Essay with rich text Question types: content pasting restrictions

We have blocked pasting of rendered math and images including base64 in the following Question types:

• Essay with rich text,
• Formula Essay with rich text, and
• Chemistry essay with rich text.

When pasted, these assets were causing issues with the captured response data of the user.

Images need to be uploaded using the image tool in the Question type. This ensures the image is captured in the system and aligned to the user session. Previously, images were displaying when pasted, but when viewed in resume or review states the image was missing -- as the image asset was not available in the asset bucket. 

Images pasted into the text area will be stripped out, and display the following icon and message, to explain what happened to the image:

" Invalid pasted image. Images can be inserted using the uploader in the toolbar."

Figure 1: error message, reporting a failed image.

If rendered math from an external source is pasted into the essay text area, the math will be stripped out, and a placeholder that says "[Invalid pasted math]" added into the text. The user will then need to use the math keypad tool to insert math. This ensures that the math will always render as expected and not encounter any conflicts with unwanted HTML math rendering content coming from the original source.

Accessibility improvement for conflicting IDs

We have added dynamic generation of ARIA labeled by IDs in the dialog windows of the Assess API player. These IDs were originally hard-coded, however as there could be multiple uses of the same dialog in a page, this was causing an accessibility violation of non unique IDs. We have maintained the original ID used in each case and then appended an integer at the end.

Grouping and ordering of Tags based on type and name

Tags attached to Items and Activities are now grouped by Tag Types and then ordered by the Tag Names. This allows authors to audit Tags attached attached to Items or Activities in a much easier manner. The CSS selector for the Tag chip remains the same, as "lrn-author-settings-tags-label".

Item and Activity title improvements

The reference field will also be displayed by default along with the title when enabled for Items and/or Activities. The reference field can be hidden using the new init options. The activity_edit.item_title initialization attribute is now deprecated and replaced with activity_edit.item_search.title object, which gives better control on how the reference and title fields should be displayed. In the item_list mode, the reference field is also searchable when title is enabled for  Items. The reference search option can be hidden using the item_list.toolbar.search.controls option.

Conversion of Activity UI settings from legacy to regions based format

The player UI settings for Activities will be automatically converted from the legacy ui_style based settings to the newer and more flexible regions based configuration when opening Activities in the Author API based Activity editor. This means Activities created using the Author Site based Activity editor can now be used in Author API. While the UI settings are converted to the regions based format, the Activity JSON would also be sanitized to remove the converted settings from the legacy format and also settings which are turned on in the legacy format, but available by default in the regions based preset.

While the Author API based Activity editor offers much more powerful features than the legacy Author Site based Activity Editor, we are still working on bringing in additional non UI related settings into it. If Activities created in your Item Bank need to have non UI settings like Distractor Rationale, Administrative settings etc, you should not switch over to use the Author API based Activity editor in the Author Site yet.  

The Author API based Activity editor converts Item references into an object format by default for Items, Intro Item, Outro Item and resource Item. The object format makes it possible for Activities to have Items from multiple Item banks. 

To enable the Author API based Activity editor in the new Author Site for your Item bank, contact the Learnosity Support staff.

UI Improvements

Below is a summary of all CSS changes between the previous LTS release and this release. Generally, these changes contain new feature implementations and various accessibility improvements.

See all CSS changes between v2021.1.LTS and v2021.2.LTS in GitHub

Annotations API

• Updated the default blue color for the text highlight module for color contrast improvements

Assess API

• Fixed a bug that caused the "right" region to disappear when using Safari in full screen mode
• Improved the general dialog styling
• Improved the flagged status of an Item in the TOC with a new icon
• Improved the resource menu
• Added styling for the bottom region of the player
• Improved the color contrast for partially attempted Items
• Improved the styling for the "skip to navigation" element
• Improved the annotations button styling

Author API

• Updated styles to work with Learnosity Design System
• Improved AB standards interface
• Updated tooltips to support longer text descriptions
• Improved Tag search and ordering elements
• Improved adaptive Activity editing interface
• Improved template builder interface
• Improved Item settings modals
• Added styling for Item references

Questions API

• Added a code editor to the longtextV2 Question type
• Improved general display of the stimulus and shared passages
• Improved the color contrast for the formula keyboard
• Improved the display of text inputs by removing an extra white background