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This page provides a history of the changes in each release of QPL 5. If you are not using the current release, please review the list of changes below to determine if you should upgrade.
One correction was made in this version of QPL to accomodate a change in MySQL 5.0. If you are using MySQL 4.x, you do not need to implement this upgrade (but it would not harm anything). Further, this change only affects the content analysis functions. So, if you are not using the content analysis functions in your project, you do not need to implement this upgrade. No changes have been made to the database structure since the 5.05.001 release listed below. (See Upgrading Live Sites for information on how to upgrade an existing web site to this new version.)
This version of QPL focuses on improving accessibility for visually impaired users, meeting W3C coding standard for HTML 4.01 Transitional web pages for both the generated questionnaire pages and the administrative pages, and updating the system programs to be compatible with PHP versions 4.x and 5.x, and MySQL 4.x and 5.x. (Note: QPL still uses the PHP "mysql" extension to connect with the MySQL server, not the newer "mysqli" or "PDO" extensions.) Several other improvements have been made as noted below. No changes have been made to the database structure since the 5.05.001 release listed below. (See Upgrading Live Sites for information on how to upgrade an existing web site to this new version.)
The system was completely reviewed to insure that the web questionnaire forms that are generated are easily accessed by visually impaired users. All of the form controls are labeled with the answers (so screen reader software can tell the blind user what the control does) and the tab order of form controls is explicitly set (so the blind user can navigate the form in the correct order). These changes also benefit sighted users. For example, a respondent may now click on the label of a multiple choice question to check its radio button. All of the controls on the administrative pages have been updated to meet these same accessibility requirements.
A sample QPL questionnaire has been reviewed by the U.S. Department of Education and was found to be Section 508-compliant, with the following caveat: If a questionnaire author puts a graphic into his questionnaire, then the graphic should be appropriately labeled with the IMG TITLE option or, if a longer explanation is needed to explain the graphic, as linked HTML file that uses text to describe the graphic file.
Both the generated questionnaire web pages and the static administrative pages have been updated so they pass the W3C Markup Validation tests for HTML 4.01 Transitional coding. (Note that the index.htm page that is generated appears to not pass because the validator does not detect when some of the HTML code on the page is being generated by JavaScript.) Meeting this standard gives you greater assurance that QPL pages will work with browsers that also comply to these standards.
New buttons have been added to the QPL toolbar in HomeSite that help you write your QPL program. Buttons have been added for each of the eight types of questions, as well as buttons for global settings and options.
These buttons launch dialog boxes that guide you through the programming. You fill in the blanks, then click on the OK button to insert the program code into your questionnaire program. The dialog boxes also include brief help files that describe all the options on the dialog box. You may continue to edit the code after it has been inserted into your program.
Modified the horizontal rule definition so that it always puts a page break after the horizontal rule (i.e., the marker used in the local HTML file to indicate where a page will be displayed when it is deployed on a live web server). Whether the page will actually be broken after the horizontal rule depends on the particular browser being used. IE versions earlier than IE 6 ignore the page break setting. (Note: The page break setting is also used if one prints the local HTML questionnaire to Acrobat's PDF writer if using IE 6.)
When a respondent goes from one questionnaire page to another, the keyboard focus is automatically set to the first input field on the page. This is done to aid respondents who do not use a mouse. It will only put the focus on the input field if the target question of the link has an input field (i.e., it is not a VOID question) or the next question has an input field. It will put the focus on the Next section button or Exit button if the target question is VOID and it's the last question on the page. Thus, a questionnaire author could still have trouble if the have one very, very long VOID question that fills more than one visible screen. This may be fixed by making it into two or more VOID questions. Then the above rules will work so that no cursor focus is set because the next question does not have an input field and it is not the last question on the page.
The special ID question you may have used to identify respondents can be displayed on the content analysis pages to identify respondents, instead of using just the built-in case ID number.
The bouncing green ball graphic used on the left menu now has an ALT tag that says "At page." The blank graphic says "Go to page." The graphic and the tag are now dynamically updated when the respondent moves from one page to another. Screen reader software uses the tags to tell the visually impaired reader what current menu page is.
The graphic image title tags on the menu may be changed from the default labels using the label number commands in a .pgm file. Also, the default name of the menu frame has been changed from "Sections" to "Menu." This label may also be changed with a number command.
Ex.
.16 = "Menu" .18 = "At page" .19 = "Go to page"
The Enter key is now disabled when the cursor is in any OPENEND, STRING, NUMBER, DATE, or TIME question. Pressing this key while the cursor is in one of these fields now is silently ignored. (Previously, depending upon the browser, pressing the Enter key could activate one of the buttons at the bottom of the page.)
Non-number keys are also disabled when the cursor is in a NUMBER, DATE, or TIME question. Pressing a non-number key here is silently ignored. (Previously, inappropriate characters could be typed in a field, but they would be removed automatically when the respondent pressed a button to go to another page, or exit.)
MULT and CHECK Answers Now Float Over Buttons in Matrix Layout When the questionnaire form is displayed in a browser and a respondent hovers his cursor over a button, the label for that button will be displayed.
Extended the /v converter option so that also affects the display of embedded answers inside question text (i.e., when using the square brackets… [Q1]) when these are displayed in the HTML version of the questionnaire and in the online tabulation report. When this option is used, the square brackets will be replaced with the question number (i.e., previous behavior). When it is not used, the brackets will be replaced with a series of five underscore characters (i.e., _____). This is intended to be used when the HTML version of the questionnaire is PDFed for use on the web site or/and the tabulation report will be used by respondents to view their completed questionnaires.
Bang tags (!), which are used to shade rows or columns in MULT and CHECK questions in normal or matrix layouts, are now not displayed with the answer label in the online tabulation report.
May now use the bang tag (!) to turn on column shading for these question types when they are used in a matrix layout. The MULT still uses its default behavior of shading the right-most column if more than two columns are used.
Instead of using a table to format the home page, the paragraph style is now set to provide the correct margin settings. You should now enter your home page narrative using <P></P> tags instead of break <BR> tags at the location indicated in the file. Also, the automation built into the page now identifies whether the respondent's browser is running JavaScript (which is required) when he first opens the home page. If he is not running JavaScript, the Start Log In button will not be displayed (preventing him from logging in) and instead, a message will be displayed that says that JavaScript is required.
This version of QPL adds a couple new features and corrects two bugs as listed below. One change was made to the database structure to support the new automatic login feature. (See Upgrading Live Sites for information on how to upgrade an existing web site to use this new feature.)
A special version of HomeSite, called HomeSite+ is distributed by Macromedia with their Dreamweaver MX 2004 product. It is not installed by default when you install Dreamweaver, but may be added later by re-running the Dreamweaver setup program.
The QPL setup program has now been upgraded so it will detect the HomeSite+ software and correctly install QPL as an add-in.
Both versions of HomeSite may be installed on one computer at the same time. If both HomeSite and HomeSite+ are installed, QPL will be installed as an add-in to HomeSite.
You may now let a respondent access his web questionnaire on your site without first going to your site's home page and login page. To do this, you must send the respondent a URL to your site that includes his user account information. When the respondent clicks on this link, he will be automatically logged into his questionnaire. See the QPL help page, "Logging In Using URL Options" for information on how to use the QPL email system to create email messages with each respondent's user name and password embedded into the URL. A respondent may still log in from the project home page when this option is enabled.
A change made in PHP 4.3.7 caused QPL to export incorrectly formatted fixed-format data files when the file contained floating point numbers. The QPL data export function has been adjusted to fit this change to PHP. Thus, QPL 5.04.012 and later now requires PHP 4.3.7 and later to create correctly formatted fixed format files. (See Data Analysts FAQs for more information.)
The data columns were being incorrectly labeled. The column names (i.e., the content analysis tag names) now match the reviewers' data in each column.
This version of QPL corrects several bugs as listed below. No changes have been made to the database structure since the content analysis functions were added in version 5.04.002. (See Upgrading Live Sites for information on how to upgrade an existing web site you may have to use these new functions.)
When using certain versions of PHP, the BASE tag in the qpl_sample.htm file (<!-- <BASE HREF=''> -->) was not getting updated to the web site location. When the BASE tag is not set to the web site URL, the qpl_logo.gif graphic is not displayed in the email message when it is received. This has been updated to work with all current versions of PHP.
The XDATE question type behavior was inadvertently changed when the calendar button was added. This behavior would always set the field on the questionnaire to today's date. It has been changed back to its original intended behavior: if no date has been set, then it is set to today's date; if it has been set to a date, then that same date is used in the form.
A date of March 31 was incorrectly treated as an invalid date when entered by a respondent into any of the date field types. This has been corrected.
This version of QPL adds more incremental improvements as listed below. No changes have been made to the database structure since the content analysis functions were added in version 5.04.002. (See Upgrading Live Sites for information on how to upgrade an existing web site you may have to use these new functions.)
Previously, QPL built matrix question tables that would let the browser determine all the column widths, based on the amount of text in each column. Strategic use of break tags and non-breaking spaces could be used to adjust the sizing of the columns, though not perfectly. Now, matrix tables of questions are built using a fixed column with for the question text (250 px) and the remaining columns are given an even share of the remaining space, though some columns may be bigger if a long word requires more than its share of the column space. Hyphenating can help here, and break tags and non-breaking spaces may still be used to control the flow of the text.
The "Assign Tags: Step 3" content analysis page would sometimes show that "phantom" tags have been applied to respondent comments. This would occur when the web site was using MySQL 4 and the user jumped to the middle of the comment list to apply a tag. Here, the Step 3 page would indicate that this same tag was applied to all the previous comments that had not yet been viewed by the coder. These previous comments were not actually coded, but appeared to be coded due to a difference in how the report query was processed by MySQL 4 and 3. MySQL 3 did not show this problem. The phantom tag problem with MySQL 4 has been corrected in this version.
All the buttons on both the questionnaire pages and on the administrative pages may now be clicked by typing an access (or shortcut) key, in addition to being clicked by the mouse. Hover your mouse over a button to show the access key. For example, Alt-C may be typed to click the Cancel button.
The questionnaire button access keys may be changed in your questionnaire program. See the help page, "Changing Default Phrases." for more information. (You may change the access keys used for the buttons used on administrative pages by editing the qpl_messages.inc file.)
The link on the thank you... page that is displayed to the respondent after he or she exits a questionnaire that would close the browser window has been changed to a button that says "Close."
The regular expression that is used to test for valid email addresses (i.e., that are used in the email address field in the Edit User Account page) has been improved to prevent syntactically incorrect addresses from being used when sending email messages. You can test the email addresses in your user accounts by checking the "Invalid or missing addresses" option on the Find User Accounts page.
The web server logs would record Call-Time Pass-By-Reference Warnings saying that this the program was using a depreciated feature. The software has been updated so that these warnings are no longer generated.
A new button called "View" has been added to the Edit User Account page. Clicking this button will show the respondent's complete questionnaire, including both the question text and his or her responses. The questions included in this copy of the questionnaire are set using the same QPL converter options as the on-line tabulation report. (See the QPL help page, "Converter Command Line Options," particularly the options that modify the creation of the ".inc" file (i.e., the tabulation report).
This log in option is used to let a respondent create their own user account. This is useful when you want to let anyone access your questionnaire, and you want them to be able to log into the same questionnaire any number of times before your project expires. This existing function has been improved so that it requires a respondent to enter a valid email address (i.e., both syntactically correct and having a known host name). If a respondent enters his or her account information correctly, an account is created and a confirmation email message will be automatically sent to the respondent which includes the user name and password he or she entered. An email message is also automatically sent if the respondent changes his or her account information or if someone else attempts to log in using that account (i.e., enters the wrong password). (See the QPL help page, "Confirming New Account Information," for more information.
LDAP authentication may be used for intranet projects where an organization uses an LDAP database server to manage its employees network accounts. The QPL software has been upgraded so that it can lookup the name of your LDAP server even if a DNS entry has been made that sends the request to two or more LDAP servers (which may be done to balance the load and provide redundancy).
The behavior of the failed login counter has been changed so that count is reset to zero if a user logs in successfully before the maximum number of failed login attempts (normally 10) has been reached. The maximum number of failed log in attempts may be set on the Default Project Settings page. (See the QPL help page, "Default Project Settings," for more information.
This version of the QPL system adds a number of improvements, including pop-up boxes that contain monthly calendars for date questions, general information, and a summary of the respondent's answers. No changes have been made to the database structure since the content analysis functions were added in version 5.04.002. (See Upgrading Live Sites for information on how to upgrade an existing web site you may have to use these new functions.)
All three types of date questions, DATE, LDATE, and XDATE, will now be displayed in your questionnaire with a button that, when clicked by a respondent, will display a monthly calendar. The respondent may change the month and year in the calendar and then click on a date to enter the date in the questionnaire field in yyyy-mm-dd format. The respondent may click on the button again, which will display that date in the calendar, and select another date or cancel the change. See the help file, "Time and Date Questions," for more information.
The pop-up calendar button has also been added to the date fields that are used in various places on the administrative pages.
See an example in Jim's Demo.
A new function called PopUp() has been added makes it easier to put links in your questionnaire to HTML files you write that contain supplementary information, such as a glossary. You can use this function in an HTML anchor (<A>) tag in your questionnaire that opens your HTML file in a new browser window that is always on top of your questionnaire and only has a vertical scroll control. You may also use it to set the height and width of the pop-up box. See the help file, "Adding a Pop-Up Window," for more information.
A number of improvements have been made to the Summary Statistics report. This report was previously accessible only from the main administrative page. Now a respondent may access it to get a summary of only his or her answers to the whole questionnaire on one page if you create a link in your questionnaire to the report using the new showPersonalResponses() function. An entry is made in the Recent History Log each time a respondent uses the link to view his or her responses. See the help file, "Letting the Respondent See All of His or Her Answers," for more information.
The report itself has been upgraded so that you may now include the text of VOID questions (using the /vt option) and suppress the listing of question names (using the /v option). The question text for CHECK a question is now included as part of the summary table for the first check box. SUBTITLEs are now displayed for any question in the report that has one. You may also continue to use the drop and keep variables options (/dv and /kv) to control which questions are included in the report. See the help file, "Viewing Real-Time Summary Statistics," for more information.
The buttons for "Next question" and "Previous question" have been removed from the navigation bar.
New converter options have been added that let you more easily control when the menu and navigation bar are used. The convert option "/menu," builds your web site without the left menu frame and the convert option "/nav," builds it without the navigation bar. You may also build it without either the menu or navigation bar. (This is normally done if you are creating a short, one-page questionnaire.) See the help file, "Changing the Default Page Layout," for more information.
The GOTO and NEXT commands have been improved when programming a skip to a question in which you have suppressed the automatic question numbering (typically when using a VOID question to provide overview information for a group of questions). Instead of creating a link in your questionnaire that says, "GO TO QUESTION __," it will now create a link using the SUBTITLE of the target question: "GO TO SECTION: My Section Title." If the target question is both unnumbered and has no SUBTITLE, then the link will simply say, "GO HERE." See the help file, "Multiple Choice Questions," for more information. For information on changing the default phrases used in these links, see the help file "Changing Default Phrases."
The LDAP authentication function has been upgraded so that it will correctly use a DNS rotor address to first find the SSH certificate name of the server to which the rotor address points, and then use that name to connect to the server. This change prevents the PHP ldap_connect() function from failing due to a mismatch between the rotor name and the SSH certificate name on the server that happens to get picked. If the connection still fails, because the server is off-line for some reason, the QPL function will try to connect with the next available LDAP server.
The primary improvement in this release of QPL are the addition of new functions that let you perform a systematic analysis of responses made to the OPENEND and STRING questions in your web survey. This process is generally referred to as a "content analysis." You can use these tools online, while the respondents are still using the survey, to code their comments and view reports that summarize the codes including frequency reports and inter-rater reliability statistics. (See Upgrading Live Sites for information on how to upgrade an existing web site you may have to use these new functions.)
The export data files are no longer encrypted. Now, when you download one of the export files, your browser will display a Download dialog box and let you copy the file to a location you choose, instead of using a link to the encrypted export data file on the web site.
The encryption and decryption software (and the "Decipher export file" button on the QPL toolbar in HomeSite) have been included with this version (though it is not used by web survey sites created with this version) for folks who may still be using sites created with a previous version. The server versions of these programs, however, are not included with the new server setup program included with this package. If you have already installed these programs using a previous version of the server setup program, you do not need to re-run the server setup software included with this version -- the encryption programs just will not be used by new web sites created with this version of the QPL software.
The version of the qpl_convert.exe program included with this package no longer makes the encryption support files, job.blg and job.key, since these files are no longer used.
Each of the three data export functions have new options that give you more control over how the data files will be created.
Fixed Format File (.dat). You may now choose to include the internal system variables that are stored with the questionnaire responses. These variables include the case identification number and the user name of the respondent. If you include these variables, you must build your SAS or SPSS program using the new /sv convert option. The /sv option tells the qpl_convert.exe program to define and label these variables when it builds your system file program.
Tab-Delimited File (.prn). Instead of getting the data for all of the questions, including the internal system variables, you may now pick the questions and system variables you want in the tab-delimited file.
aksSam Import file (.txt). The askSam Import file can now be created adding the results of your content analysis to each respondent record.
A fourth export data function was added that lets you export the results of your content analysis of response made to OPENEND and STRING questions. This data is exported as a tab-delimited file and can be matched against the questionnaire data using the internal case identification field, q_id.
The list of functions on the main administrative page have been reorganized to accommodate the addition of the new content analysis functions and to more clearly show what functions may be used by the different survey administrators.
This release of QPL contains a number of improvements, but no changes were made to the existing data base structure so you may, if you wish, upgrade a live site with the new features that are listed below. (See Upgrading Live Sites for more information.)
You can now use a format string option for NUMBER and STRING question types to insert labels on the left or right side of the input box on the web page. See QPL Reference Manual pages on Number and String questions for more information. (The manual is installed on your computer with the software.)
You can now selectively shade answer lines for MULT and CHECK questions when using the normal question layout (i.e., not the matrix layout). See QPL Reference Manual pages on Multiple Choice and Check-All-That-Apply questions for more information. (The manual is installed on your computer with the software.)
A new /u command line option has been added to the qpl_convert.exe program that lets you control whether a respondent's user name is included with his or her comments in the online tabulation report. Using the /u option inserts the user name; omitting it displays the comment without any user names.
A new /v command line option has been added to the qpl_convert.exe program that lets you control when question names are included in the local test HTML file. Using the /v option inserts the question name; omitting the /v option creates the questionnaire without the question names. This option has no effect on the web site version (PHP) of your questionnaire program.
No changes have been made to the data base structure from the previous publicly released versions of QPL.
When you use QPL to generate a SAS or SPSS program, the variable labels have been increased from the first 40 characters used in your question text (with any HTML codes removed) to 255 characters. The value lables have been increased from 20 characters to 40 characters in SAS and 60 characters in SPSS of the text used in answers to multiple-choice questions. Not all SAS or SPSS procedures will use the entire labels that QPL generates.
The generated index.htm file was modified so that the message "Loading..." is displayed on the new browser window that is opened after clicking on the "Start Log In" button and before the log in page can be displayed. The log in page must first query the data base so, in some circumstances, respondents may have seen a blank page before the log in page was displayed. This new browser window was also modified so that it is always displayed as the top-most window, even if it was open already and behind other windows. This corrects a problem that occurred for respondents who "lost" this window under other windows on their desktop.
The QPL configuration file, qpl_config.inc, was modified to add the extra parameters needed to make a secure connection to a MySQL data base on another server. By default, the parameters are set to use the local MySQL client with no encryption. This file is included with the server set up package, qpl5_server_setup_2004-03-10.tgz, that the web server administrator uses to perform the one-time QPL set up tasks and with the qpl_public_master_files.zip file that is used to supply the standard files for new projects. See the comments in this file and the PHP documentation on the mysql_connect() function for more information.
Previously, when a respondent incorrectly entered his password, a log entry would be made that listed the incorrect password that the respondent typed. Now, only the note, "Incorrect password was entered." will be entered in the log.
If you loaded user accounts for your respondents, but did not preload data records, you may now use the new LEFT JOIN query option on the Edit Message page to select the respondents who have never logged in for a special email message. Previously, your only option was to send a general message to all respondents. (If you have preloaded data records, then you must use another technique to identify this group of respondents. See the FAQ note, How can I send email messages only to respondents who have never logged in?, for more information.)
The square bracket characters ([ and ]) may only be used in your QPL questionnaire program to indicate where a response from one question may be inserted into the text of another question. (See "References to Other Answers" in the QPL help page, "QPL Language Syntax.") Previously, the compiler, qpl_compile.exe, would fail with a memory error if the closing square bracket was missing or the text inside the square brackets was longer than about 20 characters. The compiler now correctly identifies this problem and reports a syntax error.
The Test Message page was modified so that, in addition to the many other checks it performs on your message, it also immediately sends copies of the message to email addresses that are listed in the test accounts, "test1" through "test5." If you enter your email address under one of these default test accounts, you will receive a copy of your email message when you click on the "Test" button on the Edit Message page. This lets you quickly check the formatting and any links in your message, though it does not update any data base field tags with data.
The Test Email page now lists the user name and email address for each person who will get the message, according to your query settings. Since this query is not run until your messages are actually sent, however, this list may not be entirely accurate. If your query selects respondents according to one or more responses to the questionnaire, such as whether they are done or not, then who is eligable for this message may change between the time you send the message to the mail queue and when it sent from the mail queue to the respondents.
A PHP program is included with your web site files called "qpl_custom_report_form_public.php," that may be used to display public reports (i.e., where no log in is required) of your questionnaire data. This is usually only used for special intranet applications. (See PHP and MySQL Programmers FAQs on this site for more information on how to do this.) This file is not used for a web questionnaire site unless you create a web page on your site that calls it with an SQL query. Previously, this program could be called from anywhere with any SQL SELECT query, which could expose your data to someone who knew how to take advantage of this situation. This upgrade modifies qpl_custom_report_form_public.php so that it may only be called from other pages on the same web server and not a page that someone may have created locally. You may safely delete this file from your web site if you are not calling it from a special reporting page that you created.
This was the first time that the QPL setup programs were put on the web site for general distribution.
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