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.

June 15, 2017

Cidi Labs Design Tools Release Notes

June 15, 2017

Some big changes are coming to the rich content editor tool!

The anticipated production release is August 18, 2017.

Find out more by reading the Beta Release Notes.

Things have been a little crazy over the last few months as we have been working on improvements to the rich content editor tools as well as a new version of the Multi Tool. Even though changes and improvements have continued to take place for the existing tools, they were not accompanied by release notes.

Continue reading to learn about what has been happening with Design Tools.

New Features

Beta Tools Preview

In connection with the upcoming changes to the rich content editor tools you now have the ability to preview those changes by clicking the "Turn on Beta" in the bottom right corner of the Design Tools interface.

Anything created using the beta version of the tools will work in a production course so you are free to use these new tools when creating content. Find out more by reading the Beta Release Notes.

Updated or Modified Features

 Syllabus Navigation

One of the lesser known features of Design Tools is a navigation that is built on the syllabus page to allow users to jump to a particular section based on the heading structure. This navigation is in the right sidebar of Canvas but a change to that sidebar in Canvas a few months back made it so the navigation was only available at the top of the syllabus.

The navigation has now been attached to a button that toggles visibility and always remains in view.

 Accordions, Expanders and Tabs in Blocks View

  • Additional styling was added to the rich content editor to clearly outline headings and content for the dynamic panel widgets.

 Template Pages available in AssignmentsAdded:04/10/2017

  • Copy Existing Content was adjusted to allow pulling template pages into assignments.

 Mobile App Added: 03/29/2017

  • Removed page title if Design Tools heading exists.

Bug Fixes

 Editing Link buttons in RICH CONTENT EDITOR (RCE)Fixed: 06/07/2017

  • Overrode some default CSS that prevented buttons created using Design Tools from being selected in the rich content editor when using Firefox and Safari.

 Some Tools not Always PopulatingFixed: 04/28/2017

  • Fix that prevented the controls for banner images, HTML Snippets and the accessibility tools from populating when the    icon was clicked instead of anywhere else on the heading. 

 iFrame Preview in Rich Content Editor (RCE)Fixed: 04/19/2017

  • One of the steps Design Tools took to give a more accurate preview of what content would look like when saved was preventing the placeholder image that Canvas uses to indicate an iframe from showing. The code was adjusted to allow that image to show.

 Extended Course Customizations TimingFixed: 04/12/2017

  • When using an extended customizations course at the sub-account level, the timing of how things load in Canvas was occasionally preventing the extended customizations from showing. The setup for identifying the extended course at the sub-account level was altered to ensure that the customizations were always available.

 Vanity url conflict with banner imagesFixed:03/29/2017

  • A script that runs to update institutional banner urls was adjusted to account for institutions that use a vanity url.

 Tools Interface ScrollingFixed: 03/29/2017

  • Fixed CSS to address an issue where some of the panels in the tools interface would not scroll.

 Rich Content Editor StylingFixed: 03/07/2017

  • Added CSS classes from Canvas HTML and Body tags to the rich content editor to help make preview more accurate.
  • Removed a CSS stylesheet from the editor that set styles not visible when the content was saved.

 Mobile App DisplayFixed: 03/07/2017

  • Removed extra body padding
  • Removed Canvas CSS that overrode paragraph text color
  • Adjusted CSS to allow tables to scroll horizontally to view all content
  • Fix glitch preventing max-width fill images from shrinking on the mobile app

 Modal Dialog CreationFixed: 02/09/2017

Modal dialogs were not created when the trigger was in a list item.

 Module List - Mobile AppFixed: 01/27/2017

Link to first item does not work in the Canvas mobile apps. Code adjusted to point to module list when viewed in the app.

 Apple Theme IconFixed: 01/10/2017

The Canvas icon change broke the icon used for the apple theme. Icon replaced with an image for future stability.