3.0.0-beta Released

We are pleased to announce the release of our beta for the 3.0 version of Xibo. The codename for this version is “Finlay”.

15P/Finlay is a periodic comet with an orbital period of 6.51a (Julian years). William Henry Finlay (Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, South Africa) discovered the comet on September 26, 1886. It's last closest approach to the sun was in December 2014 and is on it's way back in July 2021.

We'd love for you to test our new beta release! If you do, please keep in mind that it is a development preview only and should not be used in production. You can upgrade to this release from 2.x series.

Alpha Improvements

This release builds on the improvements already made in 3.0.0-alpha, see notes, 3.0.0-alpha2, see notes and in 3.0.0-alpha3, see notes.

Key features

There are three key features in this release:

• Page permissions have been replaced with a new concept called "Features". Features let you more easily enable/disable parts of the platform for specific users.
• We've bought folders to Xibo! For a long time we've used Tags to organise content, but with some of our users having 100s of Users and 1000s of Layouts it was time to improve our organisational capabilities. Folders also greatly simplify permissions, which we've rebranded "Sharing".
• A JavaScript library has been developed called "Xibo Interactive Control" which allows Widgets some two way communication with the Player. This feature has already been used to enhance the PDF module with "duration per page" option, and for current/no event triggers on the Calendar module.

Installation

We're making this alpha available for people to try using our recommended installation method, Docker. We will be providing release files for the stable 3.0.0 release for those of you running without Docker in due course.

• Xibo for Docker - Linux / Windows

Changelog

21 issues have been addressed in this release!

• 2346: Fix Internet Explorer JavaScript ES6 compatibility
• 2332: Layout Designer: Check-boxes in forms left margin not right
• 2340: Widget Interactive JavaScript
• 2325: Tags: Back-end part for Bulk tagging using multi-select
• 2324: Auto submit on some dialogs
• 2217: Permissions: Bulk set for selected items
• 2213: Displays: Global setting to remove old screenshots
• 2212: Tags: Bulk tagging using multi-select
• 2211: Displays: Player Status Window
• 1911: Library: Capture thumbnail of a Video on upload to show in the Grid/Preview
• 2334: Permissions: Folders and Sharing
• 2333: Permissions: Features
• 2291: Enhancement request: Created and Modified dates for Displays
• 2264: Suggestion: Extension check when uploading a file to CMS
• 2257: Start and End dates for the Calendar Widget
• 2251: Gapless: Settings for gapless playback
• 2241: Template edit: cannot have empty Regions
• 2210: Library upload on Layout/Playlist - add a form for from/to dates to be set on all Widgets created during the upload.
• 2208: Widget: Calendar to trigger Actions via web hook
• 1994: DataSet Widget: Implement a "freshness" check and switch to the no data message if data is stale
• 944: Improve PDF module with duration per page

Future development

The next few months will see the team here at Xibo running two projects:

• A series of release candiates responding to the feedback and testing of 3.0.0-beta
• Xibo for Windows v3 R300 release with support for interactive signage

v3.0 is shaping up to be an exciting release and we're pleased that it will arrive before Finlay makes its closest approach to the sun in 7 years!