Claroline 18
From ClarolineDoc
Claroline 1.8 integrates lots of new features and improvements in its interface. The following page should allow you to get a quick overview of this promising release.
| Table of contents |
Design, Interface and Layout
In collaboration with professional graphic designers, the whole design of Claroline interface has been reviewed. Caliope (our young emblematic lady) has also been seriously relooked.
TinyMCE (http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/) is now the new default editor (WYSIWYG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wysiwyg)) of Claroline. According to wide tests from the community, TinyMCE is just the most stable and most user friendly solution to use :
- Notice also that it is now an option, you can choose in the administration interface of Claroline (Htmlarea will remain available for example)
- Multimedia authoring is now possible : add easily any Adobe Flash animation (.swf) in your text area.
Module system : build your own Claroline extension
- Create or install your own tools for Claroline and share them with the community
- Customize your platform courses tool lists by activating or deactivating existing tools in Claroline for all the courses at once
- Customize the existing banners and menu in Claroline by adding your own content or links,...
- Some examples of modules soon available :
- a "who is on-line" module
- a survey tool to create and use surveys in your courses
- a complete search engine based on phpdig, using xml based indexation and metadatas
- and lots of other tools to come ...
User rights and profiles are now completely customizable
- Change profiles rights (none, user, manager) in your courses, tool by tool for every existing profile
- Create customized profiles and define their given rights (secretary, coach, ...)
Classes management improved
According to many feedbacks given by the community, the classes' system has been completely reviewed :
- Subscription to a course is now really effective. This means you can easily subscribe/unsubscribe a class to a course.
- Any user subscribed to class will be automatically enroled to the class courses.
Personal language selector
Each user can now select his language in his profile or in the homepage. The administrator can set the list of available languages from the home page.
User home page
User can now consult a public course right from his personal home page and search a public course.
Course Tools Improvements
Course home page
Add several text blocks in course home page and attach any ressource (document, exercise, announcement,...) from the course to them.
Documents
- Download all your documents at once in a compressed file
- Improve support of secure downloaded document (compatibility with more web servers)
Note : The use of .htaccess is no longer necessary to use .url files.
Assignments
- The work tool interface has been changed, being now more intuitive.
- Mail notification in the assignment tool. Teachers receive a mail on new submission and students receive a mail on teacher's feedback.
Exercises
- support of the IMS-QTI 2.0 standard, allowing to export and import standardized exercises. This feature will also be very useful to create backup of your existing exercises or to reuse them in other courses.
- Some improvement of the interface : exercise list, question list, ...
- One question per page : add button to "previous question", "submit all and finish" and "next question".
- New multimedia file supported : Add .flv (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flv) file (Adobe Flash Video) in a question of an exercise as well as .mp3, .swf, document and image files.
Developers note : This tool's code has been completely refactored, it is now fully object-oriented. Add a question type is made easier.
Wiki
- A new local Search engine is now available.
- Course manager can export Wiki to HTML File
- Enhanced Wiki syntax including Table syntax
Group tool properties
- Each group can now be set to private or public
- Every tool can now be deactivated
Course subscription
- Course manager can add a key on enrolment
- Course manager can add a text to explain procedure to join a locked course or a course protected by a key
Configuration
- New display with tabs (or view all parameters)
- New configuration parameters :
- Language to display in personal language selector
- Session lost warning (alert user when the session is about to expire)
- Set Wysiwyg editor ( Get alternate editors (http://www.claroline.net/downloadpreview.htm#editors) )
- Form profile customization : set which parts of the profile can be changed (Name, Official Code, Login, Password, Email, Phone and/or Language).
- Configure External Authentication, CAS and SSO
- ...
Upgrade system
Older Claroline campuses can now be upgraded at once with the upgrade tool of Claroline 1.8, if you are using claroline 1.7.x, you can upgrade the campus to this new 1.8 version in an easy and much faster way, without having to run intermediate upgrade scripts.
