Change Log

Change Log Archive

:: Current Change Log

ATutor 1.4.3

February 4 2005

• Forum Upgrades: System wide and shared forums for communication across courses. Create communities around groups of course forums, or around an entire ATutor course server. Alumi participation in course forums. Subscribe to general forums or course forums, or subscribe to specific topic threads to receive messages by email. Quickly access current forum messages through the Forum Posts menu module.
• File Manager Upgrades: Create new text and html files, move and copy individual files or batches of files, and use the file manager while editing ATutor content pages.
• Enrollment Manager Overhaul: Create, import, and export course enrollment lists, and manage enrolled students or alumni. New tabbed display for managing student information, managing course lists, managing roles and privileges, as well as creating and managing groups.
• Language Overhaul: Language management has been completely re-designed. Translate, import, and export language from within an ATutor installation. Support for the UTF-8 character set. ATutor is avalable in more than 30 languages.
• Backup Manager: Administrator and Instructor Backup Manager. Create master copies of courses. Manage multiple backups per course and restore only material you specify into existing and newly created courses.
• Question Database: Create tests by adding questions to, and retrieving questions from, a test item respositories.
• Test/Survey Manager Upgrade: New ability to create image based test items, arrange multiple choice questions vertically or horizontally, assign tests to a class, to groups, or to individual students, analyse test data and generate statistics.
• Theme Manager: Easily copy, import, and export ATutor themes.
• RSS Feeds: Syndicate ATutor course announcements.
• New Feedback and Error Handling: Redesigned, modular, user feedback system. Improved logging, tracking, and presentation of system errors for debugging and troubleshooting ATutor installations.
• Embed ACollab: Embed ACollab into ATutor, or open it in a new window to participate in groups activities.
• System Announcements: Admatinistrators can send email announcements to all instructors and/or students registered on an ATutor system.
• Easy Enrollment: Students can now enroll in courses through the Browse Courses screen.

ATutor 1.4.2

September 21 2004

• Test/Survey Manager: Able to create surveys, add Likert-type questions, view detailed statistics on a per-question basis, and more.
• Secure Content: Ability to secure the content directory by placing it outside of the web server path during installation or upgrade.
• Search Course Catalogue: Search for terms found in course titles, descriptions or content. The Hide course option now is also used to exclude it from being searched.
• Course Category Themes: Associate categories with a specific theme. All courses in that category will be viewed using only that theme. This also disables the personal theme preference.
• File Manager Enhancements: Ability to rename files and directories as well as delete entire directories even if they're not empty.

ATutor 1.4.1

July 8 2004

• Course Polls: Instructors can create polls for their courses.
• Browse Code Repository: Public and developer access to evolving ATutor code.
• Course Language Property: Designate a course's primary language.
• Bug Fixes: A few bug fixes scattered throughout.

ATutor 1.4

May 28 2004

• User Levels & Roles: Ability to assign course management privileges. Create teaching assistants or multiple instructors.
• Visual Content Editor: A Javascript based WYSIWYG editor option.
• ACollab Add-on: Conduct group learning activities within courses.
• Upgraded Test Module: Automatic marking, and random question tests.
• TILE Learning Objects Repository: Search the TILE repository for content to download or import into a course. Export content from ATutor into the TILE repository.
• Theme Support: Create your own ATutor look and feel. Download or contribute themes.
• AChecker Extension: Built-in accessibility checker for content.
• Content Packaging: Ability to import content packages via a URL. Import and export glossary terms along with the content.
• Look & Feel: Redesigned look and feel.

ATutor 1.3.3

February 27 2004

• Installer Fixes: A few bugs when upgrading have been fixed.

ATutor 1.3.2

February 19 2004

• Redesigned Look & Feel: Certain sections were redesigned.
• Increased Formatting Control: Finer control over where HTML and other formatting options are allowed or disallowed.
• Zip Library Update: The PclZip library has been updated to the latest version.
• Content Packages: Exported content packages now conform to the SCORM specifications. Imported content packages now support non-HTML items.
• Import Course List: The course enrollment importer has been vastly improved.
• Content Editor: Editor for adding and changing content has been redesigned.
• Bug Fixes: Additional bugs have been fixed.

ATutor 1.3.1

December 16 2003

• Automated Install/Upgrade Script: Easily upgrade to the most recent version while preserving preferences and data, or install a fresh version and set up preferences and accounts.
• Table Prefixes: The table prefix option allows ATutor to share an existing database with other applications and tables.
• Administrator & Instructor Accounts: Customizable administrator and initial instructor usernames and passwords.
• Direct Administrator Login: No longer have to be logged in as a user to login as an administrator.
• Languages: Additional right-to-left language support.
• Viewing Courses: Administrators can now easily enter and view courses.
• XML Parser Update: The PEAR XML_HTMLSax library has been updated to the latest version.
• Fixes and Enhancements: A few bug and security fixes.

ATutor 1.3

November 14 2003

• IMS Content Packaging: Interoperable content packages for learners and content developers. Import and Export learning objects, view content offline, and manage content development and distribution.
• New Languages: German and Italian coming soon, in addition to Spanish, French, Farsi, and others.
• Course Float Size: Flexible course sizes
• Updated Zip Utility: Rebuilt the Zip library. Works better with Windows now.
• Course Categories: Group courses by grade, difficulty level, topic, or any custom defined sorting category.
• Course Backup Utility (formerly Import/Export): Copy and Restore ATutor courses.
• Course Coverage Tracking: Learners and Instructors can view a summary of pages visited, and remaining, among other content tracking statistics.
• Content Search: Find content fast. New menu module, and search tool.
• Course List Import/Export: Quickly add students to a course, or save an enrollment list.
• Accessibility Enhancements: Dynamic menu bypass link to make the main menu more accessible, updated "meaningfulness" of Title and Alt text, topic numbering added to accessibility default preferences, and images set to relative sizing so low vision users can magnify them along with browser controlled text sizing.
• Many Fixes and Enhancements: Adjustments, upgrades, corrections, and a whole bunch of other little additions.

ATutor 1.2.2

August 5 2003

• Minor Windows Export Bug Fix: Created a work-around to fix Windows 2000 export bug.

ATutor 1.2.1

July 25 2003

• Minor Language Bug Fix: Created a work-around to fix a language loading problem experienced with some fresh installs of V1.2 .

ATutor 1.2

July 7 2003

• Language/Translation Support: ATutor can now be translated using the translation tools on the ATutor translation site. Request access to the site if you would like to contribute. Languages are added to the site downloads as they become available, and can be imported into ATutor with a click of a button.
• AChat-PHP: We've created our own accessible chat to replace the third party chat we had in earlier versions. AChat-PHP is based on the original Perl version of AChat developed at the ATRC. AChat is simple to use, can record transcripts, and is accessible to assistive technology users.
• Content Icons: We've added a set of icons to represent various features of ATutor. Icons can be turn on or off with a preference setting.

ATutor 1.0

December 4 2002

• Complete rewrite of the entire system!
• Glossary additions from contents was fixed
• Image code no longer requires HTTP://
• Cancel buttons throughout
• Alt-S shortcuts to all forms
• A choice of pre-set preferences: accessiblity (text only), graphic only, and graphic+text
• Detailed course statistics page (logins)
• Printable stylesheet
• Easier to use administration section
• New content forms include the ability to paste from a text/html file
• Addition of $IllegalExtentions array to restrict the types of files to upload
• Course specific file quotas
• "Hide course" property to courses
• Added more preferences (hide breadcrumbs and top headings)
• File manager frame
• Ability to export and import entire courses
• Ability to add ALT attributes to linked images [image|description][/image]
• More XHTML friendly, can use ; (or any seperator) instead of & in URLs
• Forum: Added a custom built fully featured forum with admin controls. Support for unlimited forums.
• Auto-login option
• Completely redesigned layout
• Who's online
• Internal messaging
• Reworked site-map
• Instructor documentation
• Using ATutor documentation
• Removed SITE_PATH, and SITE_URL from vitals.inc
• Course Glossary
• The configuration options in vitals.inc.php were moved to config.inc.php
• Student mailing list
• Removed "enroll" option for admins of their own course
• state is saved
• the addition of a glossary system integrated into the content
• prev/next content links
• content version counter
• prefs are stored in the DB as a serialized array
• added a site map
• file manager with sub directory support for admins only (at this time)
• course deletion has a second confirmation and deletes everything!
• redesigned the Control Centre
• the main menu is now only collapsable and expandable
• the main menu titles are truncated depending on depths
• content is either HTML or Plain Text (certain assumptions for each)
• student tools have been removed from this version
• PEAR::DB is no longer used
• register_globals can now be either on or off (off is recommended)

ATutor 0.9.7

July 30 2002

• Added "Chrome" and "Browser skins"
• Fixed preference saving. Users can now login and retrieve their previous preference setting.
• Added new preferences: font size, font style, mouseover tool tips, sections full page, topic numbering, and collapsible menu
• Created Table of Content tool (i.e sitemap), accessed through tools page
• Updated the ATutor Howto default course
• Changed the behaviour of the sections menu. It now open automatically when sections exist
• Change sequence arrows to images so they would be more visible
• Cleaned up the presentation of links in the history menu.
• Created a bunch of Netscape 4 work arounds. (What a pain!) ATutor will now work in NS4 but without some of the customizability
• Added in some basic text descriptions on various pages.
• Improved the admin approve instructor request procedure (needs more improving)
• Still have to turn on register_global in php.ini(this will not be necessary in the next release)
• Added some basic IMS Content Packing scripts for dumping XML formatted content to be transferred to other IMS compliant course authoring tools (including other versions of ATutor). This is currently experimental, but will be introduced in a future release.

ATutor 0.9.6

January 11 2002

• Added Instructor access: users can now register and request designer access.
• Added accesskey support: it is now possible to use ATutor without a mouse.
• Updated types of courses: now public, protected, and private courses are possible.
• Added enrollment function for private courses.
• Added layout preferences to move the menu to the left or right and stack the main navigation on top of the menu.
• Fixed the line break problem that created excessive white space at the bottom of each page.
• Replaced the bottom main navigation with text links and moved the Jump menu to the bottom of the main menu (may make these preference settings).
• Added phpMyChat: a php/mysql synchronous communication tool (temporary until we write our own fully accessible chat program.). The same chat is used by all courses on the server.
• Added course specific forums. Now unique discussion forums are created for each individual course on the system.