Software Update: TightVNC 2.8.8

There are several programs to control computers remotely. TightVNC is one such program and, as the name implies, it uses VNC. ‘Tight’ refers to the use of compression, so that the program also performs well over slow connections. Since version 2.0, TightVNC is only suitable for Windows 2000 and above, Windows 9x/NT and Linux users should version 1.3.10 keep using. Since version 2.7.10, the following changes and improvements have been made:

TightVNC 2.8.8

• Installer for Windows: Fixed a problem which caused errors in handling installation parameters (sf bug #1408).

TightVNC 2.8.7 (limited release)

• Server for Windows: Fixed the bug causing the “Connection has been gracefully closed” problem (sf bug #1386).

TightVNC 2.8.6 (Limited Release)

• Server for Windows: Fixed a problem of connecting to Windows 2003 Server after connecting via RDP.
• Server for Windows: Added extra diagnostics for the “Connection has been gracefully closed” bug (sf bug #1386).

TightVNC 2.8.5

• Server for Windows: Fixed minor resource leaks (GuiThread and SocketIPv4 objects did not always closed all their handles properly).
• Server for Windows: Built-in Java Viewer updated to its latest version (2.8.3).

TightVNC 2.8.4 (limited release)

• Server for Windows: Fixed server crash on some Windows 7 systems. Finally, the bug introduced in version 2.8.2 is fixed for all Windows 7 computers.
• Server for Windows: Fixed a bug that could make the server crash after a client has disconnected.
• Source Code for Windows (Server and Viewer): Changed output directory structure in internal build scripts (the changes do not affect distribution packages).

TightVNC 2.8.3 (limited release)

• Server for Windows: Fixed server crash on Windows 7 introduced in version 2.8.2.
• Java Viewer: Fixed a problem when the viewer did not start in applet mode (sf bug #1390).

TightVNC 2.8.2

• Server for Windows: Added support for “IdleTimeout” registry key which specifies how many seconds to wait for mouse or keyboard events. If there was no activity from a client during the specified timeout, the corresponding client will be disconnected. The value 0 (DWORD) stands for no timeout at all (stay connected forever), and that’s the default setting. This setting is not configurable from the user interface.
• Server for Windows: Improved handling for screen orientation changes.
• Server for Windows: Significantly improved screen reading performance on Windows 8 with multiple monitors (sf bug #1324).
• Server for Windows: Fixed a problem with the Alt key becoming stuck in the pressed state after Alt-Tab switching in Windows 8 (sf bugs #1341, #1311, #1303, #1302).
• Server for Windows: Fixed built-in HTTP server crash on Windows XP and Windows 7 when the request URL includes parameters (sf bug #1344).
• Server for Windows: Fixed a rare problem triggered when a server shares one display in multi-monitor configuration, with more than one viewer connected. If a user on the server changed the focus to other display, the viewers could see the active windows from the other display on top of the shared display and everything became messy.
• Server for Windows: Fixed server side clipboard handling. After receiving clipboard contents from a client, the server could return the same clipboard data back to the same client, and clipboard could be damaged on the viewer side (sf bug #1255).
• Server and Viewer for Windows: Fixed a bug with truncating data from clipboard, due to an error in calculating text length in Unicode/ANSI conversions (sf bug #1337).
• Viewer for Windows: Fixed possible memory access violation caused by incorrect calculation of buffer size in the StringStorage object (sf bug #1356).
• Viewer for Windows: Fixed a bug with deleting random characters from the host:port string. The bug was caused by incorrect calculation of the number of Unicode characters (sf bug #1349).
• Viewer for Windows: Fixed problems with Shift, Alt and Ctrl keys getting locked in the pressed state on switching from the viewer window to other applications (sf bugs #1360, #1329, #1174).
• Viewer for Windows: Fixed a problem which prevented from connecting to a Dispatcher using big ID numbers (ID >= 2147483648).
• Viewer for Windows: A typo has been fixed in the warning window shown on entering the full-screen mode (sf bug #1270).
• Server and Viewer for Windows: Removed libjpeg-turbo library in favor of the standard libjpeg. The accelerated library did not show major performance improvements in typical situations but introduced questionable requirements on the hardware and the compiler. The codebase goes cross-platform, so we chose to get rid of such dependencies.
• Java Viewer: Added new -showConnectionDialog command-line option. Set to “No” if you do not want to show initial connection dialog. Default: “Yes”.
• Java Viewer: Fixed an issue that resulted in error message “Value too long” (sf bug #1379).
• Java Viewer: Increased Java compatibility requirement, now it requires Java 1.7 (previous versions required Java 1.6).

TightVNC 2.8.1 (limited release)

• Server for Windows: Supporting screen orientation changes on the fly (this resolves sf bugs #1366, #1339, #1335 as well).
• Server for Windows: Fixed a bug with running on Windows Server 2003, where TightVNC Server could stop accepting connections until the system is rebooted.
• Server for Windows: Added an option to specify a list of rectangles to be treated as video and sent to viewers with minimal delays. Rectangles are specified by their screen coordinates in the Video tab in the TightVNC Server’s Configuration window. Normally, this option is not very useful, it’s rather for using TightVNC in specialized environments.
• Server for Windows: When sharing just one application (-shareapp command-line option), do not pass remote keyboard input to other apps.
• Server for Windows: Documented the -shareapp command-line option in the tvnserver /? output.
• Server and Viewer for Windows: Implemented support for Dispatcher (it acts as a proxy between servers and viewers and allows connecting to servers not directly accessible from the Internet). Dispatcher is available separately, under commercial licenses only.
• Java Viewer: Switched to a different library for supporting SSH tunneling (now using Trilead SSH-2 instead of JSch).
• Java Viewer API: Introducing several APIs and corresponding JAR libraries for using parts of the viewer as an SDK (software development kit).
• Java Viewer API: Generating Javadoc documentation for the SDK APIs.
• Java Viewer API: Added an simple example on using the SDK APIs.

TightVNC 2.8.0 (limited release, Java Viewer only)

• Java Viewer: Added support for TightVNC Dispatcher (a special proxy-type software that connects servers and viewers from different networks that may not be accessible directly).
• Java Viewer: Implemented key-based SSH authentication. Files with SSH keys should be created in OpenSSH format, in $HOME/.ssh directory.
• Java Viewer: Added better application icons.
• Java Viewer: Improved support for OS X, added support for DockerIcon.
• Java Viewer: Significantly improved rendering performance on Apple Macs with Retina displays.
• Java Viewer API: Improved API for simplifying integration of the viewer into customer applications.
• Java Viewer API: Added public API methods for choosing compression level, toggling view-only mode, and sending various protocol messages to server.
• Java Viewer API: Computing transfer rate between client and server, making this data available via a public API.
• Java Viewer API: Added support for sending client messages “VideoRectangleSelection” and “VideoFreeze” (TightVNC extensions) from the API.
• Java Viewer: Conforming to new applet security requirements introduced in Java versions 7u25 and 7u51.
• Java Viewer: Improved compatibility with built-in server of OS X. Provided a workaround for supporting 8-bit pixel formats (and formats with less than 8 bits) that were represented incorrectly by the OS X.
• Java Viewer: Implemented new infrastructure for supporting different tunnel types (TightVNC extensions of the RFB protocol).
• Java Viewer: Fixed a crash in ZRLE decoder when decompressing data from a built-in server of OS X.
• Java Viewer: Fixed crashing on reading erroneous “color depth” and “bits per pixel” values ​​in pixel format description.
• Java Viewer: Fixed a bug with disconnecting on receiving clipboard contents from the server.
• Java Viewer: Fixed a problem with disappearing controls while zooming out in the full-screen mode (sf bug #1267)
• Java Viewer: Fixed a bug with endless loop in the full-screen mode (sf bug #1268)
• Java Viewer: Refactored and fixed the source code in various places to eliminate warnings of code analyzers.