Polarbar Change Logs

View changes for version 1.27, 1.25 through 1.25a, 1.22 through 1.24c, 1.20 through 1.21b, 1.17 through 1.19a, or 1.15 through 1.16c.

The following is new or has been fixed in 1.27

Java

• Polarbar 1.27 only supports Java versions 11 and above. Please make sure you have that setup prior to running Polarbar. The JavaFX platform must also be installed separately due to how Java is distributed. The dependencies on FX technologies have been in earlier Polarbar releases but FX was bundled with Java, which is no longer true. (PBM-44)

• The Help/Support menu is enhanced to use the Polarbar Mailer issue tracking system. A custom dialog now appears that allows entering a new issue and submitting it via email. The email submission is done all behind the scenes so it's quick and easy now to report issues. You can also view existing issues, both open and closed. You can see if something you want to report is already reported. You can also add comments to any existing issue to assist in the resolution of the issue. (PBM-92)

• Polarbar now supports updating itself while running the application. This allows you to easily maintain Polarbar and keep it up to date with the latest changes. (PBM-65)

• The Help menu has a new option called Check for updates. This feature looks at the download site for any new version and lets you install (or just download) the new version when one becomes available. (PBM-65)

• Polarbar now supports the ability to backup system and account configuration files on a regular basis. You can optionally backup all your email data, although that will take longer and use more space. Either way, this allows you to recover system and/or account settings should some anomaly occur. Each backup will be placed in a zip file which is named based on the date/time the backup runs or you can choose a single name which would be overwritten each time. These backups are zip files and by default are placed where the Polarbar application data exists, under a directory named Backups. You can change this location in the backup settings. (PBM-65)

• Only WebKit and Text viewers are available. Older viewers are incompatible with the new versions of Java. (PBM-43)

• Double clicking a message in the main window list opens the message in a separate window. (PBM-43)

• Raw message in a separate POP window always uses the Text viewer.

• Most dialogs support closing the window using standard platform keys (e.g., ctrl-w on Windows, cmd-w on OS X).

• Added better Ubuntu support with dock icon, badge of unread message count on dock icon.

• One can now define an incoming IMAP server using the JavaMail open source support.

• Support for SSL on the incoming IMAP server is now available

• PGP support has been upgraded to Bouncy Castle implementation (widely used and supported, http://www.bouncycastle.org).

• Limited support for the Autocrypt PGP public key header exchange standard. Other mailers, such as Enigmail and K-9 Mail support this as well. It provides a seamless way to exchange PGP public keys, required for recipients to decrypt the encrypted messages you send. PBM currently will read the Autocrypt header if it exists in a PGP encrypted email. PBM also supports sending your public key via the Autocrypt header in a new PGP setting.

• WebKit browser integrated to follow http/https links in emails. Downloading of files enhanced to avoid having to switch from email to browser and back simply to grab a file linked within an email or web page. You need to set your web browser to WebKit for this behavior. (PBM-43)

• WebKit integration for emails on par with Text viewer - context menu is same, copy/paste available, full rich text rendering of content using a modern browser rendering engine. (PBM-43)

• WebKit viewer only loads remote content when chosen by user, *never* automatically. This allows very safe (and untraced) viewing of emails with as much rich content displayed as possible without reaching outside on the network. If the sender is trusted, a button allows reloading the message with all remote links resolved and rendered. (PBM-43)

• A new Backup/Updates settings panel configures Polarbar to perform regular checks in the background for new updates and/or perform backups of system and account settings. Polarbar can check each time it starts for any new version. This makes it easy to be notified at startup of a new update when it becomes available. You can also do a very fast backup of system and account settings files each time you quit Polarbar. Other schedules for these actions are also available in the settings panel. (PBM-65)

• Under Web Browser, you can set the default download directory for files downloaded by WebKit.

• Under Fonts and Colors, similar to consolidate colors you can now consolidate fonts across all settings. This works in most cases but you may have to adjust the LED font size for proper display if the selected font is larger than normal dialog fonts. (PBM-128)

• Under Fonts and Colors, you can now import and export color and font settings from one account/environment to another. (PBM-131)

• Under Personas on the Signature panel, the option to PGP encrypt is available. When selected, messages sent using this Persona will default to encrypting the message. This also means recipients of the message need to be in your public key collection.

• Under PGP, the Autocrypt header support is enabled on the PGP settings page. It is enabled by default for messages you send that are PGP encrypted.

• The default logging option is changed in 1.27 to be on by default. The log file name is also changed to be polarbar.log. This file may grow up to 1 megabyte in size and by default two of them may exist at any one time (polarbar.log and polarbar.log.1). You can disable or adjust these values in Settings under General/Cleanup/Log Files. (PBM-71)

• Starting in 1.27, Polarbar now uses a standard way of locating its data directory. If your data directory isn't found in a standard location using an environment variable (APPDATA for Windows, HOME for Linux/Mac), Polarbar can/will create a redirection file in that directory. The file is named Mailer and will be located within the Polarbar directory. You should not remove this directory or file or the next time you run Polarbar, it will be like a new install. You can of course just select your existing data directory again and this file will be automatically re-created by Polarbar. The -d command line switch still overrides anything, but the new approach is the preferred way as it makes support of mailto: work correctly in all cases. (PBM-72)

• Ctrl-0 (zero) is now a default key used to reset the font size in a message view to the default configured size. Useful if you use Ctrl-T to scroll through font sizes and you want to reset it back to the default. The size is maintained separately for each message viewer, so if you toggle viewers (Ctrl-7), you may have to reset the size in each viewer, depending on Ctrl-T usage. (PBM-135)

• Help is now using WebKit for displaying help contents. (PBM-43)

• As the technology is going away, support for Java Web Start is no longer provided on the Polarbar web site

• Updated web site to support downloading of new continuous integration builds. The new distribution includes shell/batch scripts to run Polarbar immediately after downloading. (PBM-47)

• Definition of custom keystrokes is now supported and keystroke definitions can be shared cross-platform. (PBM-74)

Known bugs, problems, and/or issues fixed in this release:

• PBM-177 Support custom image files by placing a directory named image in the base Mailer directory.

• PBM-175 Autoupdate should check if a Preview window is open

• PBM-173 Deleting a message wasn't always physically deleting it.

• PBM-171 Auto update with developer build only downloads the release build.

• PBM-170 Issue dialog is now a frame so it is treated differently in focus and screen traversal.

• PBM-168 Modifying From field in issue report sometimes would mess it up

• PBM-148 Save/restore window position for creating issues. Same for search list. Converted dialog to actual window frame to provide independence to rest of PBM.

• PBM-146 Correct spell checker class not loading.

• PBM-145 Clarification on terminology for Mailer directory selection.

• PBM-142 Referencing an external browser in a path with spaces failed to invoke the browser.

• PBM-140 Remote folders on *nix failed to work at all.

• PBM-126 When scrolling through addresses in the address book, the page 2 and page 3 panels were not updating.

• PBM-120 Tool tips didn't pick up on font changes after making changes in settings. Only colors would be updated, now both color and fonts update.

• PBM-118 Tool tip buttons were not working very well. Too many pop-up windows would appear in some cases.

• PBM-117 File/Import text file within a compose window failed. Corrected the problem which was internal.

• PBM-114 Filtering of certain codes in a message was causing issues in display, this logic was disabled.

• PBM-85 Popper background color wasn't properly switching colors when accounts changed. It now honors the current account colors.

• PBM-84 Double clicking a plain text URL in the WebKit viewer now opens the URL which is the same behavior as the text viewer.

• PBM-79 Changing the persona name while editing should update the tree. This fix dynamically updates the tree on each keystroke.

• PBM-78 Clicking cancel when opening the address book didn't cancel the operation, it does now.

• PBM-74 Keystrokes/mapping not working correctly on Mac OS X and on Windows the right Alt key isn't recognized. Corrected by making all key mappings the same and this also fixed the Alt key issue.

• PBM-59 Webkit in Virtual Folder sometimes would go blank and this turned out to be quite a balancing act between older AWT threading and the new FX threads.

• PBM-58 Panel on browser frame for the URL was using the wrong background color.

• PBM-57 Sticky notes icon was not properly representing the state of a sticky not existing. It now renders the proper icon for each state.

• PBM-56 Background of web browser frame isn't the default user setting. Fixed by modifying HTML to render the proper background.

• PBM-55 Exceptions when loading images on Mac OS X. This was generated due to the internal image loading logic on OS X platform. By replicating images to represent higher resolution images, this went away.

• PBM-54 View message text in separate window isn't right when the WebKit viewer is selected. Corrected internally via some initialization logic.

• PBM-50 Focus on address book sometimes gets behind the main menu. Temporary fix put in place.

• PBM-49 Address book not able to create virtual folder. Moved where show and other logic was taking place, fixing the bug.

• PBM-46 Virtual folder would allow searches even if no folders were selected. Clearly the user would never get results this way so there's no a check to make sure at least one folder is selected.