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Publish For Printing

There were three main reasons Question Writer users asked for a printing feature -

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The 'Publish for Printing' option is in the Publish menu and creates an HTML based document optimized for printing. It respects randomization - so you can create a different randomized version for each quiz taker. It creates two versions of each quiz - one with room for the quiz taker to write his answers, and one answer sheet which also includes feedback.

You can use your default browser to print the quiz - Internet Explorer and the Opera browser will create the best results. As the document is HTML, it is fairly easy to change if you want to edit your quiz after publishing it. Also, it uses CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and so you can completely change the design of the printed document. The template files are located in 'C:\Program Files\Question Writer 3\Publishing\Print' - any changes you make to these files will be reflected in all of your future printed quizzes.

Posted by Alexander on April 30, 2009 | Publish For Printing| TrackBack

Question Writer 3.3

Question Writer 3.3 is available for download today. Here's a quick list of the new features and fixes. I'll blog them in more detail over the course of next week.

1. Publish for Printing. This is the biggest new feature and will create a HTML version of your quiz optimized for the printed page.

2. Text Size. This is in the advanced quiz options and allows you to override the size of the body and title text set by the theme.

3. Disable Essay Feedback. This setting allows you to specify that no feedback page should be shown for an essay style question.

4. HTML Title Fix. Previously some html tags had been making it into question titles and reports in Question Writer Tracker. Question Writer will now strip these out.

5. Specify Flash Version in Standard Edition. Previously, if you were using the Standard version, you couldn't change the Flash version of the output. You can now - set it at Flash 8 to improve image quality.

6. Upload to QWT Improved. Some users were having difficultly using the upload facility in Question Writer when behind a corporate firewall or proxy. I've improved the code to help with this.

7. Section 'Flattening' You can now choose whether the contents of a section should be kept inside the section or randomized with questions from other sections.

Posted by Alexander on April 29, 2009 | Question Writer 3.3| TrackBack

Server Maintenance - April 30th

The Question Writer Tracker will be down for about 30 minutes on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 for essential maintenance. This downtime will occur sometime between the hours of 6:00AM to 9:00AM GMT. During the 30 minutes where the QWT server is not online, results will be directed to the backup server, and these will be transferred to the main QWT server within about 10 minutes of it coming back online.

Posted by Alexander on April 27, 2009 | Server Maintenance - April 30th| TrackBack

Google Analytics Quiz Tracking

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Here's another small upgrade for Question Writer Tracker. You can now enter your Google Analytics id in your user details and all of your quizzes will be tracked as if they are part of your website. If you're not using Google Analytics yet - you should. It's free, it provides great insight into the way people use your website and half of the top 100 websites already use it.

Also, right beside the Google Analytics id field, you can enter your timezone, so that all times in the Question Writer Tracker interface appear local to you.

Posted by Alexander on April 17, 2009 | Google Analytics Quiz Tracking| TrackBack

More On IP Address Blocking for Quizzes

I gotten a few questions about the new features, and I wanted to clear up some misconceptions.

Quiz Takers Don't Need a Question Writer Tracker Account
When you upload a quiz to QWT, you'll get a link that is available on the public internet - you can give it to anyone, and as long as they have an internet connection, they'll be able to take the quiz.

You Can Deny Access To a Quiz Based on the User's IP Address
The new feature allows you to define an IP address that is allowed, or one that is disallowed, or a range of IP addresses that are allowed, or a range of IP addresses that are not allowed, or a combination of these features. There are some simple examples in the orginal post, but here's a really complicated example to show all the features.

Let's say your IP Restrict string is

-123.123.78.22; 123.123.*.*; 210.33.*.*;

and a user arrives to take your quiz.

QWT will first check if the user's IP address is 123.123.78.22. If it is, the user will be denied access (because of the - sign) and no further rules will be evaluated.

If it is not, then QWT will check if the user's IP address starts with 123.123. - if it does, the user will be allowed access and no further rules will be evaluated.

If it is not, then QWT will check if the user's IP address starts with 210.33. - if it does, the user will be allowed access.

If it does not, there are no further rules to evaluate, so the user will be denied access.

Posted by Alexander on April 3, 2009 | More On IP Address Blocking for Quizzes| TrackBack

Restrict Access Based on IP Address

This is a new feature for Question Writer Tracker - it allows you to restrict access to your uploaded quizzes to people by IP address.

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I think this will be most useful to restrict access to a quiz to a classroom or computer lab but I'm sure you'll find other uses for it too.

You can add a number of rules - they are evaluated left to right, and wildcards are supported.

Use * to represent a wildcard number
Use ; to seperate multiple IP address terms
Use - to disallow ip address

*.*.*.* allows access to all users.

123.123.*.* allows access to just the 123.123 subnet

-123.123.*.*; *.*.*.* denies access to 123.123 subnet but allows everyone else.

Posted by Alexander on April 2, 2009 | Restrict Access Based on IP Address| TrackBack