On October 12 we released version 1.7.64 of the OpenLab. We didn’t publish release notes for the September release, so those features are included here as well.
New features and improvements
Rich text and media embedding for comments
The OpenLab now has enhanced commenting functionality, allowing you and your site members and visitors to write comments with rich text (bold, italics, links, etc), and easily embed media by simply pasting the URL, as you would in a post.
When you add a comment, you’ll see buttons to add rich text styles to your comment – bold, italics, underline, and numbered and bulleted lists. There’s also a button for adding a link, and one for embedding media.
These plugins are already activated on all OpenLab sites, so if you’re a site admin, you don’t need to do anything on your site. We have help for Commenting on a Site, which includes the new rich text and media embedding functionality.
We hope this helps to make discussions on the OpenLab even more vibrant!
Embedding for Miro boards
In addition to other types of media embedding, we now have easy embedding for Miro boards. Simply paste the URL for the board you want to embed on its own line, as you would for a YouTube video, and that’s it!
Health Services Administration department changed to Health Sciences
We added the new Health Sciences department, and changed all existing courses, projects, clubs, portfolios, and members associated with Health Sciences Administration, to Health Sciences.
OpenLab Attributions plugin
We’ve made some improvements to the OpenLab Attributions plugin. Now when you add an attribution, the window is movable so you can see the text beneath the window to include in your attribution statement. We’ve also reorganized the flow of the fields in the window.
And, the plugin is now responsive so it works better on mobile.
OpenLab Support & Help widgets
We formalized the OpenLab widget that appeared on the course template as a text widget, and also added an OpenLab support widget. These are now standalone widgets that you can add to any site by going to Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets, and adding OpenLab Help and/or OpenLab support.
The OpenLab Help widget includes links to The OpenLab for Students module, and to Help pages for Getting Started, Adding a Comment, and Writing a Post.
The OpenLab Support widget links to the OpenLab Help section, the schedule and sign up for Open Hours, and the email support Contact Form.
Library Subject Guides widget: Gender & Sexuality Studies
We added a link to the new Subject Guide for Gender & Sexuality Studies in the LIbrary Subject Guides widget.
Bug fixes
The OpenLab Attributions plugin had a bug causing attribution statements to be formatted incorrectly.
We fixed an issue with the Hemingway theme where the sidebar was not appearing on mobile devices.
As always, please contact us with any questions!
