FrostWire 4.18.0 is finally out for Windows, Mac and Linux. Among the most important changes are:
- Fixes Bittorrent Incompatibilities.
- Mac launcher fixes bug where FrostWire would not allow itself to run on a external disk.
- Fixes bug on Welcome Screen, now you don’t need to open FrostWire twice to get the latest welcome screen.
- FrostWire caches the last 2 images shown on the Welcome Screen to save bandwidth from static servers.
- Tools > Check for Updates. Now FrostWire can check for configuration updates, community messages, new FrostWire releases and welcome screen promotion updates during runtime.
- The welcome screen can be customized for every language, giving the chance to more content creators to be promoted every week to different audiences that speak their language.
- The Buttons of the Download Manager have been rearranged to avoid mistakes when trying to resume downloads. The Clear and Cancel Buttons are all the way to the right. Thanks to ‘ssome’ for the suggestion.
- New Splash Screen.
- Anti spam filters updated to filter out new keywords used by spammers.
- New “Buy” icon.
- The community chat ‘Connect’ button now checks if a nickname has been set and helps the user set a default nickname using an input dialog.
- When users issue the “/nick” command on the chat, FrostWire will remember the new nickname as the default nickname.
A little more on these updates
Some bugs on the Bittorrent implementation were causing CPU usage to go to 100%, also torrents created with KTorrent presented some incompatibilities that are now fixed. Thanks to FTA for these patches. There’s also some work that exists on the code that will allow FrostWire to let the user download only certain files shared by a torrent. This is useful if you find a torrent with multiple files and you only care about a few of them. Since we need a little more testing for this feature it’s dormant on 4.18.0. FrostWire hackers can play with the code and enable it.
After Unpack200 was introduced for all the FrostWire jars to reduce the installer size we imposed a limitation on the Mac installer that allowed FrostWire to be run (the first time) only from the Applications folder. This limitation is now gone thanks to users that complained when 4.17.2 came out. You can now install FrostWire on your Mac on any folder, including external drives, USB drives, etc.
The integration between FrostClick.com and the FrostWire welcome screen will be far more effective as of 4.18.0. Before 4.18.0 FrostWire users would not see the latest promotion from FrostClick.com downloads until they’d open FrostWire a second time. Now, the minute a promotion is launched from FrostClick, 4.18.0 will be able to display the featured download and independent artists and free content owners will see the benefits of FrostWire/Frostclick free promotions a lot faster. Also, promotions can now be distributed to different languages so FrostWire communities in other countries will also be able to enjoy content in their own language, opening the stage for more artists per month. The images for promotions are now cached on disk, thus giving a much needed bandwidth relief to the Frostclick/FrostWire servers.
A subtle change on the interface has been implemented. Some users complained about the ordering of the buttons on the download manager, it was causing some of the users to get confused and cancel their downloads. Buttons have been re-arranged so that this doesn’t happen. Also the “Buy Item” button has a more visible icon now.
New users not familiar with IRC terminology got lost in the process of setting up a nickname joining the chat community (since they’d skip steps on the setup wizard and not enter a default nickname). Now FrostWire checks if you have set up or not your chat nickname. If you have not, a friendly dialog will let you set your default nickname before Connecting to the Chatroom. No more, Tools > Options … and restarting needed to join the chat for the first time. Also, when you change your nick using the “/nick” irc command, FrostWire will notice the nick change, and save the new nickname as the new default nickname. Next time you open frostwire, you won’t have to issue the “/nick” command again.
Other than these there are a lot of internal updates and new dormant functionality that subversion followers may have noticed in the code base during the winter months. These game changing upgrades are of such importance that we are leaving them for the FrostWire 5.0 series.
Stay tuned for a few 4.18 releases that will deal directly with spam issues, and order your free stickers before they run out, make sure you send us your pictures.
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