What's New

    BigBlueButton 2.6 runs on Ubuntu 20.04


    Overview

    This document gives you an overview of BigBlueButton 2.6, the latest version of BigBlueButton now in development.

    Note: This document is DRAFT and will be expanded upon as 2.6 development goes through alpha, beta, and release.

    BigBlueButton 2.6 offers users improved usability, increased engagement, and more performance.

    • Usability - making common functions (such as raise hand) easier
    • Engagement - giving the instructor more ways to engage students
    • Performance - increasing overall performance and scalability

    Here’s a breakdown of what’s new in 2.6.

    Usability

    Dark theme

    BigBlueButton supports dark theme. To enable it just navigate to the Settings.

    The toggle for dark theme is located in the main settings panel

    Dark theme in action - typically pale elements like the participants list are displayed in dark palette

    Improved Echo Test dialog

    The echo test modal has added a new audio stream volume indicator in place of the separate confirmation screen. This reduced the number of views and interactions required for audio confirmation. Updated echo test modal with added

    Improved notification of recording start

    The indicator for whether the recording is on has been made bigger. Additionally if you create your meeting with an optional parameter notifyRecordingIsOn=true, you users will see the following dialog when the recording commenses and also when joining a session that is already actively being recorded. You can choose to either continue or leave the session.

    A big red square used as a recording indicator, used to be more subtle

    A blocking dialog shows up if the session is being recorded

    Allow pinning of more than one webcam

    The pinning feature prevents the webcams from being rotated out when audio floor switching is activated. This functionality is specially important for document and/or interpreter cameras. It has also been improved to support miltiple pinned cameras.

    Animation selecting webcam dropdown menu and pin option item

    Upload your own webcam background

    This new feature allows a user to upload virtual background image’s for their webcam. The user can upload and delete images at will.

    Animation of user uploading webcam custom background image

    Improved layouts manager selection

    Layout selection can now be done via the updated layout selection modal located in the actions (+) button.

    Animation selecting actions button and layout selection item

    Live Automatic Closed Captions

    Downloading presentation with whiteboard annotations included

    Teachers can now export their slide decks with the annotations added during a lesson. Selecting “Send to chat” in the presentation upload modal sends a link in the public chat from which meeting participants can download the file.

    BigBlueButton's upload modal with a button to export the presentation with annotations

    Upload a presentation straight from NextCloud

    Recording in MP4 format

    Engagement

    Fully reimplemented whiteboard (tl;draw)

    Exporting Shared notes to the whiteboard

    Instructors can move the shared notes to the whiteboard presentation area for further collaborative work among students.

    BigBlueButton's whiteboard with annotations, with imported shared notes as the presentation

    Exporting breakout rooms’ shared notes as a presentation to the main room

    Exporting breakout rooms’ whiteboard annotations to the main room

    Easier setup of polling (when prepared in advance)

    Analytics

    Performance

    Recording API improvements

    Allows for quicker, more efficient search and retrieval of recording data.

    Experimental

    Upgraded components

    For full details on what is new in BigBlueButton 2.6, see the release notes. Recent releases:

    Other notable changes

    We have retired the bbb-demo API Demos development only package

    We recommend using API MATE or Greenlight - see the development setup section for more information.

    Development

    For information on developing in BigBlueButton, see setting up a development environment for 2.6.

    The build scripts for packaging 2.6 (using fpm) are located in the GitHub repository here.

    Contribution

    We welcome contributors to BigBlueButton 2.6! The best ways to contribute at the current time are: