Release Notes

Below you will find the changes of the latest update of Wuala. More details can be found here.

June 18, 2009

No new features, bugfixes only.

• Fixed a severe problem when moving (not copying) folders outside Wuala on Windows Vista
• Fixed a bug that prevented subfolders of the favorites folder from being created
• Fixed a bug that caused Wuala to crash when opening the connection settings without connection
• Various smaller fixes

June 5, 2009

• New Feature: recently viewed items
• Removed Feature: The "World" tab has been removed by default
• Balloon notification when a download completes
• Less memory usage when uploading many images
• Improved website performance
• Improved client stability

May 8, 2009

• Improved network stability
• Improved cache cleanup behaviour
• Improved file maintenance
• Improved upload stability for bad connections
• Notification for the Wuala group are disabled for new users by default
• Many smaller bugfixes and improvements

April 29, 2009

• File system integration now showing myfiles/myfriends/mygroups at root level
• Http status/log on local loopback adapte
• Less memory usage when uploading lots of small files
• Refactoring: content is better separated from metadata.
• Resolved trading bugs
• Thumbnails are not scaled anymore but cut
• Other smaller changes and bug fixes

April 20, 2009

• Bouncy Castle Crypto library bundled. Makes Wuala less dependent on Sun JVM.
• "Count my views" option in account settings
• Improved upload queue
• Other smaller fixes and improvements

April 9, 2009

• Adding lots of files more stable and faster
• Online status more stable and more likely to be green
• Fixed a bug that made transactions fail when restoring them
• Added an easter egg. Can you find it? :)
• Fixed a number of smaller bugs

March 31, 2009

• More NAT Traversal: more computers qualify for trading storage without router configuration
• Notification Settings: notifications for individual users and groups can be disabled
• Connnection check dialog: added link to your router's web interface (if found)
• Other smaller changes

March 24, 2009

• Improved Online Time Measurements
• Fixed a bug that caused downloads/uploads not to be shown after restart
• Fixed a bug related to loading localized strings
• Preferences and share dialog now adapts size to large system fonts
• Other minor improvements

March 19, 2009

• New users get welcome mails from now on
• Downloads tuning
• Various smaller bugfixes

March 12, 2009

• Trading computers overview (trading options -> new button "Overview)
• More robust downloads (now also works with very slow connections, e.g. GPRS)
• Improved direct write access (storing file from apps directly into Wuala should now work for any application that does not rely on being able to set access rights)
• Mouse button 4 and 5 supported for navigation
• Family filter is also taken into account in folder tree
• Fixed auto restart after update, no more multiple update dialogs
• Resolved many other smaller issues and bugs

March 12, 2009

• Trading computers overview (trading options -> new button "Overview)
• More robust downloads (now also works with very slow connections, e.g. GPRS)
• Improved direct write access (storing file from apps directly into Wuala should now work for any application that does not rely on being able to set access rights)
• Mouse button 4 and 5 supported for navigation
• Family filter is also taken into account in folder tree
• Fixed auto restart after update, no more multiple update dialogs
• Resolved many other smaller issues and bugs

March 4, 2009

• Resolved a bug that prevented commenting on files shared by secret link
• Connection check: prefer configured port if available (might resolve some connection problems)
• Less failed downloads, we also had to disable compatibility mode yesterday, sorry if you were affected!
• Limited number of notifications shown per friend to 300
• "Filter" section is back in advanced settings
• Better robustness against bit-errors in local files
• Various other smaller issues/bugs

February 27, 2009

Just a followup update:

• Downloads start less aggressively, but retry harder internally
• Fixed a few smaller bugs

February 24, 2009

Improved downloads in many ways: faster start, better throughput, more from p2p network, more stable, buffering on double-click for streaming with progress bar, native c library for erasure coding => less cpu usage

• Added "Upload now" to right-click menu of not yet uploaded files
• Improved Feedback dialog (e.g. if download fails), aggregates feedback, report function
• Allows computers with address-restricted cone NATs without loopback to trade storage
• Additional help links
• Special character support for mp3 tags (only affects newly inserted ones)
• Traded storage calculated more accurately
• Fixed a bug that prevented notification settings from being saved
• Fixed a bug related to bandwidth usage statistics
• Fixed a number of other, smaller bugs

February 17, 2009

• Resolved various bugs related to uploads:
• a large upload queue could lead to long loading times on startup (blank screen)
• running maintenance uploads were not interrupted by new, more important uploads
• a failed upload could cause Wuala not to try any other uploads for two hours
• New commandline commands
• 'showPaths' shows most important paths
• 'setTempPath' sets the temp path
• Skype integration deactivated (it just didn't work reliably enough)
• Other, smaller bugfixes

February 8, 2009

• fixed loadbalancing bug
• fixed web url bug (wrong assembly of query part)

January 31, 2009

• More feedback messages (e.g. after inviting someone to a group)
• Account creation: less sample files, full name, resolved bugs with skype & facebook detection
• Add Files shown on non-empty folders (helps new users, removable)
• Removed Ads
• Periodically repeated connection analysis (instead just on startup)
• Faster downloads (in particular outside Europe)
• Improved responsiveness (GUI blocks less often)
• Improved stability (less transaction failures, resolved many smaller bugs)
• Links are now standards compliant (e.g. no more '+' for spaces in URL path, using '%20' instead)
• Added a new command 'benchmark' to the commandline version

January 9, 2009

• Bind address can be specified in settings
• Resolved some minor issues

December 31, 2008

Refactored file maintenance and upload logic:

• resolved a bug the caused Wuala to maintain file less often than intended
• maintenance of downloaded files if idle (idea: helps spreading new files that have not yet been spread into the network getting there faster)

Happy New Year!

December 16, 2008

• Web Access: all public files and files shared by secret link can now be accessed and downloaded through the website.
• Secret Links: "Sharing by password" has been replaced by "secret links". Basically it is the same as sharing by password, but with the key/password directly encoded into the url. When opening a secret link in the web browser, the key contained in the url is sent to our server to temporarily decrypt and serve the requested data, making sharing by secret links a convenient method to share folders with non-Wuala users, but also a little less secure than sharing with friends or in groups.
• Startup: login dialog instead of World home by default, blank "loading" screen

December 12, 2008

• Contact import (gmail, yahoo, linkedin, etc.) in invite, find friends and sharing dialog
• User Settings (e.g. address bar) are now stored online, no reset any more on crashes
• A number of small improvements and resolved bugs (including a memory leak and a bug
• Preparations for monday update

November 27, 2008

• 'Compatibility mode' in connection settings. This makes Wuala use less connections. Uploads and downloads will get slower and trading won't be possible in compatibility mode, but the network will be less heavily used. Enable this if your router tends to crash when using Wuala or if you see other problems with your internet connection.
• Hidden option: press 'Ctrl-Alt-H' and then open the connection settings. You will see a new (temporary) option'[experimental] RTT to wuala.com'. If you are far away from Europe and your downloads are slow, try entering your round-trip-time to wuala.com in there (execute 'ping wuala.com' on the commandline while your connection is idle). Let me know if that makes a difference. For high values, this might starve other connections.
• Refactored Window creation: in earlier versions, dialogs sometimes opened in the background (e.g. the Resize Image Dialog). This shouldn't happen any more.
• Metadata cache: clearing the local cache now also flags the metadata cache to be cleared on the next start. The metadata cache is also automatically cleared when a severe error occurs.
• Resolved a bug the prevented folders from being created through file system integration

November 17, 2008

• Less bugs, more stability (e.g. transactions can't crash whole client any more when they fail in unexpected ways)

November 10, 2008

• Resolved network/download problems that appeared over the weekend

November 4, 2008

• More Upload/Download stability:
  Fallback to TCP if no UDP available -> Wuala works in more environments
  Large file uploads are more likely to succeed
• More information about found users shown in find friend dialog
• Smaller changes
• Better stability in firewalled networks, reduced timeout to switch to port 80

October 28, 2008

• Tooltips in itmes pane (e.g. on favorite star)
• Bugfixes, minor changes

October 22, 2008

• Notifications when friends join public groups
• Listing the public groups of a user
• Various small changes & bugfixes

October 14, 2008

• Improved local search: now searching in current user / group first
• Fullname/alias: users can enter an alias/fullname in their profile
• Fixed a bug that made promocode users to pro's even though they didn't buy or trade storage
• Temporarily disabled Mac folder bundles again (see previous release notes) because of problems with folders with a '.' in their name
• Various smaller issues

October 9, 2008

• Mac File Bundles (e.g. .app folders) are treated as such on OS X
• Contact infos (Email, Skype, etc.) are also shown in details pane
• Pending transactions don't delay loading of items any more
• Other smaller changes

October 3, 2008

• Improved search in My Files / Friends / Groups
• Introduced type-as-you-go filename filter, useful in folders with many files (just start typing and you'll see)
• Showing contact infos in user profile
• Resolved a number of smaller issues

September 26, 2008

• Fixed a bug that caused large private groups (>500 members) to not display all members and prevent the admin from banning members. If you are admin of such a group and can't ban members any more, you might need to run member repair (Select the group to repair and hit Ctrl-Alt-D > Repair members) and let me know if it worked.
• A number of minor bugfixes

September 23, 2008

• Comment notifications show comment
• Adapted top items algorithm: less items of the same user are shown
• "Account" and "Privacy" properties reorganized into "Account" and "Contact" with many new contact options (they will soon also be shown in the profile)

September 18, 2008

Some users reported that Wuala did not run any more after the latest update (crashes with an assertion error on startup). We couldn't reproduce the problem, however it seems to be directly related to the usage of port 80. So port 80 will only be used as fallback if the default port doesn't work.

September 17, 2008

Resolved a number of annoying bugs, e.g.:

• Fixed a bug that caused author icons and names in comments to only show '...'. Same for header icons.
• "Roles and Permissions" action is back
• Resolved NPE when sharing by email while not logged in
• Resolved NPE when opening a password protected folder on new computers
• Other smaller issues

General Note about the Beta:
Currently, due to the high load on our servers Wuala might sometimes be slower than usual when browsing. This is only a temporary issue that will be fixed during the next week.

We have also limited the number of new notifications (the green marks) to 100 per group or friend since the current user interface cannot gracefully handle more than about a thousand notifications.

September 15, 2008

• Directly pasting image data into Wuala (e.g. a screenshot or some selection from paint)
• Fixed a bug that prevented open, public groups from being created
• Better connectivity: all TCP connections go to port 80. This should result in better connectivity in corporate or other restricted networks. However, downloading large files still requires UDP.

September 9, 2008

Refining the Flagging tool

Generally, we are very happy about how the new flagging tool works. The abuse has been minimal and there are a many users who help us flagging porn with great effort and very accurately. Thank you!

We have also resolved a few minor problems in connection with the flagging tool. You can't "save as..." blocked content any more, you can unflag "not family friendly" content again, and anyone with write access can now unblock files in a group, not only the owner; among other smaller changes.

September 5, 2008

• New flag as inappropriate dialog, see also: http://wua.la/blog
• Added favorite counter next to icon
• Resolved a number of bugs and minor issue. There was a bug that sometimes could. Excel). If you still see such behaviour, please let us know.

September 1, 2008

• New tab "social bookmarks" on share dialog
• Green plus icon on users and groups to directly add them to your friends/groups
• New ads outside Switzerland. Let us know if you see undesired ads (e.g. playing sound, opening windows, too flashy)
• Resolved many bugs and smaller issues

August 21, 2008

• Lots of smaller bugfixes (e.g. unlocking a folder shared by password did not always work if the same user also shared a different folder with the same name by password)
• Earlier updates of this week were mostly related to the incident we had and we had to switch to read-only mode, see also our blog.

August 14, 2008

• Wuala is now in beta
• New Website with Webstart
• New Dialog "Enter Password or Login" when trying to access a non-public URL
• No more earning GBs for invited friends

August 12, 2008

• New sharing dialog

August 6, 2008

• Guest login: you don't need to be logged in any more to surf the World area or to access password protected folders.
  This is, after password sharing, the second big change on our way to the beta. The next is Web Start which will be released when the beta starts.
• Fixed a number of bugs (finally, banning members in the "Member List View" works)

July 28, 2008

• Share folders by password
• Bugfixes / minor issues

July 23, 2008

• Linux: Improved commandline mode
  Note: some changes are in the startup script from wuala.tar.gz which doesn't get automatically updated (e.g. replaced $* with "$@" to make escaping work)
• Improved updater (faster for new installations on OS X)
• Minor issues

July 16, 2008

• New Language: Russian, thank you Marianna!
• New Dialog: 'Find Friends'
• New Commandline: on Linux, the commandline now works differently: Wuala has no own commandline anymore, instead, you can send commands to Wuala by invoking './wuala' again, e.g. './wuala logout'. This will send the 'logout' command to the running instance and return its answer. This even works if the first instance has a GUI. This also makes the 'screen' hacks obsolete since you don't need connect System.in to the original instance any more.
• New Updater: the old updater is still supported. However, as part of our preparations for the Beta-version, we are moving to a new update system. This will allow for automatic restarts on updates, faster updates and (in the beta) webstart. Unfortunately, you need to get a new installation of Wuala to move to the new Updater. The old Updater is still supported, so there is no need to reinstall Wuala unless you want to use the new commandline mode in Linux. Old installations will be automatically migrated when the Beta is ready.

There have been quite a few changes recently. If you notice anything unusual that you think should be immediately addressed, you can write directly to bug_high_prio@wua.la .

June 26, 2008

• File availabilty stats now also supports the 'Group Postings' folder
• Repaired world home view: showing tops and recent again

June 25, 2008

• Ctrl-N or Ctrl-T opens a new window
• Closed item cliques remain closed on refreshs
• Firefox (and other programs) can now correctly store large files directy into Wuala (on Windows) (Let me know if there are problems with other programs on Windows, we still have to look at the NFS issues)
• Resolved http://wua.la/Wuala+Community/Bugs/Resolved/Upload-Bug+-+dringend%21.txt
• Various other bugfixes

June 24, 2008

• New feature: File availability check (Right-click on folder > Properties > Check)

  Newly insert files have the status 'not yet uploaded'. As some of you have noticed, a bug hit us yesterday that caused the status of some files in groups to be reset to 'not yet uploaded' even though they have been uploaded before. These files are currently not accessible. Like other files that are not yet uploaded, they will be uploaded again as soon as the original uploader logs in the next time (if they are in his local cache), or if anyone else uploads the same file (identified by hashkey) to the system. This bug only affects files in groups. No files stored in 'My Files' are affected. The bug has been identified in our server code and fixed so there is no need to update your client. We apologize for this incident. This is the first and hopefully also the last time that already uploaded file data got unavailable again in Wuala.

  In response to this incident we provide a new feature called 'file availability check'. It checks all files of a given folder or group for their availability. It also shows their upload status (no distinction between files that have never been uploaded (the majority) and those lost due to the bug mentioned above). Furthermore, it uploads all files with status 'not yet uploaded' that are found in the local cache and can repair some files that have never been uploaded correctly.