We've released the LimeWire 3.9.1 beta, with the pro version available from a link on your pro download page, and the free version available from the LimeWire download page.

Changes in 3.9.1 include:
- Better detection of all unhandled errors.
- Support for a future change of requesting certain file types.
- OOB Proxying, which means that even hosts that are firewalled can take advantage of super-fast out-of-band queries.
- Better use of invalid locations in downloaders, allowing failed locations to be retried after a long enough period of inactivity (submitted by Gregorio Roper).
- Better intelligence about when to not do OOB queries, so that hosts who incorrectly set it can still receive results.
- Icons for the file types in search results, uploads, downloads, and the library. This currently requires Java 1.4 or higher on Windows to correctly get the native icons -- we're exploring ways for it to work with Java 1.3 on Windows. (It always works on OSX, and will likely never work on Mac Classic.)
- A new 'Change Language' mention option under View in the menu bar.

As more 3.9 betas are released, more features will likely be added, including:
- THEX support.
- DAAP support, for iTunes integration on Windows too.
- Socks Proxying / HTTP Tunneling support.
- Upload slot memory.
- Better detection of features on the uploader or downloader.
- Many many code optimizations.
- ID3v2 support.
- Filters for search results.
... and many other additions, both in the interface and internally.

Thank you for your help in testing the betas!

- The LimeWire Team

and thank you LimeWire Team for keeping 'em coming!

Keep up the great work.

Yes--thanks for the log, the developments, and to the patchers. The forecast is interesting too (no NIO?).

The icons were a pleasant surprise, and the way the tabs are drawn in Panther much nicer.

A few bugs--the color of the Connectionn quality meter doesn't change with the theme (and changing themes still reduces font size).
a magnet request received on my G3 triggers quite a few bug reports (NPE) and blank lines in the Monitor Uploads pane. Running the mouse over the blank lines shows data which quickly goes back to blank, and scrolling the pane fills the Console with many more NPE reports. The workaround is to check Always discard bug reports (not a good idea) and also check auto-clear completed uploads.

On the G4 running Panther, choosing "Magnet details for file" gives an error in Internet Explorer (could not open url...). but works in Safari when it is set to be the default browser.

Making magnets is a really useful tool--thanks! There's another entry for TOTD. I must have missed when that contextual menu was added. Has it been there for a long time?

btw--running LW on the G4 for the first time since it was updated to Panther triggered a bus error and a java crash which was sent to Apple. I kept the logs if needed. After restarting the G4 in Safe boot, LW ran fine.

cheers

btw--I set up the G4 with LW to share only the test magnet, and a request there also triggered the NPE (the magnet was received correctly--thanks guys).

This revealed quite a few other issues. Comment, suggestions and info would be appreciated. I'm probably misunderstanding something here.

--should I send in every automatic bug report of the same error? (I only send in one per session and discard the others)

--Which help the gnet more--sharing or running as an UP? Both LW's do run as UltraPeers simultaneously. The G4 only shares 1 file, but running by itself 24/7 will use up almost all of my "ISP-below-the-horizon" allocation of 1 GB/day. Would sharing only 1 file but serving as an Ultrapeer be perceived as leeching?

--both machines are set with Force IP checked. I can't tell if this potentially confuses incoming requests, or if the Linksys router is handling them correctly.

-- uploads throttled ~75% (100KB/s) on both means that Ethernet speeds are also limited to 100KB/s, instead of >700KB/s seen before. Can the upload throttle be bypassed just for ethernet transfers?

--I can browse the G3 from the G4, but not vice-versa

--ethernet downloads from either machine are split into two streams. One downloads from the NAT address (192.168.*.3 or .2), the other stream from the router (192.168.*.0). I cna't understand the reason, and I hope such transfers remain within the LAN and do not register on the ISP's routers.

Sorry for the delay in the response --

NIO: NIO is a HUGE change. It is essentially a complete rewrite of the internal message processing. The payoffs are large, but not large enough to stop development on other areas while we finish NIO & fix any bugs that might have crept in. NIO will make it in at some point, but not for 4.0.

Connection Meter: The problem with themes is that they each have their own images, so images that are introduced now have to use 'fallback images' -- ones that exist if the theme doesn't have them. We can go through and add theme-specific images for the connection meter (and anything else that's new), but for the connection meter specifically I don't think it's necessary. Red/Green is pretty universal for disconnected & connected, and LimeWire's adopted blue as a 'turbo' color.

NPE's & Magnets: We'll look into it before the next beta.

Sending bug reports: It doesn't hurt to send them a lot. We prioritize bugs based on how many we received (and how many unique clients they come from). So if we see a lot of bugs, it probably means it's a problem affecting lots of people lots of times. There's always some wierd case where a single client gets a really rare bug that's repeated 500 times... but it doesn't happen too often.

Helping Gnutella: LimeWire's pretty smart about what will help the network the most. It will create and remove Ultrapeers as needed. I think sharing files is the most important thing for network growth.

Force IP: So long as each machine is set up correctly on the Linksys router for port forwarding (to different ports), it should be fine. I have succesfully forwarded to a W2k and OSX box that are behind the same router.

Upload Throttling: We'll look into how feasable it is to ignore throttling on ethernet transfers.

Browsing: Yeah, there's some wierd things with browsing. We'll look into it.

Ethernet Transfers: I noticed the same phenomena transferring files from my PC to my Mac behind the router. I don't think it has any adverse effect -- it's just a different way of advertising the address. None of them should hit the ISP I don't think.

Thanks,
Sam

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

FWIW, the magnet NPE errors seem to be triggered by older clients (3.5.8 and 3.6.15 noted), but not by 3.9.1

Sometimes the bug report buttons don't respond (in that case, the close button works to help get through a stack of windows). The bottom bug report window's buttons usually do work.

cheers

Received the above error message when attempting to install LW 3.9.1 Pro

P-III/600 384 MB RAM; Win2K SP4

Bugs/problems

I notice that when I'm an Ultrapeer for several hours, my outbound connections all fall away and searches no longer return any results. I don't know if this means my leaf nodes have the same problem.

The "sort by" triangles in the connections monitor are reversed, such that with the triangle pointing up, "dropped(i/o)", "time" and other fields are displayed highest values on top instead of the intuitive lower/smaller on top. This also crops up in some other places I don't recall right now.

In the search results, the math for determining the size suffix (KB,MB,GB) seems to be off by a factor of ten, at least for the KB to MB transition, I regularly see thinks like "96,400KB". The changeover seems to happen at about 102,000KB.

In "Library" view, if I change the name of a file within the LW interface the interface hangs for a long time. I think the program is re-calculating a hash or something. In any case there should be a progress bar or this should become a background thread like the normal hash generation.


Requests/annoyances

I still really hate the re-size of columns in all the views. I'd really prefer if only the dragged column and its neighbor were resized instead of scaling all the columns to the right. This is the only app I've used that does this "all column" scaling and I have to re-size all the columns three to five times every time I change any of them.

A detail view of hosts in the "downloads" view would be excellent so we could see the connection status and speed of each host, pending/in queue, waiting, etc. At least a display of how many hosts are being tracked for the DL. Acquisition does this very nicely.

A preference for how often to update the display. From my-rough tracking the display east up about 20% of my CPU cycles, I'd rather have infrequent updates with the window open than have to close the window.

Pervasive intra-session search results. Search results become cumulative, so when I choose "repeat search", the old results don't go away. This would minimize repeating search requests in the long term since the known hosts could just be re-polled. This could be automated such that searches could repeat every few hours to check for new hosts while maintaining the existing cache.

Support for multiple windows. Maybe this all-in-one thing is preferred on MS Windows, but I prefer more small windows: search entry, search results, downloads, uploads, connections, library. All of these little re-size dohickies are just clutter and confusing to me. Just make it a preference option, a check box: "use multiple windows"


Mac G4/475, Panther, 768MB (yes, it's a beige).

oops, one more bug:

In the preferences window, clicking "ok" does not save the changes and has the same effect as "cancel". I must press "apply" and then "okay". Pressing "okay" should mean just that, the changes are okay, save them. Cancel should abort any changes since the last "okay" or "apply" and "apply" should commit any changes at that moment an keep the window open.