16 August 2010, 19:50

Hello,

We had planned to bring out a Release Candidate for version 1.3 last week. However, due to exciting last minute additions - right on time for the new school year - another beta version was in order. You can check out the new additions - Collections and Plans - on http://master.dev.mahara.org

More about the purpose of Collections and Plans in a bit.

We are also working on some new icons and design improvements in general. Thus, some of the functionality especially for Collections is not yet in its final stage because we are currently working on that.

Therefore, another beta version seemed more appropriate than a 1.3 Release Candidate that is supposed to be really the new version, but allows testers to make last second comments.

We still aim at releasing version 1.3 later in August as planned. Watch this space for an update.

Now, what are Collections?
Collections are a new way of combining several views for the purposes of

1. Creating a navigation block or horizontal navigation bar within a view for a series of connected views. Up until now, you had to do that either in a blog post or a text block.
2. Ordering views within one collection in a non-alphabetical order.
3. Giving the same access to a number of views at once.

What are current limitations of collections?

1. A view can only be part of one collection. If you want to create, say 2 portfolios which both contain View A, you have to make a copy of View A and include that in the second collection.
2. Collections cannot yet be displayed on the profile page for others to view immediately. Teachers (or other users in general) will still only see your views in an alphabetical order. However, when they click on a view that is part of a collection, they will see the navigation block / bar and are able to navigate to the related views from there.
3. You yourself can access the views that make up a collection only from the screen where you edit your collection. There is no page just listing your views without the edit option.

What are Plans?
Plans are essentially task lists that allow you to formulate a goal (the plan) and spell out the individual steps (the tasks) you need to take – optionally by a certain date – to reach your goal.

Who made all that possible?
We would like to thank Birmingham City University for their funding that made the development of collections and plans possible. It is a great step into linking views more easily and navigating a portfolio from a single point of entry (collection) and creating task lists (plans).

If somebody were interested in sponsoring additional development on Collections, we could take this feature even further.

Cheers
Kristina
for the Mahara Project Maintainers