workgroup collaboration software
for business, education and more
Home | About | Contact | Blog | CourseForum | ProjectForum


Changes Between Versions

New in Version 5.5.0 (Released 8/14/2007):

  • New Features and Enhancements:
    • New 'web views' feature allow a read-only version of a forum to be published as a static site; this makes it easier for a group of people to jointly edit content that is automatically made available externally.
    • Added a new option on search form to allow including the contents of matching pages in the search results, which is useful to generate certain types of reports.
    • Added file size to attachment tooltips.
    • On Windows, CourseForum can now also be uninstalled through the "Add/Remove Programs" control panel.
    • Ellide names of long pages in pages table.
    • Various changes to page layouts and messages.
  • Bug Fixes:
    • The 'delete unused files' administration tool was missing mp3: and include: attachments.
    • Adding 'mp3:' links to a page was creating extra blank pages.
    • Pages will not be autocreated on editing an existing page if the page name contains newlines.
    • Remove image borders from pages, attachments and user activity admin screens.
    • Remove logginig on invalid forum errors.

New in Version 5.4.2 (Released 6/19/2007):

  • Bug Fixes:
    • Fix problem where software would not run on certain Linux systems due to security restrictions associated with loading libraries from /tmp (usually SELinux related).
    • Restored ability to select empty pages for deletion.
    • Adjusted code to allow for attachment downloads that take a significantly long period of time to complete.
    • Fix typo in editing help.
    • Fix colors for sortable table in dark weblog theme.
    • Fix sporadic sorting issue on size column of attachments page.

New in Version 5.4.1 (Released 5/31/2007):

  • Bug Fixes:
    • Fixed a problem where interrupted downloads of attachments would sometimes leave an operating system file open; in extreme cases, this could result in the process hitting operating system limits on number of open files, preventing opening further downloads or forum databases.
    • Corrected an error in an HTTP header.
    • Made changes to internal error logging.

New in Version 5.4.0 (Released 4/23/2007):

  • New Features
    • Pages in this Forum screen is now sortable, adds information about size and versions for each page, and allows selective multiple deletions.
    • New Attachments screen allows for browsing information about and deleting attachments in a forum.
    • New page to browse list of all versions of page, and selectively delete them.
    • User activity screen is now sortable, and allows drilling-down to see detailed activity logs for each user.
    • New 'View' command on attachment menu to view uploaded files in the browser window, where possible.
  • Bug Fixes and Enhancements
    • Upload progress bar done with AJAX, to avoid repeated web page reloads.
    • Improve performance of fetching old versions of page and generating page-specific RSS feeds on pages containing hundreds of posts in a row.
    • Creating a new course will skip over any old, unused datafiles it finds.
    • Updated various icons, tooltip labels.

New in Version 5.3.2 (Released 3/19/2007):

  • Bug Fixes:
    • Fixed a variety of harmless errors that were producing warning messages in log files and the Javascript console.

New in Version 5.3.1 (Released 2/27/2007):

  • Bug Fixes:
    • Fix memory leak when forums are automatically deallocated from memory after being idle for a while
    • Fix memory leak in the versions screen showing differences between versions
    • Fix memory leak in Search that can occur when the http request has a particular set of http headers, which doesn't occur with normal web browsers, but can happen with spam robots

New in Version 5.3.0 (Released 2/05/2007):

  • Custom and Image Links:
    • A completely reworked "custom links" feature allows the site administrator to define entirely new formatting markup. This can be used to add new formatting features, or smoothly integrate with "Web 2.0" services like photo sharing, instant messengers, and even your own internal information services. All these things no longer require users to add their own HTML to forum pages. A new Custom Links HOWTO describes in detail the new capabilities and how to use them.
    • Many links, such as http, ftp, and more can now be displayed as images in the page. Whereever changing the name of the link was allowed, images can now also be used, by specifying the "name" as e.g. "image:12345" (for an image uploaded to the forum), or "image:http://.../foo.gif" (for an image from another web site).
  • Comment Posting Improvements:
    • Comments can be posted to locked pages without unlocking the page by first entering the lock password and then posting; the page remains fully locked.
    • Comment posts are stored more efficiently in the databases; this helps mediate problems with automatic spam robots, which could cause the databases to grow extremely large very quickly.
  • Other Features:
    • for Campus, all logins now go through a single centralized page, as opposed to forum-specific signin pages
    • added ability to batch delete users for Campus
    • added new view=content display option, which generates just the content part of the pages, without borders, etc.
    • allow including HTML files uploaded as attachments to the forum (e.g. converted Word documents) by using '[include:###]', where ### is the attachment id
    • attached CSS styles 'toclist' and 'tochlist' to table of contents generated by 'toc:'
  • Bug Fixes:
    • removed bogus cell-spacing and cell-padding properties from CSS
    • import wasn't properly setting URL Prefix of the course/group

New in Version 5.2.2 (Released 11/29/2006):

  • Bug Fixes:
    • Fix problems with preview in projects
    • Improve preview so images and document icons are rendered

New in Version 5.2.1 (Released 11/13/2006):

  • Bug Fixes:
    • Fix problem where preview of larger pages was not working on some versions of IE 6.0
    • Fixed margins of classic theme

New in Version 5.2.0 (Released 11/6/2006):

  • Revamped Editing Page:
    • New preview option to quickly review changes before saving
    • New format toolbar for access to common formatting features
    • Resizable text area
    • Completely new, more comprehensive help system, and option to hide help
  • Bug Fixes and Enhancements:
    • All themes now load a system-wide CSS file (base.css) before loading theme-specific styles.css; this allows better refactoring, thereby simplifying custom themes. Existing custom themes may need some changes to work with the new system.
    • Themes now support use of 'png' images.
    • Added missing 'alt' tags for all system images (for accessibility)
    • Table borders now appear in slideshows where appropriate
    • Fixed an incorrect calculation (overflow) when calculating size of large attachments folders
    • On versions page, some internal links were still active and incorrect

New in Version 5.1.2 (Released 9/13/2006):

  • Bug Fixes:
    • Fix problem where some email notifications might not be sent after a restart if there were previous pending notifications still to be sent out for the forum
    • Fixed error on storage page with very large database or attachment directory sizes
    • Added error logging to forum export
    • Closed loophole where it was possible for spam robots to post to archived forums
    • Field in rename pages starts out with current name
    • Name of database file appears on storage admin page

New in Version 5.1.1 (Released 8/14/2006):

  • Bug Fixes:
    • Fix problem where sending of email notifications could become "stuck" in some circumstances
    • Page references were not being properly updated when more than one link on a page targeted another page, and then links were added or deleted
    • Fix sporadic problem with content-enabled page RSS feeds containing attachments that sometimes would not render
    • Fix problem where an error in the 'recent changes' section of the page would prevent the page from rendering at all
    • Trap and handle a wide ranger of harmless errors that were appearing in logs, resulting from incorrect parameters for some pages and other causes

New in Version 5.1.0 (Released 7/11/2006):

  • New and Changed Features in this Release:
    • Added [mp3:...] playback tag, for either uploaded files (specified by fileid, like with the file: tag), or external MP3 files, specified by URL; this uses an approach based on the Del.icio.us playtagger
    • By default, activity logs for courses are now off; this also applies to pre-existing courses except where this option was explicitly set
    • Administrator now has the ability to delete all empty pages from the 'Pages in this Forum' screen
    • Versions screen has new options to show the page without changes highlighted, or show only the changes; layout of controls area was reworked to accommodate this and improve appearance
    • New option [toc:horizontal] to display the table of contents for the page with a horizontal orientation
    • A 'forgot password' email is available for Campus when users are logged in via their email address, and an email server is available
    • Added "-directory" flag to command line versions, for specifying a different base directory than the current directory
  • Bug Fixes and Enhancements:
    • Greatly increased the performance of the versions screens, particularly figuring out the difference between two versions
    • Fixed very slow rendering of bold, italic, etc. when start and end were widely separated in a page, such as can occur with mismatched tags
    • The 'Open Current Page' button in the edit conflict resolution screen generated an error in some web browsers
    • Archived forums no longer write entries to the activity log, regardless of whether logging was on before archival
    • Fixed error loading versions of Projects page when the 'only administrator can create projects' option is set
    • Fixed a bug where an improperly structured comment post (such as generated by some spam robots) could generate excessive CPU activity, potentially causing a hang or a substantial decrease in performance
    • Cleaned up formatting of 'Pages in this Forum' so that dates don't wrap onto multiple lines, leaving excess blank space between rows
    • Option to navigate directly to a course if only one is present now is available if there is only a single course that is not hidden
    • On Solaris, removed dependency on a shared library that is not present on some systems
    • Cleaned up several harmless error messages that appeared in error.log
    • Reworked the display of error pages

New in Version 5.0.0 (Released 5/3/2006):

  • Major Changes:
    • Mac OS X: This version is now a Universal Binary, running natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs; the minimum OS version required has been changed to 10.3.9
    • Windows: The minimum required operating system is now Windows 2000, Windows XP, and newer versions
    • S5 (version 1.1) slideshow support files have been directly integrated into the application, so that creating slideshow presentations no longer requires a separate download; the previous slideshow.zip mechanism is available for adding or changing presentation themes
    • The internal low-level runtime engine for all platforms has been upgraded to the latest versions (Tcl 8.4.12, Metakit 2.4.9.5+), which brings increased performance and reliability, helping address a number of bugs
  • Other Bug Fixes and Enhancements:
    • allow linking to files on a mounted Windows shared drive by drive letter, e.g. 'file:U:\foo\bar.doc'
    • recognize 'feed:' URL's when including RSS in a page
    • recognize 'telnet:' URL's in page markup
    • new application icons for Mac OS X and Windows
    • updated look and feel for Windows installer
    • Mac OS X version now uses Internet-enabled disk images
    • fixes for several crashing bugs that could appear in unusual cases on some Windows systems
    • fixed problem where searches returning many results were very slow
    • fixed rename and delete for pages containing a '*' in their name
    • properly escape ampersands in page RSS feeds showing full content, which caused some aggregators (e.g. RSSReader) to reject the feeds
    • noted that projects are not automatically exported when the containing course is exported
    • closed loophole that allowed scripts to post to pages even when the page required a password or was locked
    • fixed problem where theme support files uploaded from Windows did not strip off paths properly, so they couldn't be referenced
    • added additional error handling and logging for administration pages
    • fixed bug in Campus version that could in some circumstances prevent the display of users after the first ten pages
    • fixed bug in Campus version where batch registering users did not accurately track license user limits
    • removed some spurious but harmless errors that appeared in error.log

New in Version 4.7.0 (Released 11/14/2005):

  • This release includes a wide range of performance and scalability enhancements throughout the application.

New in Version 4.6.0 (Released 9/19/2005):

  • New and Changed Features in this Release:
    • activity log page in course now allows setting maximum amount of time activity logs will be kept, and logs can be cleared from that screen
    • new checkbox on attach file/image dialog to allow optional top posting
    • new markup [toc:] inserts table of contents in page, based on page headings
    • new markup [pagelist:] inserts list of all pages; optional parameter 'bydate' to sort by modification date, otherwise sort is alphabetic; new 'Index' page in newly created forums
    • added [recentchangeslong:] markup, which tries to display the first 250 characters of each page's content
    • allow non-admin users to rename pages, when they have edit rights and the page isn't locked
  • Bug Fixes and Enhancements:
    • very long page names are elided in the page footer
    • don't automatically create pages when run-on links are found in the page.. either crossing a newline or longer than 100 characters
    • fix top posting with comments divider at end of page; divider stayed at end, rather than post going after the divider
    • forum export now processes 'include:' when used to include other forum pages
    • 'include:' will now look for cache-control and expires 'meta http-equiv' tags in the header of included HTML pages, when the corresponding HTTP headers are not found
    • tweaks to all the themes related to the size of the comment text area, as well as dialog sizes; for users of custom themes, there is a new '#commentstext' style that can be used
    • fix problem that could cause some extremely large uploads to terminate part way through on a slow network link
    • improved performance of page rename

New in Version 4.5.0 (Released 8/2/2005):

  • Notification Changes - RSS and Email:
    • new 'Track Changes' page linked from the forum page
    • new per-page RSS feed, complimenting the existing per-forum RSS feeds
    • email notification option, per-forum or per-page
    • removed RSS link from default key pages used for new forums
    • new 'Notification' panel in Site Admin for configuring RSS/email:
      • site-wide admin option to include content of changes in per-page feeds
      • customize number of items in RSS feeds
      • customize url of site (used in RSS/emails); this way RSS feeds are always served with same URL, not dependent on how the feed itself is served
  • Other changes:
    • Tables can now have borders; place "[tablestyle:borders]" before the table, or turn it off with "[tablestyle:default]". Note that this depends on a new stylesheet style ".bordertable"
    • Table rows are now vertically aligned at the top.
    • Site administration screens now report information on when the current license is valid until, for software updates.
    • When the URL prefix is changed in the administration screens of a forum, the browser is immediately redirected so that it is using the new URL prefix
    • for Campus licensing, added some explanatory messages to the directory page in cases where no courses are listed

New in Version 4.4.1 (Released 6/2/2005):

  • fixed bug affecting some versions of IE/Windows where the 'Replace...' feature for file attachments wasn't working

New in Version 4.4.0 (Released 5/24/2005):

  • Table Formatting. Tables can be created, by using a "|" as a cell divider, and you also need it as the first and last character of each row (each row on its own line). Markup within cells works as expected. For centered cells, put two or more spaces before and after the cell's contents; for right justified cells, put two or more spaces before the cell's contents.
  • Web-Based Slideshows. Very simple slideshows can be created from forum pages. This support is based on the open source 'S5' package by Eric Meyer, and does require an additional download. See the Slideshow HOWTO for more information.
  • Other Changes:
    • The site administrator can now set a time zone different than that of the underlying server; this feature is available on Mac OS X and other Unix systems that provide the Olson time zone data files
    • Minor changes were made to date and time formatting in some areas.
    • Archived forums now display the "key pages" area (containing links to projects, the main forum, etc.) for easier navigation.

New in Version 4.3.0 (Released 4/21/2005):

  • Web-Based Theme Editor. Site Administrators can now create and modify themes entirely through the web interface, making branding and other look and feel changes even easier.
  • Improved Help for New Users. Many of the help pages loaded by default into new forums have been changed to make it easier for new users to learn the software. They also link to a new 'getting started' area on the web site.
  • Category Pages. Added explicit support for building category pages, a bottom-up way to organize forum pages.
  • Easier Administration. All administration screens have been restructured to provide for greater consistency and ease of use.
  • RSS Enhancements:
    • added support for Firefox 'Live Bookmarks' (and other RSS feed detectors using the <link> tag).
    • new [rssfull:] tag, which renders an RSS feed with full description, and allows included HTML e.g. images.
    • some RSS feeds displayed with [rsslong:] did not have all HTML tags stripped from their description.
    • fixed title of feed in projects where the project had no name
  • Other Enhancements:
    • allow changing page title of directory page via Site Administration screens
    • fix problem where "use same passwords as main forum" permissions for a project would sometimes not look at accounts set in the main forum if the main forum was wide open
    • fix possible overflow calculating total disk storage for display
    • fix six level deep nested bullet lists
    • fix bug on Windows where sometimes older versions of theme components would be returned after restarting via the launcher user interface

New in Version 4.2.0 (Released 3/1/2005):

  • Enhancements to File Attachments:
    • upload dialogs now allow simultaneously uploading of several files/images
    • added progress bar to upload dialogs
    • new menu on file attachment icons allows you to more conveniently replace/update a file
    • added named file: links (those on the network require quotes around the network path)
  • Enhancements to Search:
    • rewrite of searching code to work more closely to common search engines; allows searching for words in different parts of the page, use "" to group words to find words only when together
    • pages where match occurs in title are listed first in results
  • Additional Changes:
    • new built-in theme 'Flair', courtesy of Jean-Claude Wippler
    • courses to be imported now must be placed within the 'import' directory, and files available there can be chosen from a list, rather than prompting for an arbitrary path
    • a ===comments=== divider right at the very end of the page would not be detected
    • RSS/include weren't handling permanent redirect (301) http status codes
    • in Campus version, do not return search results for forums the user does not have access to
    • fix problems exporting some forums that used rss/include
    • fixed problems with forums that are archived after a forum password is setup
    • fixed various places where an available URL prefix was not being used (search, references, links, etc.)
    • fixed problem rendering '&!' sequence

New in Version 4.1.0 (Released 1/12/2005):

  • Enhancements to Top-Posted Comments:
    • Setting of the 'top' checkbox on each page is remembered for the next poster
    • A new per-page setting allows selecting whether comments for the page appear always at top, always at bottom, or either
    • A per-forum setting for whether comments default to top or bottom can be set by the forum administrator
    • Top-posted comments can be set to appear below fixed text at the top of the page, delimited by ===comments===
  • Additional New Features:
    • Provided built-in support for Windows Services (previously relied on the third party FireDaemon utility)
    • Made available a Solaris version (but see our FAQ)
    • Themes can now override settings for 'print' pages
    • Courses from another CourseForum site can be imported
  • Other Bug Fixes and Changes:
    • course and project lists are now sorted alphabetically
    • fixed handling of some fatal startup errors on Windows
    • page includes with spaces after the 'include:' were not appearing in the appropriate page references list
    • fix problem in campus license with inherited post/write permissions in projects

New in Version 4.0.0 (Released 11/08/2004):

  • Weblog-style top posting. This new option allows you to post comments at the top of the page. Top posted comments can be made using the new 'Top' checkbox in the comments section of each page.

  • Named links. A different name for links (http, https, mailto, ftp, etc.) can be specified which will be displayed in the page instead of the link itself. To do this, place the link in square brackets, and after the link address itself, place a space and then the name to display, e.g. [http://www.google.com Google] will display as Google.

  • Export forums to static HTML. This allows you to generate static pages on disk containing the full content of a forum, suitable for archiving or being served by a regular web server. This option is available via the new 'Forum Export' option in each forum's administration pages. (full version only)

  • Additional new features and changes:
    • projects can now be archived/unarchived, which parallels how courses work
    • as an alternative to including a forum's RSS feed to embed a list of recent changes for the forum in a page, the new markup [recentchanges:] or [recentchanges:forum] can now be used
    • new windows were sometimes reusing browser windows rather than always opening a new window
    • when requesting a RSS feed via SSL, the internal URL's in the feed are now returned as https, not http
    • the sitewide help URL could sometimes be reset
    • for theme developers, the new include 'contentend' allows inserting material directly after the main content of the page
    • additional internal changes and customization options

New in Version 3.7.0 (Released 7/12/2004):

  • when linking across forums without specifying a page name (e.g. [3#]), now shows name of the forum rather than 'Home'
  • linking across courses now better handles pages that have special characters in their titles
  • adjusted rendering of images to resolve issues in some browsers
  • better handle XML CDATA and UTF-8 characters in included RSS feeds
  • enhancements to Campus licensing when using in conjunction with an external authentication server
  • numerous other changes and improvements internal to the software

New in Version 3.6.0 (Released 5/25/2004):

  • Improvements to Campus Licensing Features:
    • some projects would not appear in the projects list even when the user had access to them
    • delete project links were sometimes not showing up in the projects list even when the user had appropriate priveleges
    • the user's name is automatically added to comment posts
    • clarified terminology to more consistently use 'signin' rather than 'login'
    • restructured signin sequence to display errors on a separate page, and to allow linking directly to the signin page
    • hooks are available to allow the system to use an external authentication server to get account information (contact us for details)
  • Miscellaneous New Features and Changes:
    • added a new option in regular licensing so that forums can be set to allow posting comments without a password, though still requiring one for page editing
    • prevent search engines from indexing the 'Edit' pages
    • render headings using HTML h2 tags
    • removed some explanatory text from the directory page
  • Other Bug Fixes:
    • fix problem rendering bracketed 'file:' links starting with two backslashes
    • when 'allow HTML' is on, '<' or '>' within verbatim blocks are now escaped, to allow e.g. displaying HTML or XML example code in a page; processed HTML should use ===HTML=== blocks
    • adjusted HTTP headers to correct sporadic problem with stylesheets not loading on some Linux versions
    • cleanup routines would not detect files or images that were present in a page if they contained a space after the 'file:' or 'image:' part of the link, even though they display correctly

New in Version 3.5.0 (Released 4/19/2004):

  • New Campus licensing option, offering per-user, unlimited course licensing, single sign-on, and more
  • Additional Enhancements and Fixes:
    • Allow theme designers to specify the sizes of the comment posting area, as well as help popup windows; adjusted some of the built-in themes to take advantage of this
    • New option to allow setting a side-wide help page to be loaded when users hit the 'Help' button in any forum
    • Added the ability to monitor and clear up storage for activity logs via the 'Manage Storage' administration page
    • Made current behavior of redirecting from the home page directly to a course when only one is present an option that can be set in the Site Administration options
    • Made a variety of changes to the HTML generated for pages
    • Improved cacheability of theme components (images, stylesheets) via HTTP header changes, 304 responses, etc.

New in Version 3.4.0 (Released 3/17/2004):

  • allow easily including pages from different courses into the current page
  • added new markup (===html===) to easily include block of HTML code into a page
  • additional bug fixes and enhancements:
    • RSS feeds will return a 304 code when not changed to save bandwidth
    • handle http redirects in include: and rss: targets
    • updates to starting pages for forums reflecting changes in recent versions of the software
    • fixed problem deleting the first version of a page
    • clean up some harmless errors that were being logged
    • performance improvements for some operations

New in Version 3.3.0 (Released 2/23/2004):

  • New Features:
    • extended formatting markup to support nested lists, using multiple "*" or "#" at the start of a line
    • links are now allowed to forums outside the course, and can be specified via the forum's URL prefix, followed by a hash ("#") and then the name of the page, e.g. "3#Help" or "Physics#Home"
    • new Site Administration option allows projects to specify their own "URL prefix", as courses have been able to do previously
    • to allow control of web crawlers, serve up a 'robots.txt' file if placed in the 'Course Data' directory
  • Other Enhancements:
    • multiple fixes in Versions feature: inhibit processing of include/rss directives which caused delays; improved performance of 'diff' algorithm; escape embedded HTML tags in 'view unformatted'; fix location of navigation buttons at the top of the page; additional stability improvements
    • fix problem where printing on IE6 was ignoring stylesheets
    • fixed errors loading RSS feeds in some aggregators such as AmphetaDesk, caused when some page names contained ampersands
    • moved 'Find Pages' above key pages list in Broadcast theme
    • tweak date formats to use abbreviations for months, not numbers
    • on Windows, detect add-on themes on stop/start from the GUI, not only on full restart
    • adjusted signin dialogs so just hitting 'Return' submits them
    • fix errors that could sometimes occur on list of archived courses page when logged in as site administrator
    • extra blank pages were being created for bracketed words appearing within ====== verbatim blocks
    • strip any quotes from list of accounts
    • improved error handling in site administration pages
    • additional stability enhancements for 'include' functionality

New in Version 3.2.1 (Released 1/16/2004):

  • fixed a sporadic bug that could cause pages containing one or more included RSS feeds to sometimes hang when loading

New in Version 3.2.0 (Released 1/12/2004):

  • New features:
    • embed RSS feeds directly into forum pages (via '[rss:http://...]' links)
    • a list of pages or other links can now be placed on every forum page, as selected by the forum administrator (replacing the fixed 'Projects' and 'RSS' links)
    • extended 'include:' links to allow including the content of other forum pages (e.g. [include:Home])
  • Enhancements to Themes:
    • new standard theme "Broadcast"
    • new theme exchange for add-on themes available on the website, including several new contributed themes: "Notebook", "Parchment", "Titanium"
    • size of attachment windows can now be set on a per-theme basis using the new 'dialogsize' parameter in the theme's info.txt file
    • removed clock from sample "Bookworm" theme which caused problems on IE5/Mac
    • added date of last change to "Classic" theme
    • various fixes for themes in Windows
  • Other Changes:
    • fixed bug where text enclosed in double square brackets was creating empty pages
    • fixed error handling behavior for badly formatted 'include:' links
    • fixed rendering of bold http links
    • fixed some caching problems when including other web pages
    • fix version information etc. in Windows binaries
    • fix possible crash in Windows when doing a search with an extremely long search string

New in Version 3.1.0 (Released 12/8/2003):

  • New features and options:
    • recognize use of file:// URL's for access to files on shared network drives
    • new option to reset site administration password (a menu item on Windows and Mac, and a new "-resetpassword" command line option on Unix
    • ability to delete a specific older version of a page
  • Enhancements and fixes:
    • better detect and resolve conflicts that occur when multiple people make overlapping changes to forum pages
    • adjust build processes to substantially shrink size of binaries
    • list of recent changes now displays the date/time of most recent change
    • fix display glitch where IE/Windows text area on edit page would change size when first modified
    • fix some problems running as a StartupItem on Panther
    • improvements in version differences display
    • on Safari, some parts of certain image buttons were not active

New in Version 3.0.1 (Released 11/21/2003):

  • fixed bug that could very rarely cause IE/Win to report an error following submit of edit forms, but only on certain pages (changes to the page were being made correctly)
  • fixed error that prevented all entry into forums setup for individual licensed accounts after a license key had expired

New in Version 3.0.0 (Released 11/17/2003):

  • Themes Support:
    • Appearance of each forum as well as the overall site now determined by themes
    • Themes can be set at the project, course or site level
    • Several standard themes are available
    • Custom themes can be added, e.g. for corporate branding
    • Additional changes to accommodate themes: "start new page" area replaced by "new page" link, comment posting area made fixed height
  • Integrating Other Web Information:
    • New "include:" links allow incorporating other web pages directly into a forum page
    • Custom link prefixes can be defined which extend the markup language, and allow including information from external web services into pages
  • Other Changes:
    • Dropped the "mailto:" from rendered form of mailto: links
    • Allow page rename to change the case of a page's name
    • Old name of page no longer shows up in changes list after rename
    • Escape HTML character codes in edit page so preserved in most browsers
    • Fix page links in RSS feeds for sites hosted out of a subdirectory

New in Version 2.6.0 (Released 9/30/2003):

  • New Features:
    • versions browser now shows a 'diff' view, highlighting the parts of each page changed with each version
    • the administrator can now both delete and rename pages, either right from the page itself, or from the list of all pages
    • a new printable version of a page, without all the controls, is now available
    • the administrator can now purge all older versions of a page from the versions browser
  • Markup and Formatting Changes:
    • allow bracketed https: links
    • add popup: links, which work like help: but without the button rendering style
    • add support for rtsp: (streaming) links
    • can now include square brackets in the page by doubling them up
  • Bug Fixes and Other Changes:
    • saving very large pages was very slow
    • downloading files originally uploaded to another forums in a course can now only be done if the user has permissions in the original forum
    • when logged in as Administrator but without a name, use 'Admin' as the default name when posting comments
    • added summary of total user activity to user activity stats page
    • fixed messages in the headers and footers of pages for archived courses, and when running the free version

New in Version 2.5.0 (Released 8/26/2003):

  • titlebar now includes name of forum as well as page name
  • in the short recent changes list appearing on each page, the tooltip for pages modified in the past 24 hours now shows the time modified rather than the date
  • added version number to bottom of site admin page
  • additional bug fixes:
    • signin page on password-protected forums was being included in the page activity statistics
    • internal enhancements to FreeBSD builds
    • bracketed http links no longer cause new pages to be created for the link
    • better error handling for permissions errors which prevent writing data files on startup

New in Version 2.4.0 (Released 7/21/2003):

  • list of all pages in the forum is now available, linked from the forum setup page (though non-admins can view the list as well)
  • administrators can now completely delete pages in forums (via the new page list screen)
  • added support information (email, forum, home page) to Windows and Mac OS X about boxes
  • changed Windows installer to add a link to the online user's guide in the program group, and added an option on the uninstaller to delete all data files
  • allow changing 'Welcome to...' message on the home page
  • reworked authentication options for projects, including adding an option to explicitly use whatever authentication is set up for the main course forum
  • allow ftp links to be placed in brackets to produce a short form
  • RSS feeds now note when pages are empty in their item descriptions
  • modified wording of message on directory page when running the free version
  • additional bug fixes:
    • fixed typo in editing instructions
    • added additional HTTP headers to work around a problem where Safari was sometimes cacheing editing pages after some other operations
    • remove some spurious but harmless error messages that were being logged on deleting courses
    • fix references to help icons when run proxied from a subdirectory of another web server
    • recognize PNG images, even when not uploaded with proper MIME type

New in Version 2.3.0 (Released 7/2/2003):

  • new RSS (Really Simple Syndication) support in every single forum, allowing you to easily track changes made using popular news aggregators such as NetNewsWire, NewzCrawler, or AmphetaDesk.
  • improved the appearance and layout of pages, making it easier to navigate through a course or project forum
  • new features to make it easier to refer to pages pages in different forums within the course, such as between different projects
  • various enhancements to page formatting:
    • support for numbered lists
    • support for abbreviated display of long URL's or email addresses
    • several enhancements to preformatted text
  • other bug fixes and enhancements:
    • fix display problems on user activity pages
    • adjust setuid behavior to run correctly when non-root user specified
    • fix stylesheet, image and page references on some pages
    • adjusted default size of comment field

New in Version 2.2.0 (Released 5/19/2003):

  • new tools for course administrators to allow them to cleanup old versions of pages, and unused attachments
  • allow page locking for course administrator in the free version
  • fix problems on Windows when can't start up on the default port
  • fix problems in the option that allows course administrators to prevent students from creating projects
  • fixes to make it easier to run as a StartupItem on OS X

New in Version 2.1.0 (Released 4/9/2003):

  • extended branding to support insertion of new elements into pages
  • enhanced project administration: ability to delete individual projects, and an option to restrict creating them
  • added new markup for headings (surrounded by three asterisks)
  • miscellaneous performance improvements in page rendering
  • bug fixes:
    • fix problems when running on newer versions of Linux
    • fix problems creating accounts without passwords
    • allow attached files to be linked to from multiple pages

New in Version 2.0.0 (Released 3/13/2003):

  • added support for international characters in all content
  • changed Windows version to run as a small GUI, rather than running as a console-mode application
  • update application icons (Mac/Windows)
  • bug fixes:
    • workaround bug in Safari beta 60 where it would often incorrectly complain about network connection resets
    • use of certain search terms could generate bad results pages
    • ignore leading/trailing spaces in links to other pages
    • fix width of edit box for older Netscape versions

New in Version 1.3.0 (Released 2/10/2003):

  • support preformatted text by enclosing the whole block with '==='
  • new course option to allow HTML tags to be used in addition to the standard markup
  • new 'references' feature showing what other pages link to a page
  • new option to hide a course from the directory page
  • new option to store passwords with permanent cookies on login
  • fixed layout problems with Safari beta: footer rule intruding on bottom logo, button wrapping in right hand area of pages
  • fix problems formatting mailto: and http: links enclosed in brackets
  • when using individual student accounts, include the user's name in the header for posting, rather than inserting it as editable in the body of the posted comment
  • when only a single course is defined, loading the site home page now takes you directly to that course; the 'Site Home' links in page footers can still be used to access the directory page
  • empty pages are indicated in the search and recent changes results, and omitted from the short list of recent changes appearing on view pages
  • the textarea on edit pages now takes up the full page width
  • added an indicator to the bottom right of view pages showing if the user is signed in as the course or site administrator

New in Version 1.2.0 (Released 1/13/2003):

  • enhancements to support larger number of courses
  • option to choose from a predefined template when creating new pages, with the course administrator able to define new templates
  • option to search across all projects in a course
  • change restrictions on free version (i.e. when no license key provided): remove number of pages restriction, but don't allow use of versions, images and attachment features
  • restyled administration dialogs to provide help text on demand
  • cosmetic enhancements to edit pages

New in Version 1.1.0 (Released 11/19/2002):

  • Reworked default course pages to provide more explicit structure:
    • pages now provide a typical site structure as a starting point
    • added new "hints" popups to provide suggestions for using pages
    • removed initial Setup page; creating a course/project now goes directly to Home page
    • reminder to set admin passwords is displayed until set
  • Unlicensed version now allows creation of a single course, but with a limited number of pages, and with restrictions on some features
  • Allow images to be explicitly resized for display
  • Allow stylesheets and images to be customized (e.g. for branding)
  • New option to allow comments to be posted on locked pages
  • Assorted bug fixes:
    • Changing license key wasn't taking into account courses already loaded into memory
    • Addressed problems posting empty comments or comments with just a name
    • Entering license key from main page returns to main page when done
    • Fix cancel on signin dialogs when required for editing pages
    • Enable setuid support for FreeBSD version
    • Changes to allow running proxied from a subdirectory on another web server (e.g. via Apache's ProxyPass)
    • Internal infrastructure/performance updates