Xibo CMS v4.2.0 Released

We’re pleased to announce the latest CMS release, Xibo version 4.2.0!  The codename for this version is “Kopff”.

22P/Kopff is a periodic comet in the Solar System. Discovered on August 23, 1906, it was named after August Kopff who discovered the comet.

What's new in Xibo v4.2

Xibo v4.2 brings with it a host of new improvements that will enhance the user experience and add new functionality.

Emergency Alerts Widget

Introducing our new Emergency Alerts widget! Emergency alerts can prove critical in the event of a hazard in areas such as education, retail, and manufacturing. Xibo integrates with leading Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) providers to immediately share vital information across all your displays, no matter the location. Reduce response times, provide real-time instructions, and protect your students, shoppers, or staff from threats.

To get set up, simply configure the Emergency Alerts widget with a CAP URL which is then filtered by various industry standard fields. A set of elements are provided to allow a visual representation of the alert.

Schedule Criteria

New schedule criteria has been added for Emergency Alerts; only show your Emergency Alert layouts when there are active alerts.

National Weather Service (NWS) Widget

The latest update to our CMS also introduces a new National Weather Service (NWS) widget and National Weather Service connector, offering real-time notifications about severe weather events and potential hazards (specifically for the United States).

Support for Xibo for ChromeOS - Coming Feb 4th

Our new Xibo for ChromeOS player will also be fully compatible with Xibo v4.2. Get ready for a secure, reliable, and sustainable signage solution coming on February 4th.

Other Improvements

Welcome page

The CMS welcome page has been updated to give new users a more engaging onboarding experience.

Libraries

Xibo's front and back end libraries have been updated to the latest supported versions, improving security, performance and reliability of the CMS.

PDF Widget

The PDF library has been upgraded to a newer release #3470.

Text/Code editors

The text editor has been updated to the latest version of CKEditor, and the code editor has been switched to a lighter weight editor more suitable. Code editors have a simple “expanded view” which allows for a larger editing window.

Performance

Various front end performance improvements have been made to reduce page load times and the responsiveness of layout editor.

XMR

A new XMR service has been added which changes the way the CMS and XMR components communicate, and optionally allows Players to connect to XMR over web sockets.

Download:

Please use the links below to download this release:

• Xibo for Docker - Linux / Windows
• Xibo for Apache/Nginx / WAMP/IIS

Visit our Downloads page for all the latest releases.

Install / Upgrade

Instructions for installation/upgrade can be found here.

The minimum version of PHP needed to run the CMS is PHP 8.1.

Please note: Xibo 4.2 does not require ZeroMQ/ZMQ dependencies for the web container, making it easier to install for those of you not using Docker. See the Apache/ISS notes for more information.

Players

We recommend using player software of the same version as your CMS. The latest player software is available here.

Earlier versions of the player will connect to a v4 CMS in legacy mode.

Please note: Xibo for webOS and Xibo for Tizen players require v3 R308 and above to function with a v4 CMS. View the latest player software here.

Cloud hosted

If you have a cloud hosted CMS and have not opted out of minor version updates, this update will be applied to all v4.1 instances with the release of 4.2.1 in March. You can manually upgrade earlier from My Account.

Change log

Detailed changes for this release: https://github.com/xibosignage/xibo-cms/releases/tag/4.2.0

Detailed changes for each prior release:

• 4.2.0-beta: https://github.com/xibosignage/xibo-cms/releases/tag/4.2.0-beta
• 4.2.0-alpha: https://github.com/xibosignage/xibo-cms/releases/tag/4.2.0-alpha

Feedback

A big thank you to our beta testers who have dedicated their time and effort to testing this release with us.

Please let us know what you think of v4.2 in the comments.