Moodle 2.5 release notes
Releases > Moodle 2.5 release notes
Release date: 14 May 2013
Here is the full list of fixed issues in 2.5.
See New features for a user-friendly tour with screenshots.
Many thanks to everyone that worked on the new features in this release.
Requirements
These are just minimums. We recommend keeping all your software updated.
- Recommended minimum browser: Google Chrome 11, Firefox 4, Safari 5, Internet Explorer 8 (IE 10 required for drag and drop of files from outside the browser into Moodle)
- Moodle upgrade: Moodle 2.2 or later (if upgrading from earlier versions, you must upgrade to 2.2.9 as a first step)
- Minimum DB versions: PostgreSQL 8.3, MySQL 5.1.33, MariaDB 5.2, MSSQL 2005 or Oracle 10.2 (oci_native_moodle_package.sql needs to be executed before upgrade on Oracle servers)
- Minimum PHP version: PHP 5.3.3
- New PHP extension requirements: GD
NOTE: We will drop support for IE8 in Moodle 2.6 (to be released November 2013). This means IE8 will probably still work for 2.6, but developers will not be required to test their new code on that browser. Moodle, like most of the world's web sites and browser producers, encourages you to keep your browsers current to improve security and functionality while saving us valuable time. (For example see what Google is doing)
Major new features
Open Badges integration
- MDL-35073 - Badges may be awarded manually or for course or activity completion. Users can choose to display their badges in their Moodle profile and in their Mozilla backpack.
Add-on installer
- MDL-38509 - New admin tool for installing add-ons
Themes
- MDL-38016 - New Clean theme with responsive design for all screen sizes and Bootstrapbase for developers to use as a template
- MDL-23504 - Transparency and RGB support in themes colour picker
Forms improvements
- MDL-30637 - Improvements to the usability of big complex Moodle forms in general
Enrolment
- MDL-26956 - You can now search the list of users enrolled in a course
- MDL-36514 - New option for preventing new self-enrolments in the course
- MDL-7537 - All PayPal-supported currencies are available for use in Paypal enrolment
- MDL-32387 - New PayPal enrolment setting 'Enrolment expiration action'
- MDL-37291 - Restore support for PayPal enrolments
- MDL-37187 - Various Flat file enrolment fixes
- MDL-28705 - Configurable mapping between IMS course names and Moodle course names for IMS Enterprise enrolment
See MDL-36504 for the full list of all enrolment-related improvements.
Assignment activity
- MDL-36804 - New assignment settings for handling resubmissions
- MDL-37337 - Assignment settings page improvements
Database activity
- MDL-38166 - Database activity URL field includes option to open link in new window
- MDL-7660 - Option to delete database activity entry attachment
Glossary activity
- MDL-20131 - Global glossary entries can be displayed in the random glossary entry block
- MDL-35842 - New option for displaying entries in alphabetical order in the random glossary entry block
Quiz activity
- MDL-38538 - Option to auto-save during quiz attempts
- MDL-37417 - Question editing forms improvements
- MDL-36955 - Better grading for partially correct Cloze questions with Interactive behaviour
- MDL-35793 - Defaults for when a question is previewed
- MDL-10516 - Essay questions can have a template, so the student starts answering from the template, not a blank editor
Workshop activity
- MDL-37602 - Overall assessment feedback support in the Workshop activity
- MDL-37806 - New 'Save and show next' button for workshop submissions
Resources
- MDL-33206 - Book print dialogue link
- MDL-37455 - New folder resource setting to display folder contents on the course page
- MDL-30790 - New folder resource setting to display sub-folders expanded or collapsed
- MDL-34137 - Option to drag and drop a media file onto the course page to create a label
- MDL-33946 - Option to drag and drop text onto the course page to create a label
Repositories
- MDL-37217 - Folders are now displayed in the Google Drive repository (renamed from Google Docs repository). An administrator must enable the Drive API in the Google APIs Console, as described in Google OAuth 2.0 setup.
- MDL-33669 - Option to access Equella site when using EQUELLA repository
- MDL-37641 - Improved file names when a file already exists in a repository
Course listings
- MDL-37009 - Course listings are displayed consistently throughout the site (theme changes may be required)
- MDL-38708 - Course settings option to add images and other files to course summaries, displayed in course listings
- MDL-37572 - Categories edit page is separated from view and does not depend any more on global editing mode
Performance improvements
- MDL-35716 - New performance overview report
- MDL-35685 - Improved login performance
- MDL-36809 - Support for persistent connections to MariaDB/MySQL servers
- MDL-34344 - CFG caching in MUC
- MDL-34346 - New repository caching
- MDL-34401 - New caching of plugin information
- MDL-37718 - Improved database recordset memory use
- MDL-38212 - Workaround for some memory issues in cron
- MDL-38391 - Improved YUI module loading performance
- MDL-37127 - Use of minified YUI modules to reduce content size
Other highlights
- MDL-35611 - Behat integration, the framework for testing of user expectations
Drag and drop improvements
- MDL-33688 - Drag and drop file upload progress indicator in filepicker
- MDL-32652 - Block drag & drop now works throughout the site (not just on course pages)!
Forum activity
- MDL-5875 - New forum setting 'Display word count'
Upload users
- MDL-36602 - mnethostid available as an upload users field
- MDL-38494 - Upload users accepts date-time format custom profile field
Miscellaneous
- MDL-28585 - Improved LDAP authentication password expiry handling
- MDL-37644 - New setting for showing course full names in the navigation block
- MDL-37728 - Role definition overview improvements
- MDL-32341 - Configurable calendar export date range
- MDL-31983 - Settings block renamed 'Administration' and reports moved there
- MDL-34917 - Jump to section navigation for 'One section per page' setting in course formats
- MDL-36395 - New setting Maximum users per page for specifying the number of users shown in search results
- MDL-37596 - Scheduled maintenance mode
- MDL-35775 - Group import allows new groups to be assigned to groupings
- MDL-26649 - Date picker usability improvements
- Multiple improvements in MS SQL Server and Oracle database drivers
- MDL-37284 - Unicode support in MariaDB/MySQL is now configured automatically during installation
- MDL-35819 - Rewrite tooltip help to improve UI consistency, and performance.
Security issues
A number of security related issues were resolved. Details of these issues will be released after a period of approximately one week to allow system administrators to safely update to the latest version.
Moodle 2.5 also includes fixes to security issues resolved in earlier minor versions released after Moodle 2.4. See the release notes for Moodle 2.4.1, Moodle 2.4.2 and Moodle 2.4.3 for more details.
For site admins: Warnings
It is very unlikely that any of these issues will cause you problems, unless there is something quite unusual about your Moodle installation. However, we highlight them here just in case:
Multi-server architectures with different PHP versions
Moodle has moved to use a more secure mechanism for securing passwords, from 2.5 new passwords will be generated using bcrypt rather than md5. Because bcrypt is only supported for PHP version 5.3.7 and above, it is important that all servers within a cluster use the same version of PHP (MDL-35332).
Restoring Moodle 2.5 backups to sites with old PHP versions
Because bcrypt is not supported in PHP versions below 5.3.7, course backups made using the $CFG->includeuserpasswordsinbackup setting on a site using PHP version 5.3.7+ that are subsequently restored to a site with PHP version < 5.3.7 will require a password reset.
The same issue would occur if you downgraded the PHP version on the server running your site from 5.3.7+ to less than 5.3.7. (MDL-35332)
Manual grading option in the quiz settings
Before Moodle 2.5, you could set 'How questions behave' in the Quiz settings to 'Manually graded'. This caused all questions in the quiz, including multiple choice questions, to require manual grading. This option was not necessary because essay questions, the only ones that need to be graded manually, will always work that way whatever behaviour is selected.
Since the only effect of that setting was that people somehow choose it by mistake, we have hidden it. There should be no circumstances for which you would need to re-enable it, but if necessary, it can be restored by going to Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Question behaviour.
For developers: API changes
- MDL-34640 - Improvements to how the question engine handles uploaded files. This should make it possible to write question types that automatically grade uploaded files.
- MDL-37287 - 3rd party libraries updated, ex.: YUI 3.9.1, TinyMCE 3.5.8, latest tcpdf and others
- MDL-15727 - jQuery and jQuery UI supported in add-ons
- MDL-29996 - Legacy filters are not supported any more, developers need to migrate filters from modules to standard filter location
- MDL-35356 - Excel and ODS export improvements
- MDL-35434 - Theme developers may use new admin setting type for user uploaded logo images
- MDL-37726 - PREVIOUS and NEXT attributes are not required in install.xml files
- MDL-38558 - It is now possible to run local pre-upgrade script
- MDL-38391 - Convert YUI_config to class in lib/outputrequirements.php.
- MDL-35819 - JS M.util.help_icon deprecated in favour of moodle-core-popuphelp
Upgrade notes for developers
- Activity modules
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=mod/upgrade.txt;hb=master
- Assignment
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=mod/assign/upgrade.txt;hb=master
- Backup
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=backup/upgrade.txt;hb=master
- Cache
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=cache/upgrade.txt;hb=master
- Calendar
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=calendar/upgrade.txt;hb=master
- Core
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=lib/upgrade.txt;hb=master
- Course formats
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=course/format/upgrade.txt;hb=master
- Enrolment plugins
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=enrol/upgrade.txt;hb=master
- Filters
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=filter/upgrade.txt;hb=master
- Forum
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=mod/forum/upgrade.txt;hb=master
- Question types
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=question/type/upgrade.txt;hb=master
- Repositories
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=repository/upgrade.txt;hb=master
- Themes
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=theme/upgrade.txt;hb=master
- TinyMCE plugins
- http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=blob;f=lib/editor/tinymce/upgrade.txt;hb=master
See also
- User documentation of new features in Moodle 2.5
- Upgrading to Moodle 2.5 - information for admins who are upgrading from earlier versions
- Moodle 2.4 release notes