Yesterday we released ownCloud Client 1.7.0. It is available via ownCloud’s website. This client release marks the next big step in open source file synchronization technology and I am very happy that it is out now.
The new release brings two lighthouse features which I’ll briefly describe here.
Overlay icons
For the first time, this release has a feature that lives kind of outside the ownCloud desktop client program. That nicely shows that syncing is not only a functionality living in one single app, but a deeply integrated system add-on that affects various levels of desktop computing.
Here we’re talking about overlay icons which are displayed in the popular file managers on the supported desktop platforms. The overlay icons are little additional icons that stick on top of the normal file icons in the file manager, like the little green circles with the checkmark on the screenshot.
The overlays visualize the sync state of each file or directory: The most usual case that a file is in sync between server and client is shown as a green checkmark, all good, that is what you expect. Files in the process of syncing are marked with a blue spinning icon. Files which are excluded from syncing show a yellow exclamation mark icon. And errors are marked by a red sign.
What comes along simple and informative for the user requires quite some magic behind the curtain. I promise to write more about that in another blog post soon.
Selective Sync
Another new thing in 1.7.0 is the selective sync.
In ownCloud client it was always possible to have more than one sync connection. Using that, users do not have to sync their entire server data to one local directory as with many other sync solutions. A more fine granular approach is possible here with ownCloud.
For example, mp3’s from the Music dir on the ownCloud go to the media directory locally. Digital images which are downloaded from the camera to the “photos” dir on the laptop are synced through a second sync connection to the server photo directory. All the other stuff that appears to be on the server is not automatically synced to the laptop which keeps it organized and the laptop harddisk relaxed.
While this is of course still possible we added another level of organization to the syncing. Within existing sync connections now certain directories can be excluded and their data is not synced to the client device. This way big amounts of data can be easier organized depending on the demands of the target device.
To set this up, check out for the button Choose what to Sync on the Account page. It opens the little dialog to deselect directories from the server tree. Note that if you deselect a directory, it is removed locally, but not on the server.
What else?
There is way more we put into this release: A huge amount of bug fixes and detail improvements went in. Fixes for all parts of the application: Performance (such as database access improvements), GUI (such as detail improvements for the progress display), around the overall processing (like how network timeouts are handled) and the distribution of the applications (MacOSX installer and icons), just to name a few examples. Also a lot of effort went into the sync core where many nifty edge cases were analyzed and better handled.
Between version 1.6.2 and the 1.7.0 release more than 850 commits from 15 different authors were pushed into the git repository (1.6.3 and 1.6.4 were continued in the 1.6 branch which commits are also in the 1.7 branch). A big part of these are bug fixes.
Who is it?
Who does all this? Well, there are a couple of brave coders funded by the ownCloud company working on the client. And we do our share, but not everything. Also coding is only one thing. If you for example take some time and read around in the client github repo it becomes clear that there are so many people around who contribute: Reporting bugs, testing again and again, answering silly looking questions, proposing and discussing improvements and all that (yes, and finally coding too). That is really a huge block, honestly.
Even if it sometimes becomes a bit heated, because we can not do everything fast enough, that still is motivating. Because what does that mean? People care! For the idea, for the project, for the stuff we do. How cool is that? Thank you!
Have fun with 1.7.0!