The community is happy to report that Spark 2.6.2 has reached final status. The release contains several bug fixes and new features and enhancements for Spark. It is a hot fix release for a regression bug introduced in 2.6.1. Details can be found in the changelog.
Main features for this release are:
OTR (off-the-record) support for encrypted chat between clients
New notification mechanism
New splash screen
Support for animated GIF as avatar
Plugin blacklisting
Documentation for Spark customizing (lot’s of option now)
More than 30 bugs were fixed, including
New default look and feel for Mac
File transfer is using IBB as fall back for VPN network connections
Scroll to end in chat window
The downloads for all supported plattforms can be found in the download section of Igniterealtime.org.
Red5 is not included in the release as well as games were not included. These can be found in the forum for those of you interested.
A big “Thank You” to Holger and Wolf who spend numerous hours in writing features and debugging code. And of course to all the users who have reported issues, provided feedback and contributed code.
Yayyyy….File Transfers have been Fixed in 2.6.1 . . . Kudos to the Spark Team . . Congrats & Keep up the Good Work…Thanks Much
** Just noticed after installing 2.6.1 i had to maually enter back my password to login, for some strange reason Sparks remember my username but not the Password and my system is set to auto start/login…also broadcast message aint working either
This new feature (remembering all logins and passwords) sometimes gets messed up while encrypting passwords with logins. I had to delete my old spark.properties and start with a new one.
Oh this is fun - so it looks like the Spark Manager plugin we used to use to prevent Spark prompting our users to auto-upgrade must have stopped working several Openfire upgrades ago…
All our users have been prompted to upgrade to 2.6.1 and of course its too temping for them to say no!
We push out 2.5.8 via Group Policy and don’t want users upgrading, especially as there is a regression bug and we are advised not to upgrade!
Any way of blocking auto-updates? If I have to block igniterealtime.org in the firewall then so be it!
@holger - Thanks for this, I expect this is the way to go, however the latest plugin only supports Openfire 3.7.0 and we are running 3.6.2. The older ClientControl 1.0.3 doesn’t seem to work on this version properly either, so it will have to wait until we upgrade.
@wroot - I didn’t know there was such an option, although checking now I can see it in the notifications section of the Preferences. However I’ve just checked with some of the users and that box is not ticked but they still got prompted to update, so it’s a bit useless really.
For now I’ve just blocked connections to 207.223.240.70 (found using Wireshark) which appears to be the igniterealtime update server.
As i use mostly latest nightly builds myself so it doesn’t popup for me and i didn’t notice this option is not working. I was already proposing to get rid of this option altogether when it was not able to find the update server, but Wolf decided to fix it. I don’t see use of this option in a corporate environment where users has no rights to upgrade something. And if this checkbox is even not working, then it’s just a nightmare for an admin and nothing else…
The issue i’m having is when i try to broadcast a message the pop up window/box does not appear to type the message or select the users that i want to broadcast to…
I normally click on the username then go to Actions >>Broadcast Message and
a window/box normally comes up and I type the message and tick the users i want to broadcast to then click OK and the message is sent. that window/box is not coming up since i upgraded to 2.6.1 and 2.6.2.
Thanks for the tip…I was thinking of starting a fresh profile but hesitated.…Now i’m happy to report I Just created a new profile and all seems to be working well again the old way (broadcasting Msgs)