Changelog

Version 1.5.0

New features

A whole new Document mode

A major overhaul of the Document mode has been carried out.

Documents tree structure

You can now create complex tree structures to organize your work. The "Untitled Documents" folder is no longer relevant and, if exists from a previous installation, can be deleted. You can adjust the size of the documents tree area by playing with the vertical splitter between it and the thumbnails area.

Sortable documents

Documents can be sorted, using the "Sort Kind" drop down list and the "Sort Order" icon beside, by creation date, modification date, or alphabetical order. A second column displays the date of creation or modification.

Icons on Folders and Documents

New icons have been added to the document tree structure to improve readability and help navigation.

Export/Import a folder

You can now export an entire folder (including the "My Documents" folder), using the new option "Export to OpenBoard UBX" in the Export menu. You can choose where the import of the created UBX file is done by clicking/taping on the folder where you want the content of the UBX to be imported in.

Mac Certification

OpenBoard for macOS is now signed, allowing it to be recognized by Gatekeeper.

New Translations

Translations for Ukrainian and Hungarian has been started and added to the supported languages.

Widgets

A new version of the GraphMe widget has been integrated.

Bug fixes

• It was no longer possible to freely resize the mask
• The tab on the library panel could disappear in some cases

Known issues

• This redesign of the Documents mode was a complex development and several small cosmetic bugs may still remain, including focus issues
• Folders in the trash of your OpenBoard 1.4 installation are renamed _Trash:folder_name in the 1.5 version and are found in My Documents. They can put in the Trash.
• Some slow motion can be experienced in MacOS while using drag and drop in the new document tree structure.

Version 1.4.1

New features

• Podcast module for Mac is now using the FFMPEG library
• New version of the Calculator widget
• New widget QR code (thanks to basilstotz)
• New translation into Galician
• New option in the preferences to be able to reverse the order if 2 projected screens (hidden by default)
• The Mask widget can now be duplicated, like other widgets

Bug Fixes

• Podcast audio should no longer loop when recording a long session
• Modification of the installation package for Ubuntu 16.04 (better dependencies handling)
• Correction for the Spanish translation

Version 1.4.0

New features

Simplified drawing

An important work has been done on strokes to reduce their complexity and give more fluidity to drawing. The weight of new OpenBoard documents is indeed greatly reduced.

Simplified access to the objects of the library

The detailed view has been deleted for apps, interactivities, images, sounds and videos. You can simply drag and drop these elements from the library tab. To set as background an image, it is now done via the image menu after it has been dropped to the page.

Size of the background grid

You can now adjust it in the background window, with the option of a lined background. This new parameter can be set for each page of a document. A new page is set with the background settings of the current page. A new button on the background window resets the grid size to its default value. When OpenBoard starts, the size is initialized to represent approximately 1 cm on the screen. Indeed, the size of the grid is preserved while importing a document on another computer. Geometry tools have been adjusted to fit this initialization.

Background grid tab on preferences

You can now choose the color of the grid and the its opacity on dark and light backgrounds. The grid opacity is ignored if the zoom is lower than ~0.7.

Thumbnails tab drag and drop

Thumbnails can be reordered using the pen/mouse, by drag and drop. The "move up page" and "move down page" icons have been retired. The "remove page" and "duplicate page" icons' size was increased by a factor of 2.

Podcast module on Linux (screen recording)

The screen recording is finally available on Linux. ffmpeg is used for video encoding, with the MP4 format (h264/AAC).

Pen tool circle preview

Above a certain size (set in preferences), a circle preview appears.

Software update option

A new parameter in the configuration file allows to hide the "check for software update" option in the OpenBoard menu.

Planète-Sankore widgets

Because planete-sankore.org is down, the research applications (image, audio, video and flash medias) had to be deleted.

Clock Widget

The Clock widget used in Open-Sankore has been added to the library.

Bug fixes

• The state of the zoom was persisted on each page, but not the state of the position of the view. Now both are.
• The "visible on extended screen" property was not correctly persisted.
• Several corrections have been added to improve their behavior on object groups.
• Text box : resizing, using the left handle, was causing unexpected text box moving
• Text box : you could lose the cursor by dragging an image or a shape on a text box.
• Text box : OpenBoard could crash, while trying to select a text box by its border with the text tool selected.
• OpenBoard could crash when erasing part of a stroke, drawn with the compass, and the center cross, simultaneously.
• You could lose data if you had only one document on the main directory.

Known Issues

Podcast module on Linux

• the module's performance depends on its configuration, so please don't use too high resolutions on slow devices,
• last images of a record can not be added to the video,
• recording is slow on desktop mode.

Podcast module on Mac

• audio sometimes loops,
• audio and video can be unsynchronized if the user stops his annotations.

Internal web navigator

Many errors, mainly on secured sites (https). The internal web navigator may be removed, for security reasons, on a future release of OpenBoard.

Data loss

Most issues concerning data loss have been resolved. However, in some cases (network context, slow computers), some features related to the data saving may not behave as expected. For example, it is possible for the duplication of a page to be done before the save of the duplicated page by the thread which has to perform this save. If so, you have to delete the new page and retry the duplication on the original page.

Version 1.3.6

• Fixed several issues relating to copy-pasting and cut-and-pasting elements from one page or document to another
• Fixed an issue on Windows where OpenBoard could crash upon saving the document when a video was on the board
• Fixed an issue where pen strokes that had been erased with the eraser would reappear after saving and loading.
• Fixed an issue where duplicating a pen stroke that had been moved could cause the new stroke to be placed in the wrong position
• Fixed an issue where strokes could be badly placed after using the "undo" and "redo" functions
• Fixed an issue where compass strokes were not saved (when making several strokes, only the first one was saved)
• Fixed an issue where pages could be truncated when exporting to PDF
• Fixed an issue where locked items could be moved when part of a multiple selection
• (Document mode) Fixed document selection after deleting a trashed document
• Tweaked the background grid color for the dark background
• The mask tool can now be resized non-proportionately
• Re-implemented automatic update checking, which will appear to users when the next version is released

Version 1.3.5

• Fixed an issue where text could be displayed at different sizes on different platforms, even with the same font and font size. From now on, a newly created or modified document should display the same on all platforms (provided one uses version 1.3.5)
• Fixed an issue in document mode where deleting a document by drag-n-drop could make OpenBoard crash
• Fixed a bug where media elements couldn't be selected by rubber band
• Document mode: multiple documents can now be moved together, by drag-n-drop
• Added a setting in the configuration files for the background grid's colour*
• Added Basque translation (credit: Inigo Gebara)
• Updated German translation (credit: EmPeWe)
• Fixed the colour of the highlighter cursor in desktop mode
• Fixed an issue where in desktop mode, the display could be cloned even if multi-display mode was deactivated
• Fixed an issue in document mode where OpenBoard could crash when deleting pages from a document
• Fixed an issue where groups of objects or pen strokes that had been locked would be unlocked when saving then loading the document
• Fixed an issue where groups of objects lost their transforms (movement, rotation, scaling) when saving then loading the document
• Specified a minimum size for the protractor, so that it can no longer be resized to an unusable size
• Shrunk the compass slightly
• Fixed an issue where the position of groups of pen strokes could be lost upon saving and loading the document
• Fixed an issue where locked objects could be moved by dragging them directly (rather than by their selection frame)
• Fixed an issue where the icons on a text box's frame could overflow from the frame, on low-resolution displays on Windows or Linux
• Fixed an issue where OpenBoard would crash upon exiting with an empty, but modified document
• Fixed an issue where the Open-Sankoré importer would not launch, on Windows

(*) This allows the user to change the colour or opacity of the background grid, for example if it isn't sufficiently visible on a low-contrast display or projector. The parameters can be found in the Board category and are named CrossColorDarkBackground and CrossColorLightBackground for the colour of the background grid on dark and light backgrounds, respectively. The possible values for these parameters are strings respecting any of the following formats:

• #RGB
• #RRGGBB
• #AARRGGBB
• #RRRGGGBBB
• #RRRRGGGGBBBB
• SVG colour keywords, as defined by W3C

Where A = alpha (transparency); R = red; G = green; B = blue, in hexadecimal values.

The default values are:

CrossColorDarkBackground=#C82C2C2C
CrossColorLightBackground=#A5E1FF

Known issues in version 1.3.5

• Empty text items will move if they are resized by their left handle
• Text items: cursor disappears if an image is dragged and dropped onto the text item
• Page thumbnails, in the left-hand side pane, don't always update
• Copy/pasted images can sometimes disappear from the document
• Locked items can be moved if selected and moved together

Version 1.3.4

This release fixes various bugs, some which appeared in v1.3.3, and some of which have been around for a while.

• OS X: fixed desktop shadow bug.
• Windows: fixed installer so that the library installation would be silent.
• Linux: fixed detection of "cloned" multi-monitor setups to avoid multi-screen mode being activated in this configuration. [Note: some problems remain with multi-monitor setups on some Linux versions; see Known Issues].
• Text items: text can no longer be selected or edited if the text item is marked as non-editable.
• Text items: on page load, text items no longer take keyboard focus.
• Library pane: fixed moving of items.
• Library pane: fixed nested folder issue in breadcrumbs trail.
• Document view: fixed folder names not being saved after renaming them.
• Fixed audio item saving (v1.3.3 bug): documents containing an audio item were saved incorrectly.
• Desktop mode: eraser and marker preview circles now disappear when the cursor hovers over the left or right-hand toolbars, as in board mode

Known issues in version 1.3.4

On Ubuntu 14.04, some desktop environments cause problems in extended desktop mode. Specifically, on MATE, multi-screen mode is currently broken, with both OpenBoard windows (control and display views) appearing on the same display. On KDE, swapping the control and display views via the preferences menu can cause both windows to appear on the same display, but this can be solved by turning multi-screen mode off and on again, or by restarting OpenBoard.

Version 1.3.3

Bug fixes related mostly to import and export of documents (in .ubz or .pdf) with a pdf item.

A bug was also fixed which affected on-screen keyboard.

Version 1.3.1

A few bug fixes, mainly related to desktop interaction and multi-screen mode on Linux, as well as a reborn Google Maps widget.

Version 1.3.0

Below is a list of the main changes since the last version (1.02.10)

Codebase

• Qt code migrated from version 4.8 to 5.5.
  • Multimedia elements (video and audio) based on Qt Multimedia instead of Phonon
• OS X: Carbon framework largely replaced by Cocoa
• OS X: Podcast module back-end migrated from QuickTime to AV Foundation

General

• Support for system's on-screen keyboard on Windows and OS X (as well as Onboard on Linux)
• 5th pen color added
• Added image search on data.abulEdu.org and Pixabay.com

Pages (display, saving and loading)

• Corrected many bugs related to the display and saving of elements' positions on the page (*)
• Corrected a scale issue with PDF documents when switching screen resolutions (scale was not preserved when opening the document on another computer)

Graphics items

• Added a preview circle around the eraser and highlighter

• Color picker can now be used with the compass

• Various enhancements for media items, including:

  • Progress bar appears on mouse hover above a video; then auto-hides
  • Media items can be moved by clicking the gray area beside the progress bar

• "Go to content source" option removed

• Compass size reduced

Documents pane

• Multiple selection is now possible (using Shift or Ctrl/Cmd)

Minor changes

• Linux:

  • OpenBoard is now installed in /opt/openboard instead of /usr/local/OpenBoard-$VERSION
  • OpenBoard can be started from the terminal, with the openboard command
  • .ubz files are opened with OpenBoard by default

• New icons for .ubz files on Windows and OS X

• New icons for "previous page"/"next page" buttons

• New default pen colors (inc. white on white and black on black)

• Google image search removed

• Better handling of configuration files and document metadata files, resulting in less disk I/O

• OS X: system print dialog offers the option of printing to PDF to OpenBoard

• Various other bug fixes and tweaks

(*) Details:

• Corrected saving and loading of elements' z-levels
• Corrected z-level display issues when switching pages or zooming in/out
• Corrected position (x, y and z) assignment when duplicating elements
• Corrected saving and loading of positions of grouped items and pen strokes

Compatibility with older versions

While no breaking changes have been made between versions 1.02 and 1.3, we cannot necessarily guarantee that documents saved with version 1.3 will display correctly when opened in version 1.2. This is due to the many bugs that were present in version 1.02 related to the saving of elements' positions, and PDF size relative to the document, among other issues.

That being said, documents created in version 1.02 should import correctly to version 1.3.

Furthermore, an importer for Open-Sankoré documents up to v2.0 is provided (and has been since OpenBoard v1). Exporting documents from OpenBoard to Open-Sankoré, however, is not guaranteed to produce good results.

Known issues in version 1.3.0

• Google Maps widget is broken
• A few minor bugs with text boxes (positioning & selection)
• OpenBoard may crash on exiting with a blank document
• On OS X, switching from desktop mode to board mode and back causes shadows to be drawn around pen strokes, and these shadows persist if the strokes are erased. A quick fix for this is to switch again to board mode and back.
• Exporting a document containing both a background PDF item and a marker stroke on the same page, to PDF, results in scale issues. A quick fix is to restart OpenBoard and re-open the document. It should then export correctly.
• OS X: in desktop mode, the dock and menu bar stay hidden.
• ... other issues here