Week of 2 May 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.

Coming Soon

An update is coming to the learner dashboard. Instead of just one page, the dashboard will have a default Courses page that resembles the current dashboard, and will also have a Programs page that provides learners with easy access to information about their XSeries Programs. If learners are enrolled in any course that is part of an XSeries Program, they will see the XSeries Program listed on this page. For more information, see Coming Soon Programs Page.

EdX LMS

  • EdX has updated the target of its Skip to Content links so that keyboard and screen reader users can more easily navigate to the unique content on each page. Special consideration was made to determine what constitutes the main content in each of our templates. This update also defines a <main> element for each edX template. Screen reader users can use the <main> element as a page landmark.
  • Learners who selected the “next” arrow button but did not have access to the following unit received a “Page not found” error message. This problem has been resolved. The “next” arrow button is now available only if the learner has access to the following unit. (TNL-4460)

EdX Studio

Studio now has a setting that course teams can use to keep timed exams hidden after the exam due date has passed. For more information, see Timed Exams in Building and Running an EdX Course or Timed Exams in Building and Running an Open EdX Course.

Analytics

In Dec 2015 and Jan 2016, edX added several accessibility enhancements to the video player’s controls. This release includes the following updates to the events that the video player emits. (AC-383, AC-385, and AC-444)

  • The button that shows or hides a transcript file on the right of the video was relabeled from CC to ". The video player emits the existing show_transcript/edx.video.transcript.shown and hide_transcript/edx.video.transcript.hidden events when users interact with this control.
  • A button, labeled CC, was added to show or hide closed captions, which are overlaid on the video while it plays. The video player emits new events, edx.video.closed_captions.shown and edx.video.closed_captions.hidden, when users interact with this control.
  • A menu for selecting a different language for the transcript and closed captions was added. The video player emits the existing video_hide_cc_menu and video_show_cc_menu when users interact with this control. In addition, these events now include name values of edx.video.language_menu.hidden and edx.video.language_menu.shown, respectively, and the video_hide_cc_menu/edx.video.language_menu.hidden events include a new event member field, language.

For more information, see Video Interaction Events.

Open EdX

  • The JavaScript Backbone.js library has been upgraded from version 1.0.0 to version 1.3.2. For more information, see the change log for the Backbone.js library.
  • The ENABLE_JWT_AUTH feature flag has been removed.

Documentation