I got the automatic update today and it went smoothly. Is there any list of bug fixes or other release notes? It is very difficult to evaluate a new release without knowing what to look for.
This update (or the last) has resulted in very slow start-up for me. Sometimes freezes after a data file check. I have to reboot (Windows 8) and same thing but does start (slowly). Is this just me or are others having the same problem?
JJ
Slow here, Vista HP 32bit
Well, this is a constant request to the Support. Each time, it is not answered. So, I am not waiting on it, but do hope that it gets better with Version 6 that is forth coming sometime this calendar year.
start-up and synchronizing is slower… Win 7
For all: When it happens again, please run the tool available from http://www.emclient.com/tools/emstack… after the freeze happens (or when eM Client starts too long). It should generate a log file (starting with “eM Client Stack” in your Documents folder) that will help us analyze the problem in more detail. Please send this file to me at [email protected]. Thanks.
George: comments about slowness, and your comment about running diagnostics, are all well and good… but they are a hijack of this thread.
Please keep in mind that this thread is supposed to be about eM Client’s apparent lack of release notes. Not letting your customers know what’s changed is not in keeping with many (most?) software vendors, makes it difficult to be on the lookout for possible side-effect problems, makes it difficult for users to appreciate the work that has been done, and – in my opinion – is a form of rudeness to current customers.
Surely there’s internal list of changes made with the just-released version. In case I’m missing something here, would you care to explain to me your management’s reluctance to share this list?
Thanks, Bill, for bringing this back on topic. Yes, that was my original point - that it’s hard to evaluate a new release without publishing a list of changes and release notes. In my experience this is a normal expectation, especially for those of us that are beta testers and other early adopters. I really like the product and am interested in seeing it improve. But this lack of information doesn’t help.
And for eM folks, aside from what I’d consider common courtesy to your users (of what to be alert about), let me give you a specific example of why you should be providing release notes.
A few months ago, several of us reported about a problem when Windows issues a system-wide shutdown command (such as when you, or Windows Update, etc., perform an O/S “Restart”). In this case, eM Client does NOT leave gracefully, and must reconstruct its database (or something like that) upon restart. However, if before you issue a Restart command, you first manually close eM Client, there is no problem. So, I have now trained myself to Close eM Client before restarting my PC.
As a retired programmer, I am confident that fixing this bug is something like 15 minutes of work, i.e., to have eM Client perform the same code when requested by Windows to leave as it does when requested by a user to leave. And I would address it promptly.
And here’s my point: I have no idea whether this issue was addressed in the latest release. I could test it myself – Restart Windows without first closing eM Client – but if the problem was NOT addressed, then I run the continued risk of having something go wrong with the rebuild-upon-restart process (and I don’t like to press my luck). Further, suppose that the problem WAS addressed, but I still encounter a problem; at least I could report to eM that there is still a bug, perhaps only running Vista as I do, etc. – no developer can possibly test all user configurations. However, if I could read that this problem has been addressed, at least I’d be willing to try it out, once, and see what happens.
So, using just this one example:
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If the problem was successfully addressed, I’m continuing to waste my time by manually closing eM Client every time I want to restart.
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If the problem was addressed, but not in all cases successfully, I cannot report that information back to eM.
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If the problem was not addressed, and release notes continue to be absent, this scenario will replay itself forever.
All of which means that the lack of release notes is a disservice to both the developers and the users. While I like to think that I have an open mind, at this point I can see absolutely no reason why eM does not provide release notes. And let me tell you, this is also no way to win friends, influence people, or convince me to fork over $50… which, by the way, I AM willing to do, if I see some significant signs of user-oriented development and respect.
I second all of the above
To all: contact me directly at [email protected] - I will send you our internal list of changes/release notes.
Thank you – mail sent.
I sent an email to George, but received no reply. Please update me.
I, too, sent an email – on March 7 – requesting this info, and also have not received a reply.
In related news, I can tell you that the Windows-requests-a-shutdown code has NOT been fixed (see my post above). Two days ago, in the middle of the night Windows installed some patches and rebooted my PC. When I logged on the next day, eM Client (in my Startup group) took maybe 15 minutes to check that my database wasn’t corrupt, etc. I think I’ll change Windows Update to the option where it just downloads the updates, but waits for my OK before installing them – and restarting my computer.
Same here. Email sent March 7th.
I also continue to see the shutdown problem.
I have all your emails flagged and will not forget to send you the change log but I am quite busy now so please be patient.
Are technical replies any faster if I am a paying customer? If so, then I will register.
they are definitely faster
As an eM Client developer I can asure you that the shutdown/restart issue is definitely not a 15 minute fix. The cleanup code was running during shutdown since before version 1.0, but Windows forefully terminated the application before the code could finish its job. We spent several months tackling the issue and each time we were confident that we finally addressed it a new scenario was found that wasn’t fixed yet. The root cause of the issue are several bugs deep down in the Microsoft .NET Framework code. And since we have no control over that code we had to analyze the issues and implement several clever workarounds.
If you look at http://www.emclient.com/release-history you can see that we mentioned the fixes in release notes for version 3.5.12280 (“Improving shutdown mechanism to prevent unnecessary database checks.”) and 3.5.11281 (“Fixed problems with application exit when system is shutting down.”). We continued to address the issue in 4.0 and 5.0 major versions, but we try to keep the release notes brief for major revisions and so it’s not explicitly mentioned. The customers who complained about the issue were notified about the fixes.
More complete changelog for 5.0.17595:
- The application is now digitally signed. This was necessary for inclusion in Windows Store. Previously only the setup package was signed.
- Removed eM Client toolbar from setup.
- Added support for downloadable dictionaries, only common dictionaries are now included in the setup package.
- Speed up of synchronization of IMAP flags from local cache to server when large number of items are affected.
- Use bold font instead of regular for unread messages if the semi-bold font variant does not exist.
- Fixed upload of empty birthday and anniversary to Outlook.com.
- Fake User Agent to get rid of “User is not authorized to use DeltaSync” error on Outlook.com.
- Fixed applying column configuration to another folder.
- Fixed opening documentation on some computers with Windows 8 and Chrome as default browser.
- Ignore clicks on disappearing notification windows.
- Fixed crash in decompression code on Outlook.com in some pathological cases.
- Fixed displaying subfolders of “[Gmail]” on older databases.
- Removed ‘UsePasswordProtectedStartup’ option from server settings.
- Fixed editing mail addresses in textbox (doubled characters issue).
- Do not try to open an attachment if the download failed.
- Do not show icons next to the search folders.
- Disabled Ctrl+O and Ctrl+L shortcuts in several places where the web browser is embedded.
- Update button state in “New mail” window when backspace is pressed.
- Improved export of POP3 account settings.
- When creating tasks via the text box in Agenda side bar set the due to the end of the day.
- Workaround for failing PATCH requests on primary calendar (Google Calendar).
- When sanitizing HTML emails keep the original DOCTYPE tag if present (fixes layout of several Google notification emails).
- Attempt to fix the ‘Error creating window handle’ error by reducing the timer stops and restarts.
- Fix synchronization of tasks on Google Tasks that were changed locally to recurring and then modified on the server.
- Synchronize street addresses, WebPage, Title and Children, Spouse, Manager Name, Assistant Name and Referred by to Outlook.com.
- Synchronize system lables (Coworkers, Family, Friends) for non-Google Apps accounts (Google Contacts).
- Fix crash after the user deletes the currently edited security profile.
- Abort ACL information loading when the Properties window is closing.
- Fix saving and loading of the “Don’t close application before all messages are sent” setting.
- Fixed deleting of CalDAV items in offline mode.
- Fix for crash happening with databases repaired using DbRepair from year 2010.
- Fixed disabling and enabling the “Find” and “Find in body” menu items in main application window.
- Fixed collapsing and expanding groups with left and right arrows for editable data grids.
- Updated German and Slovak localization.
- Fixed reverting of changed occurrences of event to server’s version during failed upload (Google Calendar).
- Fixed importing of CSS styles for Outlook signatures.
- Fix a case where server support URLAUTH and XLIST extensions and there’s \Sent folder named “Outbox”.
- Allow drag & drop of a mail attachment into a folder.
- Added Hungarian and Dutch localization.
- Fixed some painting issues in free/busy view.
- Fixed possible incorrect time intervals shown in free/busy view.
- Fixed “Forbidden” errors on iCloud for items with reminders (value of ACKNOWLEDGED property for alarms).
- Make the ‘check all’ checkbox in EML export work properly.
- Fixed font size for unread messages.
- Fixed crash when trying to print and no printer is installed.
- Don’t ask for SMTP settings if Autodiscover returns IMAP only (Exchange Autodiscover). This facilitates use case of MailStore, which has IMAP Archive only.
- Don’t trim \ on the beginning of the path when creating backup or restore parameters. This should resolve issue with backup to network drive.
- Do not uncheck all tree view nodes if we click on the shared account folder with a CTRL key pressed.
- Fixed printing of a single day view (only part of the day after the currently selected region was printed).
- Fix a race condition on Zimbra, where UID EXPUNGE and FETCH command were queued and the Message Id used in the FETCH was invalidated by the EXPUNGE (IMAP).
- Fix for black background on messages created from template on machines with IE 10 installed.
- Fix MIME type for attachments imported from PST files. This also fixes importing of encrypted messages.
- Skip notifications for black list rule.
- Default Facebook access token changed to resolve non-functional Facebook photo lookups for users with no Facebook account set up.
- Fixed “Show Local folders” setting not being propagated through settings export/import.
- Disable sound when the notification is disabled via the context menu in notification window.
- Add handling of corrupted certificate public keys (incorrect length) to prevent application crash.
- Do not select the description text after opening event/task.
- Improved speed of PST import for large number of folders.
- Fixed bug where bogus contacts were shown in the “Chat” box in side bar if no chat account exists.
- Roundtrip unrecognized extended GData properties (fixes not being able to accept invites that contained custom shared properties, e.g. from Google Outlook connector).
- Support for the new registry path used by Outlook 2013 in PST import.
- Save custom folder selection in search box across application runs.
- Do not respect \Archive flag on IceWarp server since the mailbox is read-only (IMAP).
- Ignore dummy EXISTS responses sent by Gmail as a no-op (IMAP).
- Fix for adding the same attachment twice.
- Fixed saving words to custom dictionary.
- Fixed sanitizing of IE conditional comments in HTML emails.
- Decode Thunderbird folder name if it contains non-ascii characters (Thunderbird import).
Among the above there were quite a few fixes for application crashes that we track from the user reports.