Swift 1.0 Beta6

This is the sixth beta (preview) release of Swift, and it is in no way final or feature-complete. The aim of this release is to gain help from the wider community in guiding Swift forward: primarily, we'd like feedback from you as to what needs to be done now, and also to find any issues - either technical or in usability - with what we've already done. This isn't a final release, so you shouldn't download it unless you're willing to find issues in it, and report them back to us so we can improve it.

First, the screenshots:

Comments can be sent to the mailing list at http://swift.im/lists/mailman/listinfo/swift-users, and we have a chat room at swift@rooms.swift.im. It will be very useful if people trying the beta can keep notes on what they find for a couple of days and then send a summary email to the mailing list so we can gauge people's thoughts.

Swift is trying to plug a hole in the XMPP client landscape, and has these aims.

• Wide platform availability.
• Doing the "Right Thing" for the user, without configuration.
• Doing the "Right Thing" with standards-compliance.
• Targetting the end-users, not the system administrators.
• Being an XMPP client - not multi-protocol.
• Concentrating on the most frequently performed tasks.
• Never interrupt the user with something that doesn't need attention.

This is a beta, but Swift already has some interesting features.

• Easy status setting (and plans to make it better).
• Easy room joining and bookmarking.
• XEP-0258 Labelling for secure environments.
• Stream compression for bandwidth-saving.
• Support for the new SCRAM authentication mechanism.

These are the changes since 1.0-beta5:

• Improved snappiness of chat input and chat log
• Fixed several crashes on login, disconnect, and exit
• Don't skip tabs for Ctrl-PgUp/Dn on reopened chats.
• Bundle sounds as external files. This fixes playback on some platforms, but still not on Linux systems without NAS.
• Comply to FreeDesktop.org standard for storing data files. Data files are now by default stored in ~/.local/share/swift. ~/.swift is no longer used.
• Disable dropping of images & URL context menus in the chat view.
• Sort bookmark list.
• Don't temporarily show a scrollbar in chat input after growing.
• Focus the chat input again when the chat log is clicked.
• Don't include status in MUC roster sorting.
• Include Real JIDs in MUC rosters where available
• Restart with previous (per-account) status.
• Fix chats sometimes not re-opening on new messages.
• Only add one vcard and caps element to each presence stanza.
• Fixed linkifying of urls containing '='.
• Fixed MUC nick conflict resolution.
• Don't tab-complete empty words.
• Recognise when leaving a MUC (disconnect or kick).
• Generate a Notice if your nick is mentioned in a MUC.
• Elide and use scroll buttons on all platforms when chat tab list is too long.
• Don't allow a status change to override the new message systray icon.
• Various small fixes

As this is a beta release, there are known issues and features that you might expect to be present that aren't:

• Graphical/Rendering glitches.
• You cannot change your avatar.
• You cannot rename or regroup contacts after they're added.
• The system tray behaviour on Macs is unexpectedly Windows-like.
• The Windows installer doesn't detect running Swifts.
• If you add a room bookmark before the server has returned your existing bookmarks, the server ones may be replaced with the new one.
• Servers with themselves in their service discovery results may cause the room finder to loop.
• You cannot create new rooms.
• In some cases, roster edits from another client running alongside cause the entries to not appear until they change presence.
• The incoming message sound doesn't play on Linux.

We currently have versions available for Windows and Mac:

• Windows: Swift-installer-win32-1.0beta6.exe
• Mac OS X (10.5 or later): Swift-1.0beta6.dmg
• Ubuntu Linux
  • Lucid Lynx (10.04)
    • 32-bit: swift_1.0~beta6-1_i386.deb
    • 64-bit: swift_1.0~beta6-1_amd64.deb
    To stay up to date with the latest release, you can add the following APT lines to the list of Software Sources in Synaptic Package Manager:

    deb http://swift.im/packages/ubuntu lucid/beta/
    deb-src http://swift.im/packages/ubuntu lucid/beta/

The source code for Swift and the underlying Swiften XMPP library are available from the Git repository at http://swift.im/git/swift. Instructions for building the source code can be found in Documentation/BuildingOnUnix.txt and Documentation/BuildingOnWindows.txt.

The source for this release is available under the GNU General Public License version 3.