Computer Inter@ctive 16

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Text File | 1998-10-07 | 52.0 KB | 908 lines

History of Arachne WWW browser ------------------------------ 1.42 beta (HiColor, PostScript and PPP setup Wizard release) ---- Release date: 7th October 1998 Bug fixes: Various bugs when rendering nested tables. Unknown entities won't cause rest of line to disappear (it was bug!), instead of this, corresponding ASCII will be displayed ("Á" -> "A" if "Aacute" is not defined in fontinfo.bin). Various POP3 download bugs. Changes: ARACHNE.CFG variable "TextEncoding" was renamed to "MailBodyEncoding" to avoid interference with variable "Text". 3 different versions of CORE.EXE are now available: default (overlaid/HiColor, slow and memory hungry), overlaid/no HiColor (slow and memory friendly) and staticaly linked/no HiColor/no PostScript (the fast and memory hungry one). Improvements: Support for HiColor VESA modes (on 1 MB+ video cards). In HiColor mode, no palette mixing is required, which makes Arachne much faster. Also JPEGs decompress faster, because the palette doesn't have to be optimized to 256 colors. New Arachne PPP Wizard can autodetect some modems and generally makes configuring new connection much easier for beginner. Arachne can now print/export to PostScript (Alt+P hotkey). New ARACHNE.CFG variables for controling this PostScript output were added - PostScriptOut, PostScriptWidth and PostScriptHeight. In <INPUT TYPE=TEXT> fields and URL input field, cursor can be positioned by mouse. Maintanance of Arachne Packages (APM files) was improved (new items were added to apm.id -> see apm.txt) 1.41 beta (Yes, I know this release is not yet stable...) ---- Release date: 7th July 1998 Bug fixes: Up to 16 frames can be displayed at once - and the frames should be now much more stable and usable, they should be located on correct places and the URLs of sub frames should be correct. Frames seem to be as usable, that such thing as frames-based version of Arachne e-mail client is no possible. But prepare for many crashes on frame-based pages - I still recommend you to turn frames off if you want stable browsing. Another bug related to aligning tables to the left or right was fixed - tables shouldn't overlap now. Many bugs in rendering of pages with both <IMG ALIGN=...> and <TABLE ALIGN=...> tags were fixed. Fatal bugs in MAILMAN UUENCODE/UUDECODE were fixed. There was bug when deleting HTML files from cache. When you fail to connect with PPP and then exit Arachne, PPP.LOG will be deleted now (no more "Cannot initialize PPP" screens). Mouse cursor cannot be positioned beyond end of document in TEXTAREA fields. Several bugs concerning behaviour of search text input field were fixed. Arachne will correctly post data even to password-protected CGI scripts (or "active pages"). Behaviour of (and also ASCII-160 character) entity and <NOBR> tag was improved dramaticaly, which will result in much better HTML rendering (in many cases, pages viewed by Arachne were too wide compared to Netscape's rendering...) Textarea using ARACHNEROWS argument now displays correctly even for other system font sizes (BigFont Yes or AltSysFont xxx). HTTP authentication information won't be lost when Arachne shells to DOS to execute some external plug-ins; however, authentication data are reset when user decides to exit (Esc). <META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh"...> tag now really reloads pages from net, if TCP/IP is active - this was original purpose of this tag. Some of problems with displaying background images were fixed. Changes: Default character set is now full ISO-8859-1 (ISO-Latin-1), including all HTML entities (West European accented characters). Pressing F8 won't take you to the homepage. Design of <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT/RESET> buttons was changed, to make Arachne more compatible with today's web design. You don't have to care about many new configurable features, because APM packages which use them will auto-configure Arachne for you. Improvements: Middle mouse button can be used to paste from clipboard. New arguments of <FRAME> tag - MARGINWIDTH, MARGINHEIGHT and SCROLLING=YES(AUTO)|NO were implemented. Both Arachne and MAILMAN now require less DOS memory, which means that users with 600+ KB of DOS memory will experience much faster e-mail processing. New ARACHNE.CFG variable Index determines default document to be searched in local directory - for example URL "file:somepath\" can be expanded to "file:somepath\*.htm", "file:somepath\index.htm" or "file:somepath\default.htm". "Send files" screen now allows you to enable/disable adding description and content-ID into MIME e-mails with attachments. Content-ID is important for sending multipart documents (eg. HTML page with background image) to MIME-compliant world - for example to Microsoft Outlook. See MIME.TXT for more details. ARACHNE.CFG variables MyCharset, AcceptCharset and TextEncoding allows better support for ISO-Latin-1 and mainly ISO-Latin-2 and Windows-1251 charset, which allows you to use accented characters in eMails - even for Central and East European languages (!). And as many programs using Windows-1250 charset are ISO-8859-2 compatible, you shouldn't experience problems communicating with people using Netscape Communicator or Microsoft Outlook as their eMail clients (!!!). AcceptCharset ISO-8859-2,* will force many servers for example in Czech Republic to send you pages in correct encoding. Variable AltSysFont allows you to use some of fixed-width HTML fonts instead of default system font (8x14.fnt). It is very useful for Cyrillic (Russian) character set. Password-protected FTP was improved - URL ftp://username@host is now valid, user is prompted for password. Mouse can change color on links. News: Development of Linux version (fully 32bit, or on demand even 64bit :-) has started - first finished component is cache server which will allow more running copies of Arachne to share the same cached documents (no "/home/xchaos/.netscape/lock detected" messages while surfing web under Linux any more ;-). I plan to take advantage of my strong client-server approach to making programs and to show object-oriented crowd that they lost their way... 1.40 beta 2 (once again "last_beta" ;-) ---- Release date: Monday 27th April 1998 Bug fixes: Some general bugs (memory allocation, etc.) were fixed. <TABLE ALIGN=LEFT> and <TABLE ALIGN=RIGHT> tags should really work now. File TXTSETUP.AH was removed, because it had no effect: Arachne always writes ARACHNE.CFG to disk when exiting. Some constants were reduced (like maximum line length in built-in editor) were reduced, to save DOS memory and make Arachne faster. Some bugs when running on slower PCs were fixed - editor area won't be refreshed until keyboard buffer is empty, scrollbars of long files will be displayed properely, etc. Arachne won't loop on externaly viewed documents any longer. MINITERM in 1.40 "final beta" was completely unfinished; I hope this one will be better, but I haven't tested login script extensions (\u...username, \p...password \w...wait 1 second, \r...send ASCII 13 - Enter) Improvements: <META HTTP-QUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="timeout; URL=newurl"> In editor, you can use new shortcuts <Ctrl+Left> and <Ctrl+Right> to skip to previous/next word. Navigation buttons won't be printed when printing mail message. Cache maintenance was improved. APM with staticaly linked CORE.EXE will be now available for all new releases. 1.40 final_beta ---- Release date: Friday, 24th April 1998 Version note: Version 1.2x stable release line was skipped, because there were too many bugs in beta releases with this number. All versions 1.3x were skipped, because it reminded me of unlucky number "13", and (more important) because digit "3" looked ugly in new Arachne screen layout. The changes are really dramatical, so I hope everyone will understand this decession. Important: Arachne status changed from slightly crippled shareware to almost uncrippled shareware, which is FREE FOR NON-COMMERCIAL USE ! Using unregistered Arachne is no longer illegal. The main difference in status of registered users is, that they will recieve as much support from autor as possible - yes, I will soon have printed list of registered users sticked on my monitor, and look at it before answering technical questions ;) Technical support will include analysis of DOS and Arachne configuration files and implementation of small improvements on demand - of course, WE DON'T PROMISE ANYTHING!!! We just anounce, that we would like to treat registered users this way, if it will be possible. Unregistered users will be now REALLY left alone, with no support from xChaos software (developer) or Network and Fiction (distributor). And well, yes, now you can change URL of homepage even in unregistered versions. Bug fixes: Arachne won't hang on tags like <BODY BACKGROUND=#xxxx">, such error in HTML will be simply ignored. This was caused by serious URL parsing bug, which was fixed. This bug probably also caused Arachne to hang occasionaly, when viewing History of visited URLs. <INPUT> tags of TYPE=RADIO and TYPE=CHECKBOX were modified, so they are now font-independent (important for ISO-Latin 2 fonts). Serious layout bug when rendering input fields of all types was also fixed - forms now should look much better when using large system font. "Cancel" buttons on Editor screen (F4) and Save/send screen (F2) now work as expected (they reload original page instead of going to previous document). <TABLE ALIGN=LEFT> and <TABLE ALIGN=RIGHT> tags now work as they are expected to - ie. same as <IMG ALIGN=...>, with. Many frame layout bugs were fixed - at least ALL typical three-frames pages now should work correctly, as well as most four- and five- frame pages. Back button will change only content of frame, instead of showing previous page in full browser window. Arachne now tries to deallocate xSwap and XMS on her "Fatal error" crashes - which means, that those crashes shouldn't as fatal as before. "Restart" button should be much safer option now. Changes: APMs version 2.0 are not compatible with version 1.0. APM packages are now simply ARJ archives. APM must be downloaded from host listed in SECURITY.CFG - see file APM.TXT for details. Alt+H won't take you to URL specified in DialPage variable - it was boring, wasn't it ? The same change was done to Alt+D - it won't take you to homepage, unless you pressed it on DialPage. F7 key is now used for searching in page - to go to your SearchPage, use Alt+F7 (compatibility: Norton Commander, etc.) Improvements: There are really many of them. I hope it will make clear, why version number was boosted directly to 1.40 final beta ;-) New VESA mode 640x400x256 colors was implemented - it requires only 256 KB VGA card, so it should help users without SVGA... New screen layout and font scaling option were added. It should be useful especially for Arachne users with slow PCs, generic VGA cards and 14" VGA monitors (Note: next planned graphics library update will include support for HiColor mode on VESA cards and support for animated GIFs - not support for CGA or Hercules ;-) Please go outside and get some 10 years old 256 kB VGA card.... I doubt that they are more expensive than Herc ;) Arachne is now able to convert HTML to plain ASCII and print it. Users using IP_Address PPP (PPP.LOG) will see time spent online. FTP: <ARACHNE TARGET=...> tag can be used to specify target filename for FTP uplods. FTP proxy server option was added, but NOT TESTED !! There is also option to use "external/ftp", as any protocol can be now added as "external": MIME.CFG will be searched for pseudo-mime type "external/protocol_name". For example "external/irc", "external/https", etc. Protocols which cannot be made external are "file:", "pop3:", "smtp:", "mailto:", "http:", and of course "arachne:" and "about:". Inline images cannot be downloaded using external protocols. You can search displayed page using F7, Ctrl+Q or '/' key. To search next occurance of keyword, use Ctrl+L. Compatibility of these keystrokes: Norton, WordStar style editors, Lynx. Single line "clipboard" was implemented (but much usable editing interface will be implemented in later...) - interface is Windows compatible (Ctrl+X,Ctrl+C,Ctrl+V). But much more sofisticated editing commands will be implemented later... More system information (in resolutions lower than 1024x768) will be displayed after pressing Alt+M. Alt+F1 hotkey will take you to homepage (I found out, that this shortcut is used in DOS file managers to change disk; for example after inserting new floppy disk. As Arachne should help hardcore DOS users to get used to Internet enviroment, I thought that loading of homepage can be compared to inserting new floppy disk ;-) The same can be said about Alt+F2 - which will take you to the list of accesible drives. New bonus tag for Arachne Fans, who are optimizing their homepages for use with Arachne: <FONT 3D>...</FONT>. Check it ;-) 1.20 beta 9 ---- Release date: Thursday, 5th March 1998 Bug fixes: Numerous - memory management bugs, "disappearing icons", etc. Changes: TELNET and MPEG players now must be installed separately, as APM packages. This reduces the size of basic distribution package. See file APM.HTM for more details. Improvements: Internal FTP upload and download was finally implemented (!) Faster virtual memory -> Arachne should be generally faster. Icons now should appear much faster. Arachne package manager -> easy way to add new components. Users with fast PCs can now use background image for Arachne desktops, local disk browsing, mail messages, etc. 1.20 beta 8 ---- Release date: Saturday, 7th Februrary 1998 Bug fixes: Redirection bug was fixed and improved. Problem with deleting mail during POP3 download was fixed. Disappearing mouse problem was fixed. Arachne will no longer hang on very long documents. Changes: PPP user using PPP.LOG to pass IP address to Arachne don't have to type arachne -r to return online. Improvements: Basic WWW authentication. <SELECT> tag (pull down menu) can be larger than one screen. </SELECT> tag is now accepted. <CAPTION ALIGN=LEFT> was enabled. Client side imagemaps <IMG USEMAP="">, <MAP> tags... Cookies support was improved. Implementation of HTTP protocol was improved. 1.20 beta 7 ---- Release date: Thursday, 15th January 1998 Bug fixes: Various 16 color EGA/VGA modes bugs were fixed. Bug in "Save As" and "Save downloaded file" screens was fixed. Various image conversion bugs were fixed. Several bugs while surfing local disk were fixed. Big system font can be used again. Klos PPP dialer auto-instalation is works again. Changes: "Emtpy cache" icon ("F8" key) was replaced by "Page Information" icon ("=" key). "Empty cache" icon was moved to Utilities page. Mail manager is now doing word-wrap for long lines. Improvements: Cookies (!). Controled by ARACHNE.CFG variables "Cookies Yes|No" = enable|disable, "CookieFile filename" = cookie jar to use. Logo animation can be disabled -> speed improvement. "Logo 0" Speed improvent (the one from xMas release). Arachne desktop was added - better access to Arachne functions. Useful "Picture Galery" function was added to file manager. New file icons were added. PPPD setup page and generic packet driver setup page were improved to cover all possibile combinations. 1.20 xMas release ---- Not documented 1.20 beta 6.1 ---- Release date: Thursday, 20th November 1997 Bug fixes: Many. Including XMS deallocation bug in preview relese. Probably the most important bug fix is submitting of CGI scripts with POST method - the trick was in sending Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded. Improvements: Many. You will notice mainly new extension .AH - Arachne HTML (or maybe Advance HTML ;-). This increases security of Arachne. I don't want to mention security bugs here, as it may encourage someone to hunt for users of older Arachnes ;) New tags (HTML/4.0) were implemented: <BIG>, <SMALL>, <SUB> and <SUB>. Many new ARACHNE.CFG keywords were added, work on complete ARACHNE.CFG documentation just started. User and provider profiles (files with extension ACF) should allow creating of collection of usable configurations for different providers. Other improvements include: caching fonts in XMS, improved mail send and receive, improved frames, improved error messages (won't overwrite URL). New DJPEG.EXE can handle progressive JPEGs and can use BMP as output format (faster). Local JPEGs are now cached in CACHE subdirectory, which should allow you to view JPEGs on CD-ROM drives. New bugs: Probably many. However, there were so many bugs from preview beta releases, that I almost decided to make this beta the only publicly available release. With Frames variable set to No, it should be anyway more usable than any previous version of Arachne. Unfortunately, there appeared some bug in 16 color modes, so I recommend users of 16 color modes to use old Arachne. In final release, 16 color VGA support should be corrected. 1.20 pre-release ---- Release date: Friday, 3th October 1997 Bug fixes: Large image buttons will no longer hang Arachne during "push" animation. Small (but fatal) GIF bug was trapped. RefreshDelay variable was expected to be called LoadRefresh by mistake. Page is now being displayed more carefuly. Images with HEIGHT and WIDTH parameter equal to real size are now displayed correctly. Several problems with history of visited URLs and with submitting of fomrs were fixed. Changes: Command line switch "-c" now turns off TCP/IP even when ARACHNE.CFG contains line "Connection READY". This should allow offline mail reading to users who use "Connection READY" with SLIP or PPP dialer. BTW "-c" was originally shortcut for "continue browsing", now it is "continue online". "Use new settings" on SETUP.HTM and OPTIONS.HTM will restart browser in online mode if you pressed the button in online mode. (This may cause problem when trying to turn off TCP/IP using setup page. In this case, you have to restart manually). Improvements: FRAMES IMPLEMENTED! BETTER MAIL MANAGER! MINITERM can use other COM port modes than 8N1 (variable Mode). Virtual screen behaviour is controled by variable ScreenMode. Value "Nice" is what was implemented in beta 5, value "Auto" means that virtual screens are generated only for pages which fit into size declared by VirtualScreen variable. Probably most useful setting of ScreenMode is "Smart". Virtual screen is generated only for the top of each page, so scrolling speed is optimized: very smooth for the top of the page, and normal screen refresh for the rest of the page. Useful virtual screen size depends on the speed of your CPU, value cca 2000 pixels should be usable on most systems (and also most online pages fit this size). OPTIONS.HTM page now offers button "Performance", which allows you to configure Arachne for specific hardware. Glen W. McCorkle sent me Thomas G. Lane's new 16 bit and 32 bit versions of DJPEG.EXE, so Arachne now decompress JPEG files to BMP file (we are less dependent on GIF file format now). See upgrade note for 386 and AT/XT release list. In <TEXTAREA> fields, you can use <F2> key to submit form (warning: this will work ONLY if you are inside TEXTAREA!) For your convenience, even <TEXTAREA> abandoned by mistake saves itself to file called "textarea.tmp". Mouse position is now saved in ARACHNE.PCK file. Hotkey K displays list of hotkeys (compatibility: Lynx) Hotkey <Alt>+<H> hangs phone (compatibility: Terminate & others) Hotkey <Alt>+<E> escapes to dos shell (compatibility: Telnet) Hotkey <Alt>+<Q> opens notepad (compatibility: Dos Navigator) Hotkey <Alt>+<D> dials directly (compatibility: Terminate) Upgrade note: Hotkey H CHANGED meaning: now displays Hotlist (Hotlist variable) ARACHNE.PCK is not compatible. Please re-run SETUP.BAT, delete cache index and history files, etc. Arachne will automaticaly unload packet driver before dialing. Default release of Arachne is now guaranteed to run on following configuration: CPU 386+, 256 color SVGA card, 4 MB of memory (1MB conventional, 1MB disk cache, 2 MB XMS). I think this is typical "cheap PC" configuration - if you run PC with less system resources, you have to download "Arachne light" patch (without smooth scrolling, virtual screens and with 16 color EGA/VGA modes) or "Arachne ultralight" (same as "light", but without mail, ftp, telnet, and many other features - just WWW browser, nothing more). New codes for distribution packages: archn???.exe ... Default release, for i386+ CPU and SVGA cards archm???.exe ... Same a archn???, but without PPP, telnet, etc. archl???.zip ... "downgrade" for i8086 and/or 16 color VGA cards archu???.zip ... "ultralight" edition (requires only 420 kB) arcz????.??? ... Czech language distribution arnl????.??? ... Dutch language distribution 1.20 beta 5 (released only as a patch, for "hardcore" Arachne fans) ---- Release date: Friday, 19th Spetember 1997 Bug fixes: Smooth scrolling and virtual screens now work much better. Upgrade note: same as beta 4 1.20 beta 4 (released only as a patch, for Arachne fans) ---- Release date: Friday, 19th Spetember 1997 Bug fixes: 1.20 beta 3 was not able to read IP address from enviroment variable (eg. %MYIP%...). MINITERM included in beta 3 was still not able to connect faster than 9600, now this bug was reported to be really fixed. Also Autologin should work better. '\r' sequence can be used to type additional <Enter>. Improvements: SMOOTH SCROLLING was implemeted! Thanks to Zdenek Harovnik (and of course thanks to money from Caldera, who helped us to concentrate on development and forget about "real life" ;-) (and of course thanks to hundereds of e-mails from Arachne fans ;-), X_LOPIF library now supports virtual screens, which enabled implementation of (almost) smooth scrolling (on machines wiht XMS memory and 256 color video card only....) Scrolling is controled by following ARACHNE.CFG variables: VirtualScreen <pixels> ... size of virtual screen (eg. 1800) SmoothScrolling Yes|No ... enables smooth scrolling ScrollStep 40 ... small values mean slower PageUp/PageDown If smooth scrolling is enabled, arrows can be used to scroll the document (like in Netscape or MSIE), while "keyboard-mouse" is still available when you hold <Shift> key. Problem: Smooth scrolling will be completely unusable on slow PCs. Please report me PC configurations where smooth scrolling had to be turned off. Plans: Virtual screen technology will allow creating snapshots of HTML pages in BMP file format and also printing (print engine from IBASE project will be licensed, which allows printing of images on 9 and 24 pin Epson compatible printers and on Hewlet Packard laser and ink printers (even with colours!). Upgrade note: Just overwrite installation of 1.20 beta 3 with files from ptch12b4.zip. Warning: new executable requires 20 kB more of DOS memory (it should be last dramatic increase, as now there is staticaly linked even HiColor grahics library - not yet used). 1.20 beta 3 ---- Release date: Monday, 15th Spetember 1997 Bug fixes: 1.20 BETA 1 AND 2 WERE NOT ABLE TO WORK WITH FIXED IP ADDRESS! SMTP bug was finally fixed (?) MIME mail reader was slightly improved (name="xxx"...) MINITERM now connects faster than 9600 bps and can do autologin. Upgrade note: Hotkey W was replaced by C ("compose message"). Hotkey I now shows INBOX mail folder (document information is now available using "=" key). New hotkey mapping is trying to follow PINE and LYNX (popular text mode clients for Unix) key mapping. Improvements: about: and arachne:dialpage URLs were added. <U> (underline) tag added. Modem setting "Base Default" or "Base 0x???" can be used in ARACHNE.CFG (it is passed to PPPD.EXE and to MINITERM; not to PPP.EXE) 1.20 beta 2 ---- Release date: Friday, 12th Spetember 1997 Bug fixes: SMTP e-mail now uses brackets <...> around e-mails. MAILMAN now correctly assembles MIME messages (tested in PINE). Some more bugs in mail manager and SMTP upload were fixed. Improvements: Hotkey W ("write message") will display mailto: page. Warning: Autologin with script is still not implemented for DOSPPPD! Please wait for final release of 1.20 version (in three languages!) for better documentation and more bug-fixes. 1.20 beta 1 (preview of first professional release) ---- Release date: Friday, 12th Spetember 1997 Upgrade note: ARACHNE.PCK is not compatible. Please re-run SETUP.BAT, delete cache index and history files, etc. EtherPPP dialer is now slightly different. Automagic creation of DIAL.PPP from LOGIN.CFG is no longer supported. If you were using EtherPPP, you may encounter problems (not tested). Because author is not able to write his own PPP packet driver, but able to write modem dialer, Arachne now attempts to use MINITERM as universal dialer. As usually, 90% of Arachne users will report that MINITERM doesn't work with their modems ;-) BTW, default ARACHNE.CFG was completely rewritten to be more clear for those who prefere text setup. Bug fixes: Lowercase <hr> didn't work, while uppercase <HR> did - fixed. Some small icons vere interpreted as clicking on history list. In Lynx compatibility mode (while <Scroll Lock> is on), you can use arrows to switch among text input fields, like in real Lynx. Text input fields now should behave more normaly. "SavePasswords Yes" setting will remove passwords from ARACHNE.CFG while allowing you to define them for single Arachne session. After pressing F2, original version of document will be saved (eg. original JPG image, not a GIF copy, or source of mail message, not HTML version) - <INPUT .... ARACHNEDOC>. Mouse will move smothly even in *very* long HTML files with very large tables. Improvements: Direct DOSPPPD dialer support integrated to Arachne !!! New ARACHNE.CFG variable "Dialer" and "UseTerminal". "Animated" icons added. Added special tag <ARACHNE MSG=message>, so Arachne fans can improve their pages by messages visible only to other Arachne users. Message appears on the status bar. More Lynx hotkeys were added: G - edit URL, = - info, same as I. You can use ~ (tilde) key to turn on immediate image ignoring. <EM> tag implemented (as equivalent to <B>). Help line is now being displayed even for small icons. If you have problems with SMTP, try to disable HELO protocol by setting "NoHELO" variable to "Yes" in ARACHNE.CFG. You can disable logo animation by setting "NoLogo Yes" Input fields color can be controled by variable "Color X Y", where X is foreground and Y background color index (0..15). New hotkey "~" (tilde) will toggle ignoring both local and remote images "on fly". Useful for very slow computers (AT/XT). New Arachne extension <TEXTAREA ... ARACHNEROWS> will adjust textarea size to screen size - see SENDMAIL.HTM or TEXTEDIT.HTM! MIME compatible mail reader and composer (!) - variable "MailEncoding" with values "MIME" and "UUENCODE". WWWMAN and MAILMAN now use tag <BODY ARACHNE>, which means BGCOLOR, TEXT and LINK colors are defined in ARACHNE.CFG. Special: Arachne is now available also as "Arachne Light" - archive archnXXXl.zip, which contains reduced CORE.EXE without mail, gopher, finger, dialer support, etc. For users of very old PCs who cannot get more than 430 kB free after connecting with PPP. To use this release, you have to download full or minimal distribution package firs. 1.10 (Holiday release) ---- Release date: Tuesday, 8th July 1997 Upgrade note: Due tu implementation of frames, ARACHNE.PCK is not compatible. Please re-run SETUP.BAT. Bug fixes: Hotlist addition repaired (was not working since last beta). Inside <TEXTAREA> tag, no other HTML tags are interpreted (I found out it is required for mail composer). Mouse should now move more smothly. Sometimes, documents or image(s) were not displayed at all in latest versions - fixed. Various scrollbar bugs fixed. Several fatal DGI and CGI bugs fixed. After sending mail from page with mailto: link, Arachne will return to this page and won't go to MAIL.HTM. JavaScripts were chased, trapped and comletely exterminated finaly (but it wasn't easy). Improvements: Arachne now supports complete HTML/2.0 including <SELECT> and <OPTION> tags, and entities """ and "ß" (the second one was necessary for pages in German language). Improved mail manager. Better documentation. History list can be viewed clicking on mini-icon on the right side of URL prompt. When mouse moves over big icons, help message line apperars. Changes: This release requires only 440 kB to run (without resident PPP). (this is because big fixed array of pointers to HTMLatoms, originaly situated in low memory, is now implemented as dynamic list situated in xSwap (memory pages in XMS/EMS/disk). Default setup now includes NextStep style scroll buttons; users who prefered 1.0x appearance of Arachne can easily switch back to it at Options -> Preferences setup screen. Plans: I am leaving for holiday, so there won't be any new release in next two months. I am planning to implement Netscpe FRAMES as soon as possible, better mail manager is being developped as well as faster and less screen-flashing icons. 1.10 beta 2 ----------- Release date: Wednesday, 2th July 1997 Upgrade note: ARACHNE.PCK is (again) not compatible (and it won't be in the future versions - sorry). Bug fixes: Download and local save now works. Memory allocation bugs fixed (once again ;-) - you should get MUCH less "Non-fatal error" screens and no red boxes instead of images (tested for low memory sizes from 450 to 610 kB with step cca 10 kB). Several bugs in SMTP upload and mail manager are fixed, but mail reader is still not very usable (but at least you can write replys and then delete/rename/archive messages from DOS). Changes: This beta requires 450 kB to run (without resident PPP). 1.10 beta 1 ----------- Release date: Tuesday, 24th June 1997 Upgrade note: ARACHNE.PCK is not compatible, you have to run SETUP.BAT ! Improvements: In setup, you can select if you want to use XMS, EMS or disk for memory swapping. This should help users with less compatible systems to avoid Arachne crashing. Arachne can do e-mail ! Very simple at the moment, but it will be improved. New Arachne.cfg variable is "TimeZone". "KillSent", "UseSignature" and "Signature" variables are not yet implemented. Bug fixes: Plug-ins are now correctly executed for online documents. Small GIF scrolling bug fixed. Small bug in WWWMAN.EXE fixed. 1.08 (Friday the 13th bug-free release) ---- Release date: Friday, 13th June 1997 Bug fixes: Aborted documents with unknown mime type can be reloaded. If backround bitmap is missing or corrupted, screen will be cleared before refreshing page. Internal editor won't append empty line at the end of the document after each modification. <BLOCKQUOTE> tag was implemented (as indented paragraph). JavaScripts between <SCRIPT> and </SCRIPT> tags are now completely invisible. Multiple JPEG or PNG images on one page will be converted only once per file. Unconvertable JPEG or PNG images will not be uselessly reloaded from server. Screen will not flash when refreshing page with many images. 256 color BMP images (ussual result of PNG conversion) are now displayed properly (see http://www.w3.org). It means that Arachne is finaly independent on LZW algorithm in GIF files! It will decompress PNG images (perfect for net transfer) to local 256 color BMP files (perfect for fast page refreshing); Arachne is now ready for PNG, the future of the World Wide Web! Improvements: HTML rendering is approximately 10 times faster because or more efficient algorithm (previous versions were applying cca 100 strcmp() calls on each HTML tag, while avarage page contains thousands of such tags and pages with tables must be rendered twice. Now Arachne uses only 1-5 strcmp() per tag). Comming soon: There is already experimental build of Arachne with HiColor support, but there are still serious problems which prevented me from releasing it. And after all, HiColor support via VESA driver is on my AMD K5/133 much slower than using palette mixing and 256 color modes. Possible use of HiColor modes is on slower computers (386, 486) equipped with 1MB VESA cards. After HiColor implementation, there will be available also special builds of CORE.EXE without HiColor and/or EtherPPP support. Version 1.1 (with e-mail support) is already under construction and will be released before end of June. 1.07 ---- Release date: 4th June 1997 Bug fixes: Disabled zooming while document download (it caused Arachne to crash), some scrollbar bugs were fixed, F3 key disabled in fullscreen mode, 32 color palette freezing was finally fixed. On "Out of conventional memory" error now Arachne will not exit, it will only restart and show NONFATAL.HTM. You should generally get less screen flashing and offline and/or cached documents should be viewed with ultra-low screen flashing. Missing JPEGs and PNGs will not cause Arachne to cycle. Changes: Scroll buttons (ScrollBarStyle ...) now scroll only half-page. Improvements: When viewing cached documents (online pages, dgi scripts output, etc.), Arachne now remembers last position in displayed document. Useful for example when browsing long directory listings and generaly for long HTML pages with many links. Clicking on black zone of vertical scrollbar is now equivalent to pressing <Page Down> or <Page Up>. Horizontaly it works as horizontal home/horizontal end. Preview: Send mail page (not functional) 1.06 (first version believed to be without major bugs) ---- Release date: 28th May 1997 Bug fixes: You should get less "Illegal xSwap operation" and "Out of conventional memory" messages and less screen flashing when viewing pages with lot of images. You should be able to easily abort domain lookup. Many other small bugs were fixed. Improvements: Login script for Compuserver was included. Experimental implementation of "TerminalWindow" ARACHNE.CFG variable should help those who cannot login with their provider. Experimental implementation of "NoProxy" variable - list of hosts which are unreachable using HTTP proxy server. Messages were separated to single "messages.h" file, which will allow to compile versions for various languages. Better WWWMAN.EXE 1.05 ---- Release date: 19th May 1997 Bug fixes: Downloading of documents which can be viewed by external viewer Improvements: Faster tables, better Save As.../Download prompt, experimental EMS support (not tested) 1.04 ---- Release date: 13th May 1997 Bug fixes: Serious palette mixing bug, memory management bugs, <TEXTAREA> horizontal size bug. 1.03 ---- Release date: 7th May 1997 Bug fixes: Errors in distribution package, various HTML layout errors, various memory management errors, in HTML tag <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT NAME=... VALUE=... > the VALUE is now being passed to CGI scripts, "password" editor bug, "page up" editor bug, mouse refresh bug, browser resize and refresh bugs, <TABLE BGCOLOR> and <TR BGCOLOR> tags are now implemented correctly, faster mixing of single color to long palette. Improvements: Improved documentation, 3D-elements (<TABLE> and <HR>) are now colored differently on white (BGCOLOR=#FFFFFF) pages. Better italic fonts (sent by some Arachne fan). User definable scrollbar width, various scrollbar styles (Arachne, Windows, NextStep and experimental one), optional big system font (ARACHNE.CFG variables ScrollBarSize, ScrollBarWidth, BigFont), <TEXTAREA> tag (not tested online !), F4 key (editor), F2 key (save), renaming of downloaded files. 1.02 (first official release) ---- Release date: 30th April 1997 Bug fixes: Netscape compatible comments <!-- xxx>, reload is enabled when using proxy server. 1.01 ---- Release date: Never released for public use Bug fixes: Faster version of graphics library, table rendering bugs 1.00 ---- Release date: Never released for public use Bug fixes: <INPUT TYPE=IMAGE>, CGA support, submitting of forms without submit button, HTML entities 1.0 beta 9 ---------- Release date: 2nd April 1997 Bug fixes: *BIG* table rendering bug fixed (try http://browserwatch.iworld.com) Netscape image-resizing emulation. Improvements: Handles virtual domains (HTTP keyword Host: implemented) 1.0 beta 8 ---------- Release date: 28th March 1997 Bug fixes: Insufficient memory bug fix. Downgrade of EtherPPP.EXE Improvements: New ARACHNE.CFG variables: CreateScript, WaitFor?, Response?, ExitOnHangup. Improved ARACHNE.BAT. Klos PPP support. After optimization, CORE.EXE is 60 kB shorter. Requires less memory. Faster graphics on VESA cards. More user-friendly setup. 1.0 beta 7 ---------- Release date: 13th March 1997 Bug fixes: Stack overflow. Image loading and JPEG conversin bugs. Horizontal keyboard scroll bug (Shift+End). Change: Arachne now requires 460 kB of DOS memory (580 with PPP). Improvements: New ARACHNE.CFG variables: F3key (you can replace 'file:*.*' default string), AutoF3key Yes/No ('file:*.*' when offline, 'http://' when online), SearchPage (will appear after pressing F7). AltNameServer and AltGateway variables now allow you to add second nameserver and gateway directly to ARACHNE.CFG 1.0 beta 6 ---------- Release date: 5th March 1997 Bug fixes: Proxy support was finally implemented ! PPP.LOG file is now being opened by C sopen(), not open() function, so file sharing errors in Windows DOS box should disappear (but it was tested only with SHARE.EXE). Improvements: 4 "Memory modes" implemented: "CRISIS","LOW","NORMAL","COOL". Arachne now requires only 450 kB offline and 570 kB with PPP, but users of QEMM, MEMMAKER or DR-DOS who have more than 600 kB available will see no difference ("COOL" mode). Palette mixing is now several times faster (better algorithm). Free utility PKTSTAT can be called from utilities page. Someone sent me newer version of EtherPPP (PPP.EXE); seems to work at least not worse than the old one. And the graphical PPP setup was changed to behave more functional. Bug reports: JPEGs do not always behave as they should. The bug is not yet fixed, because the other bug fixes had higher priority. Message: New Scientist called Arachne "browser for poor". But I don't think I am poor just because I don't want to buy new computer ever year! Good news: Arachne will be incorporated as native browser in Caldera OpenDOS operating system. 1.0 beta 5 ---------- Release date: 16th February 1997 Bug fixes: some of image redraw bugs fixed Improvements: images in 16 color VGA and EGA modes, <Scroll Lock> activates "Lynx mode" - surfing with cursor keys. <Backspace> = history, <Shift> + <Home>, <Shift> + <End> = horizontal scroll. Some HTML/2.0 entities. <A HREF="#..."> ... <A NAME="..."> "Kill hotlist" icon in Utilities page - example of DGI Message: Number of visitors of Arachne homepage was increased hundered times after publishing of short article in PointCast. Many new mirror sites will be announced soon. Microsoft offered me to move to Redmond and work for them - really, I am not joking ;) Possible use of Arachne in a single-chip Net Computer. Arachne will be used in WebTyme - internet slot machine. In future, Arachne may be integrated into GEOS and OpenDos operating systems as native browser, if everything goes well. To Jan Patera: sorry, to vraceni grafickeho modu jsem zase nechal ve skole ;-))) Note: You would expect teen hackers to perfectly manage low level graphics or so, and senior programmers to be rather system administrators, etc. Reality: I am 23, my father is 50. If you like image viewing in 16 color VGA and EGA mode (as well as very good palette otimization), send credits to my father ;-) 1.0 beta 4 ---------- Release date: 27th January 1997 Bug fixes: tables ("Netscape homepage bug" and others), hotkeys bugs, "yahoo search bug" (error in form submitting), ">" entity, Linux POP3 download bug, conversion bugs, many other bugs. Cache size restricted to 256 files to reduce problems. Improvements: 16 color VGA and EGA modes, registration key support, links to <FRAME> sources (!), query strings passed to DGIs, <Backspace> returns to previous document, <Shift>+<PgUp>,<PgDn>, Message: There are signals, that in future Arachne may be used in some slot-machines for public Internet access. This can mean that more people taking care about optimizing pages for Arachne and other "Other" browsers, like Lynx, Mosaic, etc. It can be important step forcing webmasters to keep high informational value of WWW and stop the latest "putting TV-shit online" trends. REGISTER NOW to keep Arachne project alive! Final release of 1.0 will appear until end of February. Warning: No more changing homepage with <F4> in Volkov commander! I take no responsibility for possible side effects of cracking CORE.EXE, remember, I am not so bad programer... <g> 1.0 beta 3 ---------- Release date: 6th January 1997 Bug fixes: tables, documentation, miscelaneous bugs Improvements: background download of HTML documents, slight speed improvement, 1024x768 graphics mode, keyboard select <Tab>. Message: Author have new e-mail address - xchaos@main.naf.cz 1.0 beta 2 ---------- Release date: 22th December 1996 Bug fixes: gopher, finger, jpeg conversion, DGI calls, some HTML entities Improvements: EscExits and LoadImages variable in ARACHNE.CFG, Load images icon, Arachne now calls external telnet and ftp, public domain Clarkson Univesity telnet and ftp binaries added to package The way to 1.0 beta ------------------- I first attempted to compile some DOS TCP/IP application at university in 1995. It was based on NCSA Telnet sources, and for some strange reasons, the attempt was complete failure. I didn't know much about TCP/IP at that time. Then I started working as a webmaster for Video On Line, where I had enought spare time to learn about TCP/IP protocols, to search WWW for important software.... I started to hate Windows 95 as I was forced to work with them. I started also with C programming for Unix, etc. One day I tried to search Altavista for "WWW browser for DOS" - and I was very surprised, that it found nothing! Well, there were about three or four pseudo-browsers (Doslynx, Knots, Minuet and Open World Navigator), which were so useless compared to Netscape, that I decided to try it on my own. In fact, another DOS browser, SPIN, would probably discourage me from writing Arachne, because the version I had oportunity to see last month was almost usable. But it was also extremely unstable, and generaly, it could be compared to Arachne somewhere in versions 0.91-0.92. And it was also much slower, at least on my computer. (By the way, current betaversion of SPIN is now comparable with latest release of Arachne...) The reason why Arachne is so good is, that software included in Arachne package is result of years of work of many good programers. Only few of them are people I know... that's the cyberspace! My work can be best described as "source code archeology" :-). I only came, and linked it all together. Well, I also wrote HTML rendering engine but compared to TCP/IP kernel, my HTML engine is children's toy. Arachne is in fact based on "Popdump" aplication distributed as example for using WatTcp TCP/IP library. I started work in April 1996 and I released several alfaversions (0.7, 0.8, etc...) for testing. Then, when I made version about 0.9?? and started testing online homepage, one of testers added my URL to Altavista, and it is the reason why alfaversions 0.9?? ... 0.99 spreaded among people. When Arachne was once "released", I simply had to fix the major bugs and publish at least the most important updates. In fact, my first official release was version 1.0 beta, and it is also where the history list will start. I will not mention any bug fixes from alfaversion, except of one: I succesfuly fixed the packet driver interrupt crash (it was occuring in the moment when Arachne was accessing XMS, which happens very often). It was most important event in the alfaversion history. This bug is fixed cca since version 0.93 or so. So - please DELETE ANY ARACHNE OLDER THAN VERSION 1.0 beta and upgrade !!! Michael Polak, xChaos software