Developer meeting April 2008

Developer meetings > April 2008 meeting

• Date: 11am GMT, Monday 28 April 2008 - see the Moodle Developer Meeting calendar entry for conversion into your time zone
• Location: Elluminate Moodle Developers Meeting Room - login using your name and password moodle

Everyone is welcome, though developers with CVS write access will be given preference if the room becomes full.

Please add items to the agenda!

Moodle 1.9

• Summary of changes made to 1.9 stable since release (Petr)
  • Gradebook - bugfixing and performance problems solved
  • Captcha in user registration
  • Backup/restore bugfixing, improvements and performance
  • Numerous PostgreSQL compatibility fixes
  • Many critical problems fixed in language packs
  • Frontpage participants list improved
  • Database module - bugfixing and improvements
  • Forum module - fixed unread treaking, performance improvements, group modes fixed
  • Resource module - fixed problems with pdfs in IE
  • and many other bugfixing and small improvements (bugs resolved in 1.9.1)
• The weekly build process and how developers and testers can help/contribute. (Martin)

Potential candidates for inclusion into 1.9.x

(add your own ideas here)

• Group self selection module MDL-1310 (Petr & Helen)
• User suspend, delete and purge improvements MDL-13563 (Petr)
• Email change confirmation MDL-13811 (Nicolas)
• Ajax in gradebook (Nicolas)
• Role related improvements MDL-8524 (Petr)
  • Permissions of user in context MDL-13538
  • Allow modules specify which caps they use MDL-11421
  • Capability definition should include list of contexts where usable MDL-7859
• WebDAV in moddata (Martín)
• Privacy laws related issues
• My Moodle page bugfixing and perf improvements (Jenny & Petr)
• Xinha html editor

Moodle 2.0

Roadmap overview and status (Martin)

• Moodle 2.0 will require PHP 5.2 as a minimum, allowing us to clean up the code in some areas. For more info see: gophp5.org.

• File handling improvements - Moodle.com
  • File API - maintains an internal repository of files and governs access to them
  • Repository API - allows users to browse external repositories and select files to bring into Moodle
  • Portfolio API - allows Moodle content to be captured and pushed out to external repositories.

These three are separate but complementary so will be developed together.

• Conditional activities - Moodle.com

Allowing dependencies and forced paths through activities: ie "You can't do this thing until that thing is completed".

• Learner plans and competencies - Moodle.com and Google Summer of Code

Builds on 1.9 support for outcomes so that individuals can have learning plans which are updated when courses are completed.

• HTML editor 2.0

Replaces our ageing HTMLarea with a new one that works on more browsers, enforces XHTML strict and better integrates with the new File API

• Community hub interfaces - Moodle.com and others

Makes it easy for users to find and navigate other systems and external Moodle repositories, leveraging the Moodle Network in various ways.

• Standard Web Services Layer - UPC and moodle.com

Standard set of core API functions made available via SOAP and XML-RPC

• Old DB install/upgrade system removed

The deprecated system for installing or upgrading database entries used in Moodle < 1.7 will be completely removed, while supporting only the new XML based database scheme introduced in 1.7.

• Datalib 2.0

MDL-6605 Database access is to be refactored so that: we can use prepared statements everywhere for increased security and some performance, we put datalib functions in a class to allow better unit tests (mock db), and remove the need for slashes in userspace. This will cause breakage for 3rd party modules (but fixing them won't be too hard).

• Pagelib 2.0, Blocks 2.0

refactor Blocks and Pages using contexts to allow blocks to go anywhere in Moodle with better control.

• Feedback module - Andreas Grabs

Polished and included as a core module.

• New Wiki module (nwiki) - DFWikiteam-UPC

To be cleaned up and included as a core module.

• Quiz report enhancements - The Open University

Major improvements to the quiz reports, especially regrading and item analysis.

• Blog 2.0

Add commenting to blogs (MDL-8776), as well as support for external blogs

• Messaging 2.0

Refactor messaging to use plugins for input and output, controlled by users

• Secure RSS feeds

Obscure RSS feed URLs using private keys, controlled by users.

• More tagging

Tagging of courses, activities and other things

• AJAX for gradebook User Interfaces

A host of UI improvements to enhance usability and speed

Other news

• New Moodle HQ employees (Martin)
• Google Summer of Code (Helen)
• The OU blog (Sam Marshall)
• Webservices Architecture and other interoperability developments. (Ludo - Marc Alier)
• The phpdoc service for Moodle and how to enhance code documentation - (Valery)
• Global search working status and foresight - (Valery)

See also

• Roadmap