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Xibo from 1.2 to 1.4 first impressions

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a Xibo signage screen

A Xibo signage screen

Despite becoming aware of some other easy free signage tools like Concerto and the rather wonderful WordPress theme for digital signage by Nate Jones, we’ve stuck with Xibo for now. The installation was becoming a bit tired, so we’ve just upgraded our installation from 1.2 to 1.4 – quite a big leap.

First impressions? The client seems to operate much faster. Whether this is just the client application itself, or coupled with the fact that we’ve upgraded our laptops that drive each screen (we use end of life devices, so ‘upgrade’ is quite a generous term). Either way, the client loads faster, and seems less prone to error.

The user interface has been improved, and also feels much smoother. If you have used previous versions of Xibo, you will notice some minor changes to navigation, and some welcome improvements to the management of displays and layouts.

I always found the management of Displays in older versions of Xibo to be a bit unpredictable, but this seems to have been resolved in 1.4. The information shown in the display list is more accurate, and offers pretty much everything you need to see at a glance when managing a fleet of screens. Registration and Deletion is more consistent than I have previously experienced, both at the Client and Server.

Layouts feel similarly polished, with the Design summary offering quick access to your most used functions. When editing a design, the responsiveness is good enough that I find my previous habit of checking each and every design change via a live display is fading and I have learned to trust that this version will reliably record your changes without loss. I think there is still some way to go in order to make the layout design process easy enough and precise enough that your displays will look slick and professional after only a couple of visits – in comparison to the regular tweaks I still find myself making (maybe I’m just a bit picky).

Use the free Windows tool Don’t Sleep to keep your digital signage awake

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We’ve added a small tool to each of our Xibo digital signage clients called ‘Don’t Sleep‘, to keep them from entering a low power state.

Don’t Sleep overrides all power management settings when active. This means we can keep the displays running without local or group policy power management interfering.

Installation of Don’t Sleep is easy – unpack the ZIP file, place in a suitable folder, add to your Startup group and make sure the ‘straight to tray’ option is selected.

Just remember that if you do want to power down, don’t sleep will interrupt your shutdown command! Make sure you disable the application before issuing the shutdown instruction.

Four things we had to consider before publishing our app to the iOS App Store

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As a customer, there were a few things that we overlooked in all the excitement of designing and building our app. If you are about to publish an app, allow enough time to think about these:

1. The app name

Easy to overlook, but have you thought about your app name? We are a College, and somewhat predictably we name the app after our organisation. Be careful though – you are limited in the number of characters that will look good on screen. What’s could be worse than having your app name truncated? Use a guide of 11 characters as being ideal, although typically you can read more on most smartphone screens.

2. Description

How would you describe your app in 4000 characters? You need to give this one a bit of thought. Typically, the description might explain a bit about the publisher (if the app is related to your business line). You will also want to include here the key selling points. Why would anyone want to download your app, and what difference will it make to them when they haven done so? Consider a short feature list; not every last thing, but enough to give a flavor of what your app is offering (unless your app offers one or two functions).

3. Keywords

Very important for potential users to find your app. You only have 100 characters to use in the App Store. Best way to identify good keywords? Check your webmaster tools (we use Google Webmaster tools) for the top keywords used to find your organisation. Web keywords commonly used on your website are are probably a good starting point. Note that you don’t need to include your app name in the keywords, since the app name is already searchable – make the most of the characters this saves you!

4. Screenshots

Which screens will you be showing off? You can use five, and need to carefully think about which screens you will be promoting. Screenshots are shown above the app text, and visual users will quickly be turned on (or off) by your screenshots before they get to the text. Give some consideration to which pages will look most impressive and ‘welcoming’ to the user.

Not a comprehensive list by any means, but as a first time publisher, these were the last-minute elements that we would (in retrospect) spend more time considering if we repeated the process. Found it useful? Leave a comment!

Oh yeah – our app? It’s here.