Amazing news! LimeSurvey 3 stable release is now available. Head over to our download section get it. Current LimeSurvey Professional and Premium (ComfortUpdate) users can expect to receive the update automatically in the coming weeks.  

Exciting announcement! We proudly announce that LimeSurvey 3.0 Beta has been released successfully. We would like to already thank everybody that has and will contribute to this new LimeSurvey version, be it voluntary coders, partners or testers. LimeSurvey 3.0 is being developed based on three main goals: Faster operation Easier usability Increased application flexibility These goals equally apply to basic LimeSurvey users with no or little programming knowledge as well as advanced LimeSurvey users with strong coding skills. What has changed for LimeSurvey users? Thanks to our dedicated partner in development Denis (Chenu), LimeSurvey templates are now semantic with regard to HTML markup. Furthermore, LimeSurvey now meets web accessibility conditions, meaning it is now compliant with a11y standards concerning Screen Reader accessibility for blind and visually impaired people. Markus, our greatly appreciated in-house front-end developer, took responsibility of all interface-related tasks, such as the general redesign of the LimeSurvey admin panel which is currently still in process. With the help of one of our highly esteemed contributors Tammo (ter Hark) who provided a mock-up, the left side bar within the admin interface was reconstructed. Previously, the settings, i.e. general survey settings as well as question-specific settings, were organised on the respective survey level in the right accordion sections. These accordions have now been removed and settings move into the left bar settings to enable faster access, avoid confusion and keep the interface nice and lean. Left Bar Settings Up until LimeSurvey 3, editing answer options and subquestions required a separate button within the question setup. An additional improvement to reduce user-sided effort and complexity is a merge process that places question, subquestion and answer option together without the need to click extra buttons (this adjustment is currently in the development stage). In the works is also a so-called 'setting by user' which allows several administrators within one LimeSurvey account to customise the admin interface individually according to personal preferences. This increases the micro-level user flexibility and convenience when working with LimeSurvey on a shared account. Within the context of question group randomisation, it wasn't possible so far from a technical standpoint for participants to save and exist a survey somewhere along the way and then return to it later. One of LimeSurvey's core developers Olle managed to rework this limitation which now allows respondents to leave and take an incompleted survey up again later on when question group randomisation exists. Requested by many people, LimeSurvey is introducing a new template engine which enables template customisations by users with advanced programming knowledge with a template editor, but also by users without coding skills with the help of an options page for easy use. Basic design customisations such as changing logos, colours or adding animations now deliver a much greater deal of flexibility and personal styling for users. Template Overview Template Options Page The code for the rendering process of the front-end has been refactorised by Louis who is one of our in-house developers as well. This way, a continuous performance improvement is achieved on a weekly basis by changing content dynamically without needing to reload an entire page. It is made possible by deploying Ajax and will result in a faster handling of the LimeSurvey application. What has changed for LimeSurvey developers? As mentioned in the previous section, LimeSurvey is introducing a new template engine. Said Twig-based engine, including the powerful template editor, makes the use of replacement keywords obsolete. It is possible to use HTML for the template configuration which enables assessments, to load and save screens, survey lists, error pages and so on. Template Editor Olle has started implementing unit testing in order to reduce the number of bugs released with this Beta. Tonis (Ormisson) contributed by rewriting the documentation of method and helping clean the code. This is a powerful opportunity for basic as well as advanced LimeSurvey users and opens up entirely new possibilities of styling survey designs. Get involved! Test the new LimeSurvey 3.0 beta version by downloading it here. Let us know about any issues you may come across and report to our Bug Tracker.  

2. Tour LimeSurvey 2.5 still has a few ergonomic differences compared to LimeSurvey 2. Most of them were inspired by user requests. Let's have a look at these changes. 2a. Landing page After a fresh installation on LimeSurvey 2.0, the landing page was an info page presenting some “piece-of-cake steps to create your very own first survey”. Once a survey had been created, the surveys list was shown after login. In LimeSurvey 2.5, the home page is based on a design of six quick buttons, linking to the most used items. A link to the last survey/last question visited is on top of those boxes for a quick navigation. To come back to this home page, just click on the logo on the top right corner. LimeSurvey 2.5 Home Page If you disagree with the choice of the buttons, and want to change them, you can do it from global settings → Home page. In this page, you can change the title of a box, its link, its description, and its picture. It's still very basic and will be improved in the future (like adding as many boxes as you want, or linking to an external page, selecting a custome picture in a list, etc.) You can edit boxes from global settings A fresh LimeSurvey installation with no survey shows a modal box displaying the 'piece-of-cake' steps on this home page : LimeSurvey 2.5 welcome modale on fresh installation If the user clicks on “Create a new survey”, some new tips and tricks alert information will help him until the user created his first question. 2b. Admin menu In LS2, the main menu bar hosted the links to the pages concerning the global system: Manage administrators, user groups, global settings, label sets, etc. It also provided the possibility to list the surveys in a select box, to go to the surveys list, to create a new survey, and to log out: Admin menu in LimeSurvey 2.x All those links have been kept in LimeSurvey 2.5 admin menu, but reorganized in 3 categories :   Configuration: for anything related to the global system Surveys: for anything related to survey User menu: for anything related to logged in user. We also added a notification system (only for update for now). Admin menu in LimeSurvey 2.5 The configuration menu provides all the links concerning the global system, and a system overview similar to the system overview which was displayed in the first tab of global settings in LS 2.0: Configuration submenus in LimeSurvey 2.5 Also, if you have active surveys, a link to those active surveys will be shown : Surveys menu and link to active surveys 2c. Layout types, menu types and save buttons There are two kinds of layout in LimeSurvey 2.5: the full page layout, and the survey layout with a side menu and a sticky contextual menu bar. The full page layout is used for the global system pages (the ones you can access from the main menu), like Global Settings. Its content takes all the width of the page, and its actions buttons are directly placed on top of the content: Full page layout for system pages :  Content take 100% of the width, action buttons are placed on top of content The survey layout has a side menu and a sticky contextual menu bar. This layout is used for any page related to a survey (like survey summary, edit question, tokens, etc). Survey Layout : - The content is surrounded by a side bar on its left, a title bar on top, and a top sticky menu for actions The top menu bar is sticky, so Save/cancel buttons are now always easy to reach – even when scrolling down, 2d. Side bar and question explorer In LimeSurvey 2.0, the menu bars was stacked the one of top of others. So everything was reachable on a single click, but also, the interface was crowded of buttons, links, forms, select box, actions buttons. It was hard to understand and visually exhausting. Some of the functionalities were logical but counter-intuitive (like adding a new question from the question-group bar), and sometimes, it was just impossible to come back to some pages (like coming back to the survey summary after a group has been selected). For example, the 'Edit subquestions' page in LimeSurvey 2.0 A typical admin view in LimeSurvey 2.0 : many menus, submenus, icons, buttons, tabs, etc. In LimeSurvey 2.5, the side menu resolves this problem. The main idea is this one : only one menu bar is shown at the same time, and each menu bar is accessible via the side menu (see the example of edition mode at the end of this section). The side bar So if you click on the survey menu, the top menu will correspond to the usual survey menu bar. If you click on 'token management', the top menu will correspond to the usual token management menu bar. If you click on a question in the explorer, the top menu bar will correspond to the usual question bar, etc. etc. We selected a question in the question explorer in the side bar, so the top menu is the usual question menu bar. Also, when editing an element (most of the time by clicking on a button on the top menu bar, like 'edit survey settings'), only the action buttons of this edition will be shown on the top menu bar, and the left bar will be closed. Those action buttons are in the sticky bar, so its easy to reach them (for example when scrolling down): Survey page in edition mode : the side bar is closed, only the save buttons are shown, the menu bar stick to the top, so if you scroll down the page they are still reachable See here “Edit subquestions” page in LimeSurvey 2.5 (the very same one than show at the beginning of the paragraph ): A typical admin view in LimeSurvey 2.5: simple, clean, easy to understand One of the great advantages of the old LimeSurvey 2.0 design, is that it was easy to reach any question inside the current group. Thanks to the question explorer inside the side bar, it's even more easy in LimeSurvey 2.5. Just open it to explore the different groups and to open the wanted question. You even can add question directly to any group inside it! The question explorer, to quickly navigate between questions, or quickly add a question to a group 2c. Surveys, question groups, and questions lists The surveys list, so as the questions list and the question groups list, are now using the Yii Grid view system with dataprovider. In short : it provides pagination, search box, filters, and it will only load the item for the current page (so you will no more experience very slow loading for huge list of surveys or questions) : Surveys list in LimeSurvey 2.5 The question groups list provides three buttons for quick action such as “add add a question to this group”, or “edit text elements”, and of course, access to question/question group summary (with question group menu bar): Question group list: search box, pagination, add a question to this group, edit text elements, reach question group summary The questions list provides a filter to select the group of the questions, a button to preview the question, one to directly edit it, and another one to reach its summary page (with the question menu bar). Questions list : search box, group filter, preview button, edit text element button, reach question summary Of course, in the future, we could add more action buttons in those lists, and give user the possibility to activate/unactivate them. 2d. Graph rendering in statistics Now, LimeSurvey uses the chart.js engine to render the graphs of statistics. So you can use bar charts, pie charts, radar charts, line charts, polar charts, dougnuts charts :[widgetkit id="2" widget="switcher" panel=1] Conclusion The transition from LimeSurvey 2.0 to LimeSurvey 2.5 should be very easy for most users. We tested the interface with existing users of LimeSurvey, and usually they quickly got used to it.   Also, new users should understand it quickly, thanks to the tips and tricks, but also thanks to a familiar interface. The main menu, the menu bars behavior, the sticky save buttons, the side bar, and the different lists are very common today, used in many web applications or CMS. So it's more intuitive than the ergonomy of LimeSurvey 2.0 which was so specific and unusual. Also, the question explorer keeps the advantage of the fast navigation of the old interface.   Using more deeply Yii functionalities (such as the grid, or the asset manager), Bootstrap, and chart.js, the LimeSurvey admin interface is now much more modern. It can still evolve, and users are welcome to ask for new interface functionalities (like adding new boxes in front page, link in side menu, buttons in list, etc). Soon, we'll start the same kind of work for the survey template, and LimeSurvey 2.5 will then be completed.