Ark Desktop Wallet v1.4.2 Released

ARK is happy to announce 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. Many thanks to all of our core and community developers —you are the best! More than 100 separate code commits by 10+ developers have been made to the ARK desktop wallet since the last version release.

To update, simply start your ARK desktop wallet and click ‘New version available!’ in the upper left corner of your wallet. You will then be taken to the download page where you can choose your OS version, download and install. It will automatically uninstall and overwrite your previous version. Your accounts will still be visible after the upgrade, if not then simply re-enter your passphrase to import it. We have also attached the download link below:

Release/download link: https://github.com/ArkEcosystem/ark-desktop/releases/tag/1.4.2

What was fixed / changed / implemented?

1. ARK News Feed

• We integrated a nice pop-up banner in the lower corner of the desktop wallet which shows you the latest blog post from our blog. By clicking on the title it will open it up in your default internet browser and if you click on X it will remember and won’t show you anything until a new blog post is published. With this we wanted to give more users the ability to read our news and always be up to date without constantly visiting our blog or following every social media post.
  

2. Custom Backgrounds

• You now have an option to upload your own preferred background image to the ARK desktop wallet (Settings(gear icon)>Appearance — button ‘Add Custom’ in the left lower corner).
  

3. Splash Screen

• When loading in previous versions, the splash screen was not always visible. We have corrected this, and if you switch the network or start the client you’ll now be able to see this screen while loading:
  

4. Implemented Toast Service

• We have 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, …).
  

5. Hover over ARK address

• For better UI when you hover over the address it will say “Copy address” (or public key) with the ability to copy to your clipboard.
  

6. Show ‘Well Confirmed’

• Once the number of confirmations of transaction is greater than 50 it doesn’t show full number of confirmations anymore. This is the way the new explorer displays confirmations also. You can hover over now shows the actual number once well confirmed if you are interested in number of confirmations.
  

Other bugs or improvements implemented:

• Sort peers & fix bug with filtered peer status: This is to improve the initial connection to the network. Recently, there’s been a lot of connect/disconnect activity when you start 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 being 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)we were using to parse live data, which seems to be unreliable at times causing the price to read incorrectly. We have changed to the official CoinMarketCap API, hopefully resolving any issues some experienced. We will continue monitoring this closely.
• 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 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 your other Ark addresses popup, along with contact. So you can easily send Ark to your other addresses you have added in your list. They are also sorted by account label/contact name.
• Make it more obvious you’re not connected to the network: Client now sets network connection icon color to red when not connected to 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 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 you are using the Ledger Nano S with the ARK wallet, the option to remove your account was confusing. Because if removed, it would reappear after you restarted client. So we have 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. We also changed the Karma configuration to be more Electron-oriented.

This version brings in a ton of new improvements and bug fixes, thanks to our core devs and community devs, but as always, we strive for best user experience, and if you find something that could get improved, implemented, or find a bug / glitch, feel free to open GitHub issue : https://github.com/ArkEcosystem/ark-desktop/issues and don’t forget we also run Github Bounty for developers.

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