Moodle 2.0 Preview 1 release notes
What this Preview is
The current version of Moodle 2.0 is getting to the point where we are feeling comfortable inviting experienced Moodle users to try it out and start banging on it and giving us more detailed feedback.
What this Preview is not
This is not finished code. This is not for production servers. Do not use it for production. DO NOT USE IT FOR PRODUCTION! :)
Software is complex stuff. A quick line count of the whole of 2.0 (including libraries but not counting 3rd party modules) comes to over a million lines of code.
We are on the home stretch for this thing now but it's going to be a VERY busy next few months for us at Moodle HQ and all the others helping with Moodle development in various capacities.
Development Focus
Usability
A lot of the new features have early-quality development interfaces that still need to be improved a lot for general use. This is mostly a mix of new core renderers and styling in themes.
Particular areas include:
- Community hub publishing and downloading
- User profiles
- Enrolment interfaces
- Navigation and blocks in all pages
- Messaging
- Backup/restore user interfaces
How you can help
- Use current versions of 2.0 on your own server or qa.moodle.net, and if you notice particular pages that need improving, then
- Search the Tracker for an existing issue, and make a new one if required
- Post a description of the issues, and using the mockup tool there to describe solutions
- Start a discussion about the bug in the Usability forum, linking to your issue by mentioning the bug ID, and make some noise :)
Themes
Our plan is to get 20 themes in Moodle 2.0. This is accelerating now the new Themes system has stabilised and Moodle is starting to look very nice indeed.
Patrick Malley is our Themes manager and is working hard right now on developing more core themes that you can use to base your themes on.
How you can help
- Read the Themes 2.0 docs and improve them if you notice issues.
- Join in with the discussion on the Themes forum
- Start some cool 2.0 themes!
Performance and upgrade
We plan to do all kinds of testing on different types of sites, to help ensure that everyone's upgrade from 1.9 goes smoothly, and then Moodle runs faster after the upgrade.
How you can help
We would really love those of you with big sites to help us with this. Try upgrading a COPY of your production sites from Moodle 1.9 to Moodle 2.0, and give us data about:
* What environment was Moodle running in? (DB etc) * How long did the upgrade take? * Were there any serious errors? (and what did you do to fix them :) ) * Can you compare the performance of your 1.9 site to 2.0?
Please post your results in the Testing and QA forum and join in!
If you find bugs, please make sure they are in the tracker against 2.0.
Remaining features
There are also still a couple of biggish patches that will be ready in the coming weeks, such as:
- Restore for 2.0 and 1.9 backups (we can currently only create 2.0 backups)
- Enrolments rewrite - mostly done, just needs UI work
- Plagiarism API - ready to drop in after another review
- Anonymous users - needs review
However the July deadline is important, so some of these may not make it into 2.0 if time is too tight.
