This Guide is for the legacy DesignPLUS sidebar (installed before July 2023). Visit the Current Admin Guide for information for newer installations or those who have upgraded.

July 1, 2020

Cidi Labs Design Tools Release Notes

July 1, 2020

Overview

This month's release includes an assortment of updates and tweaks.

In the Works

New Upload/Embed Image Tool

There is a new version of the Upload/Embed Image tool that we are finishing with the following features:

  1. streamlined UI
  2. ability to pull images from your Canvas course and user files, Unsplash.com Links to an external site., and Pexels.com Links to an external site.
  3. set alt text before uploading an image
  4. Improved behavior in the new Canvas rich content editor

Inherited Scoped Credentials

We now have the option for institutions to use inherited scoped credentials in Canvas rather than manually created developer credentials. We will be sending out information about how to transition to inherited credentials when we send the information on upgrading to the new Upload/Embed Image tool. If you are eager to transition and just can't wait until then, send a request to support@cidilabs.com.

New Features

 Preview upcoming Design Tools features in your Canvas beta environment

This release includes code that will make new features available for testing in the Canvas beta environment before the official release. 

Along with this update, we will try and release new functionality to beta periodically during the month and add documentation for that new functionality here in the release notes.

Currently, the ability to preview new functionality is limited to the Design Tools sidebar but we will work to see if we can add something similar for the Upload/Embed Image Tool and the Multi-Tool in the future.

Updated or Modified Features

 Additional Actions Enhancements

The following HTML elements were added to the list of what can have a paragraph inserted before or after:

ADDRESS, ARTICLE, ASIDE, AUDIO, DETAILS, FIGURE, FOOTER, HEADER, HR, IFRAME, IMG, NAV, SECTION, SUMMARY

And these elements were added to the list of what can have its content stored:

ADDRESS, ARTICLE, ASIDE, DETAILS, FIGURE, FOOTER, HEADER, NAV, SECTION

 Max Height for Content Blocks Popup

The Add Content Blocks popup has been given a maximum height so that users can scroll to see additional blocks on smaller screens when an institution has a lot of template blocks available.

Bug Fixes

 Module List Dates when Visibility is Toggled

When toggling the visibility of a module in the Module List, dates in the date fields for that item will be added back into the rich content editor.

 Stop New RCE from Scrolling to Top with Image Border Style Change

Resolved an issue where choosing a border style for an image in the new RCE jumped the page view to the top of the editor.

 UEI Refresh Token with Inherited Credentials Fixed: 06/19/2020 

Resolved an issue where the request for a new credential for the Upload/Embed Image tool was failing for institutions using the new inherited developer credentials.

 Toolbar Position in Syllabus (new RCE)Fixed: 06/10/2020 

In most areas in Canvas, the new RCE removes the native Canvas right sidebar so the Design Tools sidebar pushes the content over to create a place for the sidebar. However, if Show Course Summary is selected for the syllabus, a right sidebar will appear limiting the available area for the rich content editor. The tools have been updated to overlap the right sidebar if it exists (like with the original RCE). 

Tweaks to the Canvas UI

We try to avoid making changes that extend beyond the Design Tools sidebar, but occasionally, there are some issues that we tweak to improve usability or to address issues that arise.

Quiz Description Overflow

The way the quiz description area is set up in Canvas, popups appeared behind other parts of the Canvas UI.

Quiz popup before

A tweak has been made to the CSS so that popups appear above the content.

Quiz Popup After

Technical Details

The culprit CSS in Canvas is:

.quiz-header {
    border-bottom: 1px solid #a4a4a4;
    overflow: hidden;
}

We overwrite that only when the Design Tools sidebar was used to build the content:

body.using_design_tools .quiz-header {
    overflow: unset;
}