7. If you wish to continue using one of these themes then you will need to reinstall it explicitly before running the upgrade.

See the upgrading notes for theme upgrades in Moodle 2.7 for further information.

Headline core features

Interface

  • MDL-43841 - New text editor, Atto - Tightly integrated in Moodle and focussing on usability and accessibility (TinyMCE still available as an option).
  • MDL-43855 - New equation editor for Atto.
  • MDL-42964 - Themes clean-up - Moodle is focussed on Bootstrap and improved responsive design. Clean is now the default theme and most other old themes have been removed from core (still available from Plugins directory). Many small improvements have been made all through the interface.
  • MDL-43786 - More theme - A completely new theme called More that provides easy configuration though the UI, while retaining the efficiency of LESS and the responsiveness of Bootstrap.
  • MDL-44070 - Improved conditional activities - Complex boolean combinations are now supported, with a conditions plugin API and a better interface...and it's faster!
  • MDL-43682, MDL-43681 Log reports - User interfaces for the Live logs and Log reports have been improved, with more information and filtering support.

Other

Platform

  • MDL-37658 - Logging - a new logging subsystem with plugins allowing Moodle logs to be very detailed and external. Many new events have been added which developers can take advantage of. These advancements will support better analytics as well as things like TinCan.
  • Tasks - an improved scheduling system (like Unix cron) that allows precise scheduling of tasks even on complex clustered servers.
  • Performance - With improvements to logging and scheduled tasks, as well as many other small improvements, overall performance will be improved, particularly on large sites.

Long-term support (LTS) until May 2017

Most of our releases receive 1 year of backported general bug fixes and 1.5 years of security and dataloss fixes from Moodle HQ.

Due to popular demand, we are committing to giving Moodle 2.7 extended support for security and dataloss fixes for 3 years (that's an extra 1.5 years support for this version).

If you are stuck on an old version then this might be the perfect time to upgrade!

Details

Quiz & Question bank

  • MDL-41727 - Quiz reports improved.
    • Responses from all tries are available for analysis when using or "Adaptive", "Interactive with multiple tries" or similar behaviours.
    • Break-down by question variant, for question types like Calculated, STACK and Variable-numeric, which one question can have different random variants.
    • Progress bar during long calculations to prevent time-outs.
    • Low-level calculation code moved into the question component, where it could potentially be reused by other activities.
    • Much more automated testing of this complex area of code.
  • Some minor improvements to the usability of the question bank - Some of MDL-40987
    • MDL-33653 - To duplicate a question, you now start by clicking the x2 icon, like for activities.
    • MDL-33839 - The various different ways to move questions in the question bank have been rationalised.
    • MDL-33653 - There is now a 'Save changes and continue editing' button when editing questions. Useful when you are working on a complex question with the preview open in another window.
    • MDL-32729 - The interface of the question type selector has been updated
  • MDL-40313 & MDL-40457 - New plugin point, so that plugins can add columns to the question bank, or new search conditions.
  • MDL-39756 - Essay questions can now require an attachment, with the text optional, rather than the other way around.
  • MDL-27414 - Random short-answer matching question type brought back from the dead. (This was in stable branches, but worth mentioning again.)

Assignment

  • MDL-33952 - The old Assignment (2.2) module has been removed from core. It has been replaced by a stub to support transparently remapping urls and restoring course backups from the old module to the new one. If you are still using the old assignment module - all instances of the old assignment module will be hidden after upgrading to Moodle 2.7. Once the upgrade tool is run on those assignments they will become visible again. It is recommended to upgrade, and then convert any remaining assignments because logic has been added to the assignment upgrade code for Moodle 2.7 to transparently map urls from the old assignment module to the new one. If you really, really need to keep using the old module, you should update the code to Moodle 2.7, and then replace the "mod/assignment" folder with the one from https://github.com/moodlehq/moodle-mod_assignment/releases before completing the upgrade.
  • MDL-28448 - A new capability mod/assign:editothersubmission can be given to teachers to allow them to edit or delete student submissions.
  • MDL-33600 - 'Notify students' is available to control when to send feedback during the grading process.
  • MDL-34432 - Teachers can comment directly on student's work on online text assignments
  • MDL-42585 - New capability mod/assign:viewgrades to allow grades to be viewed but not changed
  • MDL-44268 - Assignment grading table filters

Cron

  • MDL-25499 - Cron has received a major update and now has support for both scheduled and adhoc tasks.

The benefits of these changes are:

  • The schedule for every task can be configured by the admin
  • Tasks can run in parallel
  • Cron processes use locking to prevent the same task running at the same time by different processes

A result of this is that cron can be run much more often, which means (for example) forum posts can be sent out sooner. It is now strongly recommended that administrators increase the frequency that cron is run to at least once per minute, however it can be kept at it's previous schedule if desired if you do not wish to benefit from these changes.

Badges

  • MDL-40551 - Badges can be deleted
  • MDL-44264 - Badges are displayed on course profile pages

Authentication

  • MDL-42816 -Manual account authentication can now have password expiry enabled.
  • MDL-41115 - A new setting allows users to log in with both their username and their email address.

Gradebook

Developer Notes

API changes

  • Logging and events: All plugins should convert their logging and triggering of events to the new API. See Migrating logging calls in plugins.
  • Core events: All core events have been converted to the new Events API. The list of all events is available for admin in report "Events list". Writing observers to the new events is easier but old-style observers will continue to work. Moodle plans to add missing validation to core events before release of 2.7.1 (it will not affect plugins unless they directly trigger core events).
  • Reports: Reports that use log table, should be updated to use the new logging frame work. Old reports will continue to work as before as long as legacy logging is enabled in the site. See Migrating log access in reports for details.

See also