This project proposes migrating all Content Block–related settings from the Studio Advanced Settings page into their respective XBlocks. This will allow authors to configure blocks directly where they are used, aligning with the Visually Configure Course Blocks initiative.
Problem
Currently, Content Block settings are centralized in Advanced Settings, far from the blocks they control. This separation makes it hard for course authors to discover, understand, and correctly configure block behavior, leading to confusion and errors.
Use Cases
As a course author, I need to configure a block’s advanced options directly inside that block’s editor in order to avoid navigating to a separate page and reduce the risk of misconfiguration.
As an instructor, I need settings grouped with the block they belong to in order to save time and ensure accuracy when setting up course content.
I’m delighted to see you folks tackling the monster that is Advanced Settings.
General question: From the technical perspective, does this proposal mean moving the UX for setting these fields to a new location, but keeping the implementation the same (i.e. inherited attributes on the root course block)?
Some notes on a couple specific fields:
Please just ignore this one and let it die. There’s a long standing DEPR for killing it, and the only reason it’s not gone already is because it’s being partially blocked by XQueue deprecation that is actively being worked on (the Matlab API tests also double as XQueue interface tests).
This should probably also die in the fires of DEPR. It’s not only obscure, it’s actively confusing. This was created around 2014, and was a mechanism to allow a site serving a Chinese audience to specify a specific CDN that would be used for users in a specific location w.r.t. their video data, if the course opts into it. It also only works if you have a video pipeline that you’ve loaded the appropriate data into edx-val for. Basically, unless you have three very specific pieces of configuration, a backend video pipeline that almost nobody uses in this way, and a user that is accessing your site from the country it is specifically configured for, this setting does absolutely nothing.
Even if we decided that this location-specific CDN were a thing we wanted to do, we shouldn’t be letting a course author toggle this switch.
I guess in general, it would be great in the assessing team can do an audit and determine which of these things can be killed altogether instead of being moved out of Advanced Settings.
@dave thanks for your comment.
For now, we are focusing only on the UX side. At this stage, what we are doing is analyzing the different options currently living in Advanced Settings. The goal is to understand where each of these configurations could be better located from a UX perspective, so that settings live in the most logical place and it becomes easier to complete the overall configuration without jumping back and forth across different areas.
We want to:
Understanding what’s in Advanced Settings today.
Analyzing where each setting could be better located.
And yes discuss which ones might actually make more sense to deprecate rather than move. So your specific notes on the Matlab API key and the video caching system are exactly the kind of input we need. Comments like these help us flag settings that should be removed rather than relocated, and we will make sure to reflect that in the proposal.
For the full context of the overall project to migrate all Advanced Settings into more suitable locations, see https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/x/AwAjOAE
