Mahara Upgrade - New Features

We thought we would take some time to post some of the new features coming with this months Mahara upgrade. (Tuesday 17th of February)

Mahara will be upgraded from version 1.7.3 to 1.10.2 This means we will be upgrading a full 3 stable releases, this will naturally bring with it lots of new features and functions.

There is an extensive list of updates, however we will list the new features relevant to the end user below:

New Features

• Streamlined easier-to-use "Text" block 
• The new "Note" block retains all the removed features of the Text block 
• Streamlined rich text editor, with a toggle button to access advanced features 
• "Messaging" profile tab replaced with "Social media" tab with newer options 
• Added a "sent" box alongside the inbox for user messages 
• Groups: "Objectionable content" button for forum posts 
• Groups: Forum moderators can relocate forum posts between forums 
• Groups: Option to auto-create a LEAP2a archive of submitted pages 
• Groups: More control over which group members receive feedback & shared page notifications 
• Accessibility! W3C WCAG 2.0 level AA (except for some admin pages)
• Profile completion progress bar
• "Post now" option for forum posts, to bypass post delay 
• Support for Creative Commons 4.0 licenses 
• New "Feedback" block, allows placing feedback as a block instead of at the bottom of the page 
• Can now show image descriptions in "Image Gallery" block 
• Can specify the sort order of files in a "Folder" block 
• "Folder" block can now have "Download all as zip" link 
• Improvements to watchlist notifications 
• "New group page" notification
• Turned the block chooser vertical and scrolling, to accommodate longer Pages 
• The Image block and Text Box block are now conveniently at the top of the block chooser 
• Page layouts can now have rows as well as columns 
• Users can import leap2a files into their existing Mahara account
• PDF block allows PDFs to be viewed in-line in a Page 
• Resume elements can have attachments 
• Notes (and text box blocks) can have attachments 
• Users are notified when they try to navigate away from a page with unsaved changes 
• Many more types of user content can have tags 
• Resume entries for electronic publications can now be hotlinks 
• Drag-and-drop to upload files 
• Page skins, which give individual users the ability to change the CSS of their Pages 
• “Additional HTML" config option for things such as Google Analytics

We will have a deeper look into some of the new features in a blog post next week.