PVC Latest - New Layouts Feature
At the end of October, we released our latest version of Programmable Video Conferences (PVC) with a layout picker. This feature gives moderators a selector to change the layout of the video room. When not in use, the tray collapses into the header bar beside the chat icon. There are currently 10 grid layout options and 3 special use case options.
Programmatically, the layouts property can be set to true or false to enable or disable the layout selector tray when initializing a PVC.
Build Front-end Friendly PVCs with Video Conference AppKit
Speaking of PVCs, SignalWire also released the Video Conference AppKit in October. What is that? I’m glad you asked. In short, AppKit is the Stencil component library behind PVC. The AppKit is comprised of many components, but the main component (and the one you will likely interact with the most) is <sw-video-conference>. You can use the attributes of this component to enable and disable child component features. Find all of the attribute details in the AppKit technical reference.
For examples of how to use AppKit with front-end frameworks, check out our blog series starting with React and Vue 3 integrations. And stay tuned for more in the series where we will demonstrate Vite and Angular implementations.
Use the Forum, Luke
Much of the focus at SignalWire this month was on ClueCon. If you’ve been living under the rock that Luke can’t keep floating to save his life, and you have never heard of ClueCon, check out the ClueCon website for all the fun details! One of the conference's highlights was announcing our new community forum for SignalWire and FreeSWITCH topics at forum.signalwire.community.
Previously, most of our community discussions were held on Slack. However, long conversations in Slack got lost as we either started a thread, which scrolled up and vanished from awareness, or added a channel, which increased the places people needed to pay attention and often excluded new joiners who weren't aware the channel existed. Definitely not optimal. Enter the new forum hosted on Discourse. We intend to host more extended conversations on the forum, use it to get feedback, and build up a body of content that is search engine indexable and persistent.
We will still be present and posting in Community Slack, and a support ticket is still the fastest path to resolving acute issues with your account. However, we hope the forum will allow for more community discussion, inspiration, and general knowledge sharing. Please join the forum and help us build a community that’s a home for everyone.
New Guides
We have updated the Voice section of the developer portal to simplify the navigation SignalWire’s Voice resources. Your options of RELAY, SIP, PSTN, Compatibility APIs, and more can be confusing, but hopefully, the updated organization will help you find the right development solution for your project.
Within the Voice section, we updated the Zoiper integration guide to include instructions for mobile devices.
In our Video guides section, we have expanded our React and React Native guides. There are comprehensive guides to using the community library with SignalWire’s Video APIs and in-depth documentation on using Events and Hooks. This section is a must-read for developers building a video conference application with React or React Native. And, as you develop, consider contributing to that community-supported library.
SDK Releases
We have deprecated the audio and video properties on the RoomSession constructor in favor of controlling the sending and receiving of media in the roomSession.join() function.
The JavaScript SDK now exposes .disconnect() on PubSub and Chat clients.
You can read the full release notes for client and server-side SDKs on our GitHub Releases page.
And Soon…
ClueCon may have delayed our release date, but you can look forward to the general availability of Interactive Live Streaming very soon.
In the short term, we are building on the new forum's momentum and moving towards a closer working relationship between SignalWire and FreeSWITCH. We are also updating the Dashboard UI to improve the onboarding experience for new customers and simplify controls and options for existing customers.
Farther out on the horizon, we are making progress in the development of Call Fabric. There are many moving parts to align, so this project will remain on our roadmap for some time.
As always, our roadmap is subject to change, so keep an eye out for the next Fresh off the Wire for the latest releases and updates. We’ll be back after Thanksgiving full of turkey and news for the November Product update!