Dokkeos

It might seem kind of weird to mention it, but I had somewhat of a big scare when Secunia sent us an e-mail entitled "Security Patches in Dokeos 1.8.5". If my fears had been right, it would have meant that we would have needed to re-package 1.8.5 only two days after the official release.

[digg=http://digg.com/tech_news/Dokeos_1_8_5_released] Dokeos 1.8.5 has been released, after a long 8 months development! Check it out on http://www.dokeos.com/download.php There's a lot to say, so I won't comment about the release itself in this post. You can find out more about this release and what it brings you on the official website, by following the link on the right panel. We are sorry to have kept you waiting for so long for a new version, but we're sure you'll understand why when using it!

The most troublesome bit of code when it comes to migrating a Dokeos 1.6.x portal to a Dokeos 1.8.x version, is without doubt the learning paths bit, represented by the main/install/update-db-scorm-1.6.x-1.8.0.inc.php script. The fact that it may look like the script is wrong sometimes (because it fails and leaves your database in a somewhat broken state), the problem actually comes down to the original database's integrity. For example, you might get an error saying this:

SQL error in file /var/www/dokeos/main/install/update-db-scorm-1.6.x-1.8.0.inc.php at line 604.

It's still a bit premature because we'd like to try it out a few times more before officially announcing it on the website, so if you want to help, feel free to download your version from here: http://www.dokeos.com/download/dokeos-1.8.5.zip In a few hours from now we will make the official announcement, so the official release date will be the 12th of June anyway. If you happen to witness some wierd thing in the install or upgrade procedure, please, let me know as soon as possible! Otherwise, just enj

After having a look at a nice little game in Python (Frets on Fire, try it, it's a game of the likes of Guitar Hero, totally GPL) and seeing that they had a "code walkthrough" page on their wiki, I thought that the name "code walkthrough" was very explicit and helpful so... I have put together a few lines of explanation regarding the Dokeos 1.8 code for those who just joined the Dokeos development community. http://www.dokeos.com/wiki/index.php/Dokeos_1.8_Code_walkthrough It's not much but hopefully it might save

I don't know about you, but I really don't like the Dokeos footer moving around the screen when there's less content. Luckily, CSS offer an easy way to change this. Let's say I want to update the css/dokeos_classic/ theme. The rule, as always, is to make a copy of the directory that is the closest to what I want, and only work on a copy, so I'm going to do that.

Frédéric Burlet, the guy behind the Red5 server mods for the Dokeos videoconference, has recently added a short documentation to explain the process of installing the Red5 server on a... server. I'm adding it as is here, and I already added the file inside the documentation/ folder in Dokeos 1.8.5 stable (to come within a few days).

Dokeos Red5 applications ======================== Table of contents ----------------- 1. Installation 1.1. Red5 1.2. Dokeos Red5 Application 2. Configuration 2.1. How does it work ? 2.2. Recorder 2.3. VideoConference 3.

A few typos went into the upgrade code from 1.8.4 to 1.8.5 RC1, so if you went through this particular setup, you're going to have to fix a few things manually:

1. The queries about the required fields in the user profile were missing a quote, so you want to execute, inside your main database, the 3 first queries below
2. It won't help you much as the error has already been made, but the survey tool that now appears in the interaction section is visible by default, which is acceptable for a new course, given the teacher has to go through it anyway, but is not (acceptable) for an ex

Not that I've been too busy on Dokeos lately (I tend to take my mind off Dokeos for a couple of days after a release), but it's going to come back very fast now as we are warming up for the last run to Dokeos 1.8.5 stable. So, what's on the menu? Well, apparently there are still *some* bugs about the course copy and SCORM export somehow. Thomas filed a bug for me about this.

LETSI, Learning Education Training Systems Interoperability, is entering a phase of study for the next version of SCORM, version 2.0. Of course, given the little level of adoption of SCORM 2004 (or 1.3), this might seem a little premature for some, but the making of such a large norm takes time, so it's probably better to get started early. The 2.0 version is said (in the announcement of the