Dokeos community 2.1 release notes
From Dokeos
Dokeos Community Release 2.1 is a feature release. It contains all the features and bugfixes of the Community Release 2.0.x series, but adds new features and improvements. If you're wondering what the community releases are, please read this page.
Contents |
Download
Please download the more recent community release 2.1.1 instead.
Release timeline
There's also a topic on the forum to discuss the 2.1 release and its planning.
- July 13th, 2006 - community release 2.1 alpha 1
- August 11th - community release 2.1 alpha 2 (includes first attempt at upgrade procedure)
- August 25th - community release 2.1 beta (includes working upgrade procedure, aims at translation string freeze*)
- September 12th, community release 2.1 beta 2
- September 26th, first release candidate
- October 11th, stable release
- Late October or November: first bugfix release
(*) translation string freeze: from this point onwards, no new strings will be introduced which need to be translated.
Dokeos community 2.1 alpha releases
Alpha releases are unstable releases, designed to let the community experiment with new features and give us feedback and bug reports. They are not expected to be complete in any area. Alpha releases should not be used on production servers. Documentation texts and translations may also not be up to date. IMPORTANT - We strongly advise to take backups (see our FAQ) before installing or upgrading!
Known issues
- The upgrade does not work at all in alpha 1, you can only see alpha 1 by installing it. Alpha 2 has partially complete upgrade code.
- The latest translation code has not been checked in for the alpha 1 release. Alpha 2 release does have updated language files, plus a search-replace fix to avoid a language bug [1]. However in alpha 2 there are several language files (pertaining to the forum) with wrong character sets.
Dokeos community 2.1 beta
Beta releases are unstable releases, designed to let the community experiment with new features and give us feedback and bug reports. Most major functionality should be ready and working, though there may be small things lacking, inconsistencies, and bugs. Beta releases should not be used on production servers. Documentation texts and translations may also not be up to date.
Most new language strings already are in the online translation tool, so translators have time to finish the new translations before the final stable release. IMPORTANT - We strongly advise to take backups (see our FAQ) before installing or upgrading!
Known issues
- The upgrade code has been improved, you can now upgrade from Dokeos community release 2.0.x and Dokeos 1.6.x. However, there still are some bugs to be resolved.
Dokeos community 2.1 release candidate
The release candidate is made when we think - hope - a release is good enough to be release as stable. We expect to release the stable version shortly and hope everyone will take some time to test this release candidate so we can fix the last remaining bugs.
Changes
- a few language strings that we previously missed have been added to the online translation tool
- some more bugs, e.g. an important learning path bug, have been fixed
- the translations have been updated with the latest from the online translation tool (see also [2])
- this is the first release made using our new Subversion (svn) version control system, instead of CVS.
There may still be bugs, particularly in the upgrade code, so careful testing is advised.
Known issues
The language file for the integrated messages plugin, messages.inc.php, is not available yet through our online translation tool. This means you can't make translations for this plugin online. You can however copy the english language messages.inc.php file to the folder of your language and edit the file using a text editor. Please send your translations to translation@dokeos.com so we can include them in the next release.
Dokeos community 2.1 stable
The stable release is expected to be good enough for real production use. We still benefit from testing and feedback, ofcourse.
Please help us improve our releases by reporting bugs in the forum: http://www.dokeos.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=87
Known issues
- The language file for the integrated messages plugin, messages.inc.php, is not available yet through our online translation tool. This means you can't make translations for this plugin online. You can however copy the english language messages.inc.php file to the folder of your language and edit the file using a text editor. Please send your translations to translation@dokeos.com so we can include them in the next release.
- The phpbb.inc.php file has become empty in the latest exports from the online translation tool. Until this is solved it is no longer possible to update your language files this way. Perhaps the myDltt extension can help with this (not tested yet).
The future
The Dokeos developers are combining efforts again, so there will only be one main release in the future. There will be an upgrade path from the community releases to some future official release. Most community release features will make it into the Dokeos 1.8 release. The only thing about which we still need an agreement is the roles and rights design, this will not be included in 1.8. We hope to reach an agreement for the Dokeos 1.9 release.
Changes since community release 2.0
New features
- Course navigation menu can now be collapsed, using JavaScript
- Automatic resizing of user pictures (through a new api function) [3]
- Improved csv import facilities [4]
- Import a list of courses
- Import a list of user-course relations (enroll users in courses)
- Import a list of user-class relations
- Improved support for virtual courses - users from virtual courses are now treated like any other user for the roles-rights system [5], [6]
- Improved roles and rights system [7]
- Ability to create (and delete) new local and global roles
- Ability to edit the names and descriptions of existing roles
- Create new users with a selected global role, or edit the global role afterwards
- Updated Using roles and rights guide (included in the download).
- Installer uses the language's original name in the language selection box [8]
- Module for course admin to subscribe and unsubscribe classes of users [9]
- More configurable options
- Session name [10]
- Open course list: a new page so registered users can finally browse a list of courses "open to the platform" (available for registered users). Anonymous guests see the courses that are open for the world.
- Password requests for accounts with an external authorization source are handled in a sensible way [11]
- Registration time of the users is stored in the user table in the main database [12]
- Uploaded user images can be automatically resized [13]
- Who is online page shows (thumbnail of) user pictures in the list [14]
- ... (see also the roadmap)
Privacy
- There is a new platform admin option called "show email addresses", which is off by default. From now on, by default users will not see the email addresses of other users.
Security
- Users surfing to the install folder of an already installed Dokeos have to enter a name and password before being granted access. This removes the problem of users from everywhere in the world being able to reinstall existing installations. Formerly the admins had to remove this folder, rename it or change its permissions.
Included extensions
From cr 2.1 on, the community releases will include extensions or plugins that the community has made available. Advantages of including an extension by default are
- easier to install
- easier to maintain
- increased attention from Dokeos core developers
- some extensions actually provide functionality that is now considered a core necessity for Dokeos, e.g. an internal messaging system
Messages
The messages plugin [15] is now installed by default when you install the community release 2.1. This means Dokeos now gains an internal messaging system right out of the box, which was very often asked functionality. In the who is online list, you also get a send message button right next to every user listed [16].
Technical improvements
- All bugfixes from community releases 2.0.1, 2.0.2, 2.0.3 and 2.0.4 are also included in this release, along with several more that could not be added to the 2.0.x branch.
- Improvements in the API libraries
- Incessant efforts to output XHTML compliant pages
- All backticks have been removed from the SQL queries
- All calls to the deprecated api_get_XXX_path functions have been replaced by calls to api_get_path.
- The possibility to add plugins in the footer section.
- This is achieved by defining plugins in the $plugins['footer'] array in the config file.
Upgrading
The alpha 2 contains some early upgrade code. You can already try to upgrade from Dokeos community release 2.0 up to 2.0.4.
The beta 1 release improves the upgrade code and gives the ability to upgrade from either Dokeos community release 2.0 through 2.0.4 or Dokeos 1.6.0 through 1.6.5.
