Ark, the all-in-one blockchain platform has announced the newest version of the Ark Desktop Wallet. Version 1.4.2 addresses a lot of back-end and core components which may not be visible to the everyday user but will offer a lot of value to developers with more stability to the wallet. 100 separate code commits by 10+ developers have been made to the Ark desktop wallet since the last version release.
Changes/Fixes:
- The Ark Newsfeed displays more visible on the desktop wallet to keep the community up-to-date.
- Users can now set a preferred background image to the Ark desktop wallet.
- In previous versions, the splash screen was not always visible. Ark corrected this, and if users switch the network or start the client they will now be able to see this screen while loading, which is shown above.
- Improved UI for messages shown in lower left corner with different color pallet depending on the operation and their effect (eg. when connecting to the network, when disconnecting, sending transactions, …).
- When hovering over the ARK address, now it will say “Copy address” (or public key) with the ability to copy to your clipboard.
Other bugs or improvements implemented:
- Sort peers & fix bug with filtered peer status: This is to improve the initial connection to the network. The team says there has been a lot of connect /disconnect activity when users start the Ark client. It now looks for the best peers based on highest block height, and lowest delay.
- Closing all ARK processes that were still running after exiting: Instances of Ark were still running after the client was closed. This is now fixed by calling process.exit(). All parts of the client now exit completely when the window is closed.
- Fix the precision problem when sending some amounts of ARK: While trying to send some specific amount, the client altered it by 1 arktoshi, the resulting total is less than specified. This has now been fixed with new UNIT function, allowing you to send exact ARK numbers.
- Changing of API for in-wallet price provider: Some may have experienced the price display freeze issue. This was due to a 3rd party API (unofficial coinmarketcap API) Ark was using to parse live data, which seems to be unreliable at times causing the price to read incorrectly. The developers have changed to the official CoinMarketCap API, hopefully resolving any issues some experienced.
- New format currency method which will localize any number passed in: Before this release “My Accounts” currency localization is different than the values shown in the price and the market cap section, so this method will take in any value and localize it to have consistency across the wallet.
- Add your accounts list of addresses to send ARK to: When sending ARK, the list of other ARK addresses popup, along with contact. So users can easily send Ark to other addresses which have been added. They are also sorted by account label/contact name.
- Make it more obvious users not connected to the network: Client now sets network connection icon color to red when not connected to the network.
- Adding StandardJS: code is now following JavaScript Standard Style rules.
- Application menu to match Settings menu: buttons in the Application menu now fill the width of the menu, same as the Settings menu.
- Set BTC to default currency and first in currencies list: Previously, if a currency was not set, the currency option in the settings menu would be blank even though the currency defaulted to BTC.
- Fixed contact deletion bug: There was a bug causing contacts to be unable to be deleted or edited, due to an undeclared increment variable.
- Fixing virtual folders: Renaming a virtual folder is now operational and also now prevents adding the same folder name twice, showing an error message if attempted.
- Import/create an account if not connected to the network: This fixes an issue with not being connected to a network. When importing or creating an account it is now possible to import/create a new account even if not connected to the Ark network. Previously it was not allowed and no actions were performed.
- Hide ‘Remove’ button for a Ledger account: if using the Ledger Nano S with the Ark wallet, the option to remove an account was confusing. Because if removed, it would reappear after a user restarted the client. The team has now hidden the icon to remove confusion.
- Fix current account balance display in account: Currency balance total for all accounts was displayed in the currently selected account, instead of just the currently selected address. (ie: total balance of all accounts was displayed in more places than just the home screen.) This has now been fixed to only display the current address totals.
- Languages are now in alphabetical order.
A vast majority of the wallet code has also been refactored, standardized and further modularized.
A lot of test units for developers were also added, for easier testing of functions and methods. A lot of minor UI changes have been improved with some responsive tweaks. Ark also changed the Karma configuration to be more Electron-oriented.