News

This is a release that adds some useful features:

Contacts

A new contact panel allows to search and display all the identities and profiles. Contacts that haven’t set any avatar picture will get one generated by Identicons. The connection status as well as the locations are displayed and updated in real time.

Retroshare profile importer

It is now possible to directly import a Retroshare profile and friends into Xeres so that it’ll connect with them automatically.

Miscellaneous

Faster avatar image loading.

When opening a chat, the few last lines are redisplayed so that the context can be quickly grasped.

It’s possible to set oneself away or busy.

The systray context menu has been improved and one can initiate a chat from there.

Newly created profiles use SHA-256 for their integrity checksum instead of SHA-1 to improve compatibility with the upcoming Retroshare.

Added support for possibly future Elliptic Curve keys.

The application menu has been improved with a better layout and removal of deprecated functions.

Added an image viewer to see inline images in full screen.

Turtle received some fixes for tunnel expirations and search forwarding.

And many other fixes and improvements.

Full Changelog: v0.7.2…v0.7.3

Many thanks to everyone who gave feedback and helped to improve Xeres!

Download here.

This is a release that improves stability and adds a few useful features.

User Interface

Messaging

• Show when the peer is not avaiable in a message window
• Add /quote command

Various

• Add a preview button to the markdown editor
• Add a context menu to be able to save images
• Improve most context menu looks
• Improve forum header look
• Improve account creation UI
• Change default avatar icon for identities without an image

Protocols

• Fix transactions for good
• Prevents missing downloaded files on some systems
• Disconnects peers when removing their profile

Full Changelog: v0.7.1…v0.7.2

Many thanks to everyone who gave feedback and helped to improve Xeres!

Download here.

Mostly bugfixes but still a few improvements.

There’s also a portable version for Windows. No need to install, just extract and run. Also usable from an USB key (NTFS formatted, or Incoming directory on an NTFS formatted drive).

UI

Messaging window

• Improved layout
• Support for Away status
• Multiline support
• /pre and /code for special text formatting
• Better display of inline images

Misc

• Shows file sizes properly
• Update Emojis to latest Twitter release

Protocols

• Fix direct sending of files
• Fix transaction errors

Full Changelog: v0.7.0…v0.7.1

Download here.

A new version with some major changes:

File Sharing

You can now share and receive files, add multiple shares with different permissions.

You can of course also search for files.

Two kind of transfers are supported:

Direct Sharing

Allows to send and receive files directly with your friends.

Encrypted Turtle Sharing

This one allows to send and receive files beyond your friends. It’s also completely anonymous and there’s no way to know where the files come from.

Other improvements

UI

• Improved Direct Chat with buttons to send files and images easily
• Better typing notifications
• Updated Emojis to version 15.1
• Added Turtle Traffic Statistics
• Add Drag & Drop of files into the Direct Chat window
• URL link support everywhere
• Uses Dark Mode by default on systems configured as such
• Many fixes and improvements

Protocols

• Improved reliability of forum and identity syncing
• Enhanced discovery of one’s own IP behind a NAT

And many many other changes. The full changelog is available here.

Download here.

This version mostly fixes a bug that prevents direct messaging from working and also upgrades JavaFX to allow menu shortcuts to work properly.

Download here.

Note that this download is PGP signed and my key is here.

And of course, the JDK used to build the release was busted, which would make the profile creation fail. And due to the way the packaging is performed, it would only fail in that state, and not during the tests, conclusion:

• automated tests are overrated
• manual beta testing is still king

Download here

And the previous post with a description of all feature is here.

After a long wait, a new version with some major changes:

Forums

You can now communicate using forums and instant synchronization. Subscribe to your favorite topics and participate in conversations with other users.

It also features a markdown editor so you can have some structure and style but without the bloat of HTML.

which gives the following result once the message is sent:

Incoming HTML messages from Retroshare are automatically converted to markdown.

Emojis

Emojis up to Unicode version 14 are supported inline and with colors:

Profile export/import

You can now export your own profile, location and identity as well as your friend’s profiles and locations to an XML file for backup purposes.

This is also useful when switching versions with incompatible databases (*).

Miscellaneous changes

• Java 21 support for better and faster performances
• improvements to automatic backups (3 of them are kept)
• improved network failures handling
• protocol improvements
• UI fixes

*: Upgrading from a previous version requires deleting the profile because of some major changes again. At least from this version on there’s the profile export/import feature to mitigate this in the future.

Download here.