09 April 2015, 23:37

Hi there

We currently use version 1.9 and I'm sure its been there a long time, but I just noticed that the content in text boxes end up in the Content > Notes area.  I thought what a brilliant feature - for those who have deleted a text box on a page, there is a copy available to use.

I've then been playing with 15.04 and this now has a add a 'Note' block when building pages.  This is contained in the Content > Notes area but text boxes no longer have a copy.

I do think there should be a back up for the user to retrieve deleted content from the text boxes. E.g. just like other artifacts in the content area.  Students often comment about 'losing' content when they've removed text boxes by accident.

What do you think?

Christina

10 April 2015, 10:22

Hi Christina,

The new text block, whose text is not linked to a note-artefact, was created because a lot of users didn't realize that they were actually creating artefacts when just putting text on a page. Besides the fact that you could still access the text after deleting the text-block, the same note-artefacts were linked on copied pages, which did confuse people a lot when they changed the text on the new page and didn't realize the old page was affected as well and it seemed that mostly people didn't write text-blocks to actually create reusable content but rather to put introductions or explanations on the specific page. 

The old artefact-linked text-box is still available in mahara 15.04  though - it just changed it's name to note and you find it under the category general now.

I'm sorry if this caused confusion to you and your students.

Tobias

13 April 2015, 22:26

Hello Christina,

Further to what Tobias said:

Text = small bits of text that only exist on one page where you put the block. Limited functionality, e.g. can't add attachments or re-use in another page.

Note = more elaborate text where you can also have attachments, feedback, a license etc. The notes are the former "Text boxes" from Mahara 1.9 and stored in Content -> Notes. You can access them there or easily copy them on a page. They are the linked ones which can make it confusing for users.

When you upgrade your instance to Mahara 15.04, nothing will happen to your Notes. They stay as they are. Only when you run the Note to Text conversion script (see http://manual.mahara.org/en/1.10/administration/extensions.html#new-in-mahara-1-10-blocktype-text - the feature was introduced in Mahara 1.10), will Notes that don't have any special attributes be converted into Text and only be available on the one page where they are, but not anymore on other pages.

So now users can choose whether they wish to just put a snippet of text onto a page that they don't care whether they can copy it onto another page or not via the block or whether they want to create a note instead which offers them more flexibility.

Cheers

Kristina

14 April 2015, 20:25

Thanks you guys for a very clear and comprehensive description of both functions. 

Read and understood!  I'll make it clear about the use of each and the benefits of the notes (but I can see why it might be confusing for new users).

Thanks again... Christina