Spark 2.5.0 Beta 4 Released

We are happy to announce the release of Spark 2.5.0 Beta 4. We are still on target for the final release at the end of the month, so keep the feedback coming. You can get the download from our beta page at http://www.igniterealtime.org/downloads/beta.jsp.

Some new things to check out

  • Jingle P2P Voice Support.

  • Favorite Contacts - ctrl + t

  • Recent Conversations - ctrl+e

  • Much improved SoftPhone support.

  • Option to show offline users in Offline Group or the groups they belong to.

Change Log

New Features

  • SPARK-2 - Now show status of offline users.

  • SPARK-382 - Added ctrl+e to display last 10 conversations.

  • SPARK-410 - Now all plugins to be operating-system specific

  • SPARK-559 - Refactored ContactList, ContactGroup and ContactItem to allow all event operations to run through the ContactList itself.

  • SPARK-561 - Added new tray notification for incoming fastpath chat requests.

  • SPARK-567 - Added Pack200 support to lower the overall deployment size of Spark.

  • SPARK-568 - Added typing notification for Fastpath Conference chats.

  • SPARK-571 - Added client to client VOIP support.

Bug Fixes

  • SPARK-453 - Linux distribution no longer depends on the windows dir.

  • SPARK-471 - Fixed presence issue inside chat rooms.

  • SPARK-510 - Conference Invitation page needs UI improvements.

  • SPARK-551 - Handle gateway jids and adding of gateway users more gracefully.

  • SPARK-552 - Added new error handling UI for Soft Phone.

  • SPARK-553 - Presence now changes back to normal presence when hanging up phone call.

  • SPARK-554 - Opening of a chat room now hides contact tooltip.

  • SPARK-555 - Usernames with escapeable characters are now handled correctly in history.

  • SPARK-556 - VCardManager now caches invalid vCards to prevent network abuse.

  • SPARK-557 - Soft Phone only loads vCards if the user is registered.

  • SPARK-558 - IRC-Style Shortcuts are now displayed in history.

  • SPARK-565 - Users are now notified that they need to reconnect to a conference room when disconnected.

Hi Derek,

once again a small list with minor issues (;

a) chat history for user “?@example.com” fails for the user itself as for all users which chat with “?”, using a JID with a wildcard is still a good option to deny client-side chat logging.

b) Jingle

b1) Other uses see me as “online” while in the p2p chat the calling parties see each other as “on the phone”.

b2) One may miss a way to end the call (afaik fixed in beta5).

b3) “Send file” and “Place call” are there, I’'m missing “Send audio stream” there.

c) While in p2pchat clicking on the image opens a vCard, clicking on the image in the vCard opens another vCard etc. A vCard should not open itself again in another window.

d) Send message “gray \blue black” and close the chat window. Open it again, it will look like “gray \blue black”. While I unerstand that links like http://… or
… are colored blue I see no sense to do this with a single \ and after a link the offline color should stay gray and not turn to black.

e) The GTalk “\m/” emotion is broken.

f) German translations is not complete.

g) Is there a way to use a more simple or classic style with less colors and small icons?

h) Offline Users

h1) One can select “send file” and “phone” in the right-click drop-down menu, this makes little sense.

h2) Show version shows the servers version and time.

LG

added:

i) Settings Window - define a min-size and one width for the left icon bar.

One may select “Chat” and click then the gray area between the Chat icon and the title “Settings”.

One may select “File Transfer” and click then the gray area between the Chat icon and the title “File Transfer Prefs”. Now the size of the left and the right parts will change.

Clicking on Notifications and then into the gray area allows one to make the window very small, if one selects then “Chat” the content can’'t be displayed properly.

h) Query time and version: Time will not be displayed when querying another Spark client:

Spark replies with – this works

  • Favorite Contacts - ctrl + t

  • Recent Conversations - ctrl+e

Wonder how is this done? Checking chat logs and showing last active for some time period?

  • Option to show offline users in Offline Group or the groups they belong to.

Wow. I cant believe my eyes Though it still shows Offline group when grouping of offline users is deselected. Just try to check/uncheck Show empty groups. I think Offline group should go away completely when using no grouping.

Just noticed, urls are loading at right-click. Shouldnt.

Is presence broken in some way? I did receive

but “foo” shows still online within Spark.

LG

  • Favorite Contacts - ctrl + t

Our lithuanian spellchecking and dictionary program (Tildes biuras) intercepts that shortcut even if Spark is focused. So, maybe you should add this and recent conversations as a menu in Contacts or Actions? And this would help more people to find that features, as not everyone is checking changelogs or tries every shortcut one can imagine.

  • Option to show offline users in Offline Group or the groups they belong to.

Ok. Now we need it to sort contacts in groups just alphabetically (leaving the current approach as an option too). And with the current view - online contats on top sorted by names, but offline contacts in the same group are displayed in random order. Should be alphabetically too.

Seems that offline contacts being sorted randomly issue has dissapeared after few Saprk restarts. Maybe after runing it with admin rights. Will post about this in next thread.

wroot wrote:

Though it still shows Offline group when grouping of offline users is deselected. Just try to check/uncheck Show empty groups.

to make Offline group go away one should check/unchek Grouping of offline users after login

I’‘ve now moved to Spark at work, for testing. So it’‘s with XP. I’'ve noticed that sometimes contact info tooltip doesnt pop up. If i pull my mouse slowly over roster it will show pop ups, but if i move it faster and stop over some contact it wouldnt show anything until i move mouse a bit.

Simple question: Why does Spark have to look different than all other windows? Seriously. Why? There is nothing wrong with the format that Windows are in, especially since I can change them if I want, unless an application has it’‘s own look and format, then it’'s not changeable. Sorry, but this is really annoying.

scottwilkins wrote:

Simple question: Why does Spark have to look different than all other windows?

SPARK-496

Hi

I can confirm the oberservation, that the presense Information is buggy. I have users in a pending status, even though they have confirmed to be added to the contact list. Users are “idle” even though I am chatting. Users a "writting2 even though they are not. Our server is 3.2.2.

Regards

Walter

When no Offline contacts grouping is active an empty group “Unfiled” appears on the roster. It doesnt show up if Show empty groups is not selected, but i want to have real empty groups, dont want Offline group and this Unfiled group on my roster.

ddman wrote:

  • Favorite Contacts - ctrl + t
  • Recent Conversations - ctrl+e

I think these features are a good idea – though “Favourite Contacts” should be “Frequent Contacts” or “Frequently-used Contacts” because, as mentioned on the blog, they might not be favourites. Having a “favourite this user” type option so you have your own quick list of users you like could be a good option too.

I think that the Frequent/Favourite/Recent lists would be better served as a tab down the bottom which just shows a different list of contacts, rather than a floating list that is (to me) slightly annoying but nonetheless useful.

If not tabs, then maybe buttons at the top (near add/conference/etc), though if the main contact list changed, that would be confusing what with the two tabs also doing that.

I just recently found that I can already create groups and copy users into them on Spark 2.5.0b4, which is a reasonably good solution to what I suggested above (re. the favourite contacts)