v0.8.0

This release adds a notable feature, which is HTTPS remote access, making Xeres more social by enabling...

The Android Mobile client 🥳🎈🎊🍾

(which can be found here)

Yes! You can now connect to your own Xeres instance remotely and securely with your smartphone. No middleman, no company's server you don't have control over, no account on some cloud.

All you need to do is enable Remote Access in Xeres. A strong password is automatically generated but you can use anything. If you're behind a NAT, the port can be automatically opened with UPNP.

There are a few things required. First, your machine must be online of course. The second thing is that it must be reachable. If you have a fixed IP, things are easy. If not, we suggest you use a dynamic DNS provider (or setup your own). The Android client makes sure that it's connecting to the right server (it keeps the first connected certificate, also known as certificate pinning), so if you connect to a different IP or someone attempts to do a man in the middle attack, the client won't connect.

For now the features of the mobile client are private chats, chat rooms and showing contacts and their online status. You can also share text and picture in the app.

Other changes

Xeres itself had numerous changes like:

Built in manual and automatic version check (disabled by default).

Improved error messages, with a friendly requester and a way to easily copy errors to paste them in an error report.

The default control port is 6232 now. Make sure you update all custom scripts or API access if you already used this.

Sound support. You can now configure several events to produce sounds. Never miss those private messages anymore.

Chat rooms support backlogs now too.

Images in chats are improved. They are of higher quality and automatically scale with the window size. The fullscreen viewer has also been improved as well.

And many other fixes and improvements.

Full Changelog: v0.7.3...v0.8.0

Many thanks to everyone who gave feedback and helped to improve Xeres! This release also contains the first pull request from someone else than me (thank you pirus 😊).
Keep them coming!

Note: if there are dependency errors on Linux, use dpkg --force-depends -i xeres_0.8.0_amd64.deb

v0.7.3

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

v0.7.2

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

v0.7.1

Improvements

Added 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

v0.7.0

New Features

File Sharing

• Direct Sharing: send/receive files directly with your friends
• Encrypted Turtle Sharing: send/receive beyond your friends and anonymously
• File Search: find files by name
• Local File Indexing: add your own file shares with settable search permissions

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

Full Changelog: v0.6.3...v0.7.0

v0.6.3

Commits

• fadaba9: Brand new UI (#170) (David Gerber) #170
• 26eebf8: Bump com.tngtech.archunit:archunit-junit5 from 1.1.0 to 1.2.0 (#169) (dependabot[bot]) #169
• fa4aefc: Improve default size of messaging window (David Gerber)
• 0d351cd: Add dark mode borders (David Gerber)
• 74b8f89: Improve fixed fonts (David Gerber)
• d82b4cc: Improve fonts support (David Gerber)
• 9130752: Remove Linux font (David Gerber)
• 03336f9: Optimized add peer window sizing (David Gerber)
• 23d1c02: Fix line refresh (David Gerber)
• 5670e2a: Fix MacOS (David Gerber)
• 20b2047: Improve about window (David Gerber)
• 2c99bb1: Change the warning colors (David Gerber)
• 7310ae2: Bump bouncycastleVersion from 1.76 to 1.77 (#171) (dependabot[bot]) #171
• 0bc846f: Improve main window default sizes (David Gerber)
• 5e3e01b: Bump for release 0.6.3 (David Gerber)
• 061cffa: Remove MacOS installer (David Gerber)

v0.6.2

Commits

• e4bc75e: Add a way to specify the network interface to bind to (David Gerber)
• 4995f9b: Bump org.fxmisc.flowless:flowless from 0.7.1 to 0.7.2 (#165) (dependabot[bot]) #165
• d15a367: Bump org.jsoup:jsoup from 1.16.1 to 1.16.2 (#166) (dependabot[bot]) #166
• fd7018c: Upgrade to JavaFX 21 (David Gerber)
• aa01e36: Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' (David Gerber)
• fce547d: Fix JavaFX tests (David Gerber)
• 25c3671: Upgrade Spring Boot to 3.1.5 (David Gerber)
• a366756: Fix direct messaging not working (David Gerber)
• 22ad47d: Bump mikepenz/gradle-dependency-submission from 0.9.0 to 0.9.1 (#167) (dependabot[bot]) #167
• ca10b4e: Bump commons-io:commons-io from 2.14.0 to 2.15.0 (#168) (dependabot[bot]) #168
• 26c8c90: Bump for release 0.6.2 (David Gerber)

This release is signed. My PGP key is here.

v0.6.1

General

• Change the JDK so that it actually allows creating a new profile

v0.6.0

Protocol

• add forums support
• improved reliability

UI

• add markdown support
• add inline color emojis support

Misc

• profile export/import
• Java 21
• improvements to automatic backups

And many bug fixes and other improvements.

v0.5.3

UI

• add QR code export and scanning to simplify ID exchanges

Protocol

• fix GXS syncing so that updates are pushed and received in all cases (for example missing avatar image)
• make UPNP fail when the external IP is not public

And many bug fixes and other improvements.