Freenet / Hyphanet 0.7.5 build 1499 is now available.
Install Freenet / Hyphanet for Windows, for GNU/Linux, macOS and other *nixes, or for Android. See the download page for more information and other platforms (Apple Silicon needs library updates to work).
This release adds cleanups and optimizations on the way to Freenet / Hyphanet 0.8. It improves privacy with DNS requests, optimizes the networking and data transfer core and provides many improvements for website authors and user experience.
There are five larger areas of improvements:
- improved privacy protection
- optimized networking layer
- support for website authors
- better user experience
- clean ups and code purges
Privacy
The privacy improvements are reduced pings and DNS lookups. These make it less likely that a node gets detected by pings it sends for other nodes that use DNS addresses to have permanent addresses. Also thanks to Torusrxxx SSL support is updated and when setting up a node for access via SSL, unencrypted HTTP links now get upgraded to secured HTTPS automatically.
Networking
The networking layer got a fix for very fast nodes. On these the bulk queue could be starved when realtime requests were received faster than they could be completed. Also bertm fixed bulk backoff getting ignored.
Juiceman removed unnecessary boxing and unboxing to reduce CPU load and Torusrxxx improved IPv6 handling.
Website
Torusrxxx also added partial webp support to the content sanitation (filters), so you can now use webp images on freesites and depending on the study reduce the storage by around 30%. Minimizing storage is more critical on Hyphanet compared to the clearnet, so webp can improve performance for all sites. Animation and lossless mode are not supported yet.
In addition to webp, Torusrxxx also added support for more CSS keywords: border-{top,bottom}-{left,right}-radius, color-scheme, dominant-baseline, margin-block, margin-block-end, margin-block-start, margin-bottom, margin-inline, margin-inline-end, margin-inline-start, margin-right, math-style, padding-block, padding-block-end, padding-block-start, padding-inline, padding-inline-end, padding-inline-start, padding-right, padding-top, scroll-behavior, scroll-snap-align, scroll-snap-stop, scroll-snap-type, text-combine-upright, text-decoration-thickness, text-orientation, text-underline-offset.
And font settings: monospace, system-ui, ui-serif, ui-sans-serif, ui-monospace, ui-rounded, emoji, math, fangsong. Color keywords are now checked case insensitively.
Also add more CSS selectors: default, disabled, empty, enabled,
focus-visible, indeterminate, in-range, invalid, only-child,
only-of-type, optional, out-of-range, placeholder-shown, read-only,
read-write, required, root. The combination of :root and
color-scheme enables settings for dark-mode. The MIME types
image/avif, heic, and heif are now known (but have no validation). Ban
link as well as visited (these can cause requests depending on
interaction), replace with any-link. The HTML elements bdi,
figcaption, figure, main, mark, rp, rt, ruby are added.
And the :checked selector is now supported, so freesites can have
some CSS-based interactivity.
There’s one loss: Chrome removed Theora support in 2024 and Firefox followed suit in version 130 (which broke brasilian banking OTPs ). Firefox ESR (128) will still get support until may 27th 2025. Until then we need sanitation for modern video formats like vp8 or vp9 and webm to keep our video on demand (streaming) working.
User experience
There are two improvements of the interface itself: Qupo1 updated the Japanese localization and bertm polished the bookmark editor and directory listing in the Winterfacey theme.
And thanks to Bombe the Freemail plugin now has a settings page for the SMTP and IMAP address and port to use.
The defunct new load management statistics are now gone — thanks to Torusrxxx. These were just distracting.
When you change the auto-updater key, updates are now checked instantly, not only after update (for example to get updates via a testing key for checking an update before release).
And a bug was fixed that could lead to plugins being killed early during shutdown.
Cleanups
Thanks to qupo1, Christophe, and Bombe, our gradle setup is more up to date and cleaner.
And thanks to Bombe, Bertm, Venfernand, and Juiceman we purged a lot of outdated code that is no longer needed on modern JVMs (the code base once had to work with Java 1) or replaced it with more recent paradigms. Those make it quite a bit more enjoyable to work with the affected parts of the code.
Finally qupo1 fixed links and code badges in our readme and Bertm made sure that our IPv6 preference setting keeps working in Java 24 and later.
Contribute
Join our core.
If you want to help us get better, please chat with us in #freenet @ irc.libera.chat. And give us time to answer, we’re all volunteers and might not be in your timezone.
To get into development right-away, have a look at one of the Freenet / Hyphanet Projects or just get fred and fix something that annoys you.
And to take on something that makes a big difference, have a look at the high-impact tasks.
In addition to coding, spreading Hyphanet, joining the community, writing a decentralized website, and other ways to contribute within Hyphanet, you can join the awesome team of translators at transifex. They are the reason why we’re able to support several different languages, the often unseen heroes who make our work accessible to those who need it the most.
What is Freenet / Hyphanet?
Hyphanet is the original Freenet,
a peer-to-peer platform for
censorship-resistant and privacy-respecting
publishing and communication.
I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet? --Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation
What about the name „Hyphanet“? See Freenet renamed to Hyphanet.
That Hyphanet can keep moving forward and help people worldwide to exercise their basic rights and freedoms is the work of amazing volunteers, both contributors and people running Hyphanet nodes.
Thank you for your contributions, and thank you for using Freenet / Hyphanet!
-- AB
Install Freenet / Hyphanet for Windows, for GNU/Linux, macOS and other *nixes, or for Android. See the download page for more information and other platforms.