View source for Blog/Kiwix 0.9 beta1 for Win/Mac/Linux is out!

''Published 22/07/2011 by [[User:Kelson|Kelson]] ([[User talk:Kelson|talk]])''

I have released the first beta of Kiwix 0.9. Binaries for Win32, MacOSX, Ubuntu (PPA) are available, like the source code. You may download them from Sourceforge or [http://www.kiwix.org Kiwix Web site].

This took us almost 9 months to prepare this release... what is really a long time between two dev. releases. But a lot of things were done like:
* the Mac OSX port,
* the integrated content/download manager,
* the new search user interface.

[[File:.osx_screenshot_m.jpg|Mac OSX Kiwix]]

Behind the scene, we newly integrate:
* [http://aria2.sourceforge.net/ aria2c] to deal with downloads/uploads,
* [http://ctpp.havoc.ru/en/ ctpp2] as a template engine,
* [https://code.google.com/p/pugixml/ pugixml] as xml parser,

... and revamped the whole set of compilation scripts.

Here is the [http://kiwix.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/kiwix/moulinkiwix/CHANGELOG CHANGELOG]:
* Remove a hard coded path in kiwix-compact.sh (ID: 3135956)
* Avoid the flickering during mouseover links after canceling the indexing
* Under Windows, installer adds now shortcuts to all users
* Force loading no plugin to avoid any problem (with libmoon for example)
* Under Windows, the displayed (disk) "space required" value is now correct in the installer
* kiwix-index backend argument is now an option and set as "xapian" per default
* Fix regressions responsible for lower case titles in result list (ID: 3147594)
* Implement the HTTP 404 error in kiwix-serve
* Fix a small bug in the indexing code to avoid forgetting around 100 articles per ZIM file
* Disable DNS pre-fetching for external links
* New locales: Polish, Dutch
* Open a ZIM file directly from the command line
* Gnome and KDE integration: mime-type recognition + icon & application associations (ZIM double-click feature)
* New checksum checker to be able to check ZIM file integrity
* A list of ZIM files to download is dynamically downloaded in the help page if user online (ID: 3165272)
* Simplification and improvement of the searchbar (no search button anymore, always available, standardized, ...)
* New Find-in-text bar (like in firefox, at the bottom), to replace the dialogbox.
* Result sidebar removed and replaced by a result web page "a la google"
* Usage of jar files for a quicker startup
* Kiwix for Mac OSX
* kiwix-serve CPU usage improvement (ID: 3213104)
* Update the Window title by switching the tabs
* New integrated content manager/downloader
* Introduction of Desktop notifications (ID: 3315162)
* New way to open link in new tab with shortcuts or drag&drop (ID: 3311320)
* Option to change the profile directory

The most important, we have done the mandatory work to setup a decentralized solution to spread/share content (ZIM Files). We still do not use all the power offered by the Metalink tech... but we will (we still need new mirrors, please contact us if you have one).

As a result almost all features we wanted to introduce with 0.9 are now there. We plan to use the next beta and RC releases to fix bugs (I'm sure we will also detect a few regressions) and polish the software. 0.9 Final release should be there for Christmas in the worth case.

More people than usual were involved. I want especially to thank:
* Tomasz and Ryan, from the WMF, for the big support and together work,
* Renaud for the OSX port,
* Testers ([https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/kiwix-testing join us]) which were for the first time really involved and helped us so much with their remarks.