What's new

Instructors can now put text on a board, right next to the works. Recordings play back more faithfully, and joining a class copes better with a busy moment.

Class chat now opens with a short welcome pinned above the message box, carrying the greeting and who to contact if something goes wrong. It stays where it is while the conversation moves, and each organization writes its own. Classes also start faster and run more smoothly.

A class can now be given a length, so it shows as a time range and stays open until it really ends. A whole run of classes can be laid out while the course is being created rather than a date at a time. PowerPoint import now takes a deck at full picture quality and brings more of each slide across. And the panel that reports a recording says plainly whether it is ready and what to do when it isn't.

A class you have taught using PowerPoint no longer has to be rebuilt to be taught here. Upload the presentation, choose the slides you want, and each one becomes a board, with the pictures and text arriving where they sat on the slide.

There is now a guide to taking a class — how to join one, what each control does, and how to watch a class back afterwards. For the people building classes, the objects on a board can be moved and resized by hand.

The platform has been rebuilt. The parts of a class you spend your time in, the artwork, moving between looking together and looking on your own, and watching a class back afterwards, work the way they always have. Nearly everything around them is new and it is quicker to move around.