Week of 21 March 2016

The following information summarizes what is new in the edX platform this week.

The edX engineering wiki Release Pages provide detailed information about every change made to the edx-platform GitHub repository. If you are interested in additional information about every change in a release, create a user account for the wiki and review the dated release pages.

EdX LMS

  • Learners who are taking courses on edx.org or on edX Edge can now highlight text and take notes while they progress through a course. Course teams can enable notes for their courses by setting the Enable Student Notes advanced setting to true. For more information, see Notes Tool in the Building and Running an edX Course guide, or Taking Notes in an edX Course in the EdX Learner’s Guide.
  • The LMS now supports internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) of static user interface text in XBlocks. You use the GNU gettext Portable Object (PO) file format to provide translated text strings for an XBlock’s “chrome” or “labels”. For more information, see EdX Learning Management System as an XBlock Runtime in the Open edX XBlock Tutorial.

EdX Studio

  • In Studio, all video components erroneously displayed a “No playable sources found” error, even when the components were correctly configured and functioning. This issue has been resolved. Video components no longer display this error message unless playable sources are not configured. (TNL-4121)

Open edX

  • The LMS now supports internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) of static user interface text in XBlocks. You use the GNU gettext Portable Object (PO) file format to provide translated text strings for an XBlock’s “chrome” or “labels”. For more information, see EdX Learning Management System as an XBlock Runtime in the Open edX XBlock Tutorial.

EdX Documentation

Documentation for Open edX Users

  • Some sections of the Open EdX Developer’s Guide have been reorganized. The “Writing Good Code” section now includes a new subsection, Preventing Cross Site Scripting Vulnerabilities, as well as existing subsections edX Accessibility Guidelines, Internationalization Coding Guidelines, and Django Good Practices. If you have bookmarked existing pages in this guide, you should visit the updated version to locate and re-bookmark pages in the new structure.
  • The Installing, Configuring, and Running the Open edX Platform guide has been reorganized. Improvements include a streamlined table of contents which combines various “installing” and “configuring” sections for developer stack and full stack options under two new top level sections: Installing and Starting the Open edX Platform and Configuring the Open edX Platform. If you have bookmarked existing pages in this guide, you should visit the updated version to locate and re-bookmark pages in the new structure.
  • The Building and Running an Open edX Course guide now includes the same Glossary that is included in the Building and Running an edX Course guide.