One month after the eyeOS 1.6 release, we are happy to announce the immediate availability of the first maintenance release to the 1.6 branch: eyeOS 1.6.0.1.

This particular release doesn’t contain any security fix, but it’s recommended to all eyeOS system administrators to update, since it contains important bugfixes and small new features, such as the Internet Explorer 6 support, the import and export (with OPML format) in eyeFeeds or the new session language selection in the Login Screen.

You can download the new release from the downloads page and view the full changelog in the Developer’s center.

On the other hand, the eyeOS Project reached yesterday 300.000 downloads from the SourceForge servers. This is a good moment to say thanks to SourceForge for the great service they provide to eyeOS and more than 170.000 other projects.

We are proud to announce the availability of eyeSync, the eyeOS Synchronization Tool, for Microsoft Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP and Vista.

It’s a portable application, and all you need to do to get it running is to uncompress it somewhere in your system (or even inside a Pendrive) and launch eyeSync. The first time you launch it, it will ask you to configure your account (from Preferences). If you want to use it with the Public Server, just put www.eyeos.info in the Server field, and your username/password in the other fields.

You can download it from here and from the Downloads page.

You can add folders form your system to keep synchronized with your eyeOS by pressing Add Folder and choosing the local folder you want to keep synchronized with your eyeOS, and the eyeOS folder you want the contents to go to. Please note that the eyeOS folder must exist, and it must be empty.

When you add a folder, its content will start to synchronize and you can open your eyeOS session and check that your local contents are being imported. Note that the system will detect every change you do on the synchronized folders (such as file edits).

It’s an early version and feedback will be appreciated on the eyeOS Forums.

The eyeOS Team and eyeOS Community are proud to announce the immediate availability of eyeOS 1.6 Gala Sync. This new major release, which has been centered entirely to improve the user experience at eyeOS, includes new applications, significant improvements on the overall usability and new tools to develop better applications, faster.

The new eyeOS 1.6 Desktop includes major improvements such as Drag and Drop between folders and groups, new widgets that can be launched from Accessories menu and a common actions bar, with some overall improvements on its design and functionality.

The new Gala Sync version also includes new applications such as the new eyeFeeds to read RSS sources, the new Text Editor with syntax highlighting for the most common programming languages and autocomplete features, an integrated IDE (only launchable from root user) called eyeCode and some new Games and Tools such as eyeTetravex (a math game with a system highscores system) or the new Calculator.

The system part from eyeOS 1.6 has been also improved: Developers have new base libraries to make apps that communicate beween them and create virtual work groups, lots of small fixes on the eyeOS Toolkit Widgets and the new XML-RPC system , which is the base for the syncronization, and allows the creation of desktop applications which communicate with eyeOS.

Synchronization with your local computer

Probably the most important feature of this release is the ability to create desktop apps that communicate eyeOS with the local computer where the user is in every moment, and the release of eyeSync (the first app to use this technology in eyeOS).

The syncronization tool for eyeOS, called eyeSync, will be an official app but will have its own versioning. The 0.1 version of eyeSync, which allows to syncronize automatically and transparently different folders from the system will be available today for Mac OS X (Tiger/PPC and Leopard/Intel) and Linux (in deb and source/targz), and during the next week for Windows XP and Vista.

eyeSync will keep the folders you indicate always synchronized with your eyeOS account without requiring any action from you: eyeSync will detect every change you do on those folders (copying/removing some files, saving or updating some documents…) and synchronize them with your eyeOS desktop, transparently and automatically.

You can download eyeSync and the new eyeOS version from the eyeOS Downloads page.

The first time you run eyeSync you will have to configure it by putting your server’s URL ( that can be the public server one, http://www.eyeos.info or your own local or remote eyeOS Server) and your username and password. Nothing special must be installed in the server, and all the data is transfered via the port 80, so you won’t encounter problems with local proxies when using it.

Trying the new eyeOS version

As usually, if you want to use the new eyeOS 1.6 version you can do it from the Public Server, which has been already updated to eyeOS 1.6, or downloading and installing to your local server. eyeOS is Open Source Software, released under the Affero GNU Public License (AGPL) version 3.

One more… Thanks!

The development of this version has been done from its first days together with the eyeOS Community. From posts on the Forums regarding the new features that eyeOS 1.6 should had, the continoued contributions and suggestions to the Development Mailing lists, and a really intensive bug reporting during all the beta period.

This has been possible thanks to the more than 1.000 registered users in the Beta server, that will be closed later today.

Thanks!

What’s next?

It’s a bit early to say, but we can announce that the next eyeOS version won’t start by “1″, and will introduce a new eyeOS Toolkit, but always mantaining compatibility with eyeOS Toolkit 1.

We’ll be doing the announcement of the new version Roadmap and plans very soon, after the publication of the stable versions of eyeSync for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Stay tuned!

We are proud to announce the immediate availability of eyeOS 1.6.0.0 Beta, which is the result of months of work from the eyeOS Team and eyeOS Community on both the eyeOS Platform and base Applications.

The new eyeOS 1.6 version also includes everything planned on the Global Roadmap plus some new features which were not asigned to a particular release, but have been finally created for eyeOS 1.6.

Testers wanted!

There are still 10 days before the final release, and some testing would be really appreciated. Now it’s the best moment to report bugs through the Bugs reporting tool or in the Bugs mailing list.

Online beta server available

Everybody can test the new eyeOS 1.6 release extensively from the Beta server (you must create a new account first), which is located at beta.eyeos.info.

Download eyeOS 1.6.0.0 Beta

You can also download the eyeOS 1.6.0.0 Beta Release from here. Please keep in mind that this is a package without installer, so it doesn’t include some security features such as the randomization of the whole eyeOS system folder or the generation of the root password during install. Please do not use it on production systems.

Username/password for the package are root/root, and you should give the package the sufficient permissions for your system to make the web server able to run, read and write into it.

About eyeSync

Please note that XML-RPC (the server part for the synchronization) is already bundled with eyeOS 1.6, but that eyeSync 1.0 for Windows, Linux and Mac will be released with the final version of eyeOS 1.6.

What does eyeOS 1.6 include?

To discover what eyeOS 1.6 includes, you may want to read this blog post, plus all this features which have been finally added:

Drag and Drop: eyeOS API finally has a D&D system. This means that you can just move your files between folders, to the desktop, to the trash… by just dragging and dropping them to the correct place!

eyeFeeds: The new feeds reader (formerly known as eyeRSS) provides a completely rewritten interface, which makes much more easier to store and get your favorite feeds inside eyeOS. It does provide automatic link opening in eyeNav, integrated preview panel, tree-organization with folders and subfolders. It’s the first big contribution from Anaël Ollier since he’s on the eyeOffice at Barcelona, so wait for more eyecandy applications during next releases ;-).

miniActions widget: This new widget that comes preloaded with the new eyeOS 1.6 version on the desktop and links common actions on the system in an easy and intuitive way.

eyeNotes: eyeNotes has been integrated with CodePress and features syntax highlighting for the most common programming languages (including .eyecode!).

eyeCode: This new application, only available if you are root, will allow you to modify all the eyeOS applications, libraries, services and kernel from inside eyeOS. This is the first part of eyeDesigner, which was planned on eyeOS 1.0, and allows you to create eyeApps in a comfortable way, within eyeOS.

Small changes here and there: The new Info Screen (yes, doowee comes back from eyeOS 0.x), some design improvements over the whole desktop, a completely rewritten and redesigned calculator, optimization of all the images inside eyeOS and much more.

After some weeks working to provide a good platform to every eyeOS developer, we are ready to announce the roadmap for the next eyeOS version: eyeOS 1.6.0.

eyeOS 1.6 will introduce both system and applications improvements, and will be the first eyeOS release ever to include also an optional add-on for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.

Synchronization with local files and folders (see blueprint)

eyeOS 1.6 does incorporate a new system (based on the xml-rpc protocol) which will allow external desktop applications to communicate with every eyeOS in the world through the port 80. With this new addition, the same day of eyeOS 1.6 release we will release eyeSync 1.0, a tool to automatically synchronize local files and folders with your eyeOS system.

By just selecting which folders do you want to keep synchronized, eyeOS will maintain it updated with your virtual eyeOS computer, asking you to resolve conflicts with files modified in both ways and keeping the folders always updated with your eyeOS without requiring any action from the user (the system does detect changes in the folders and sends them to eyeOS every time we save changes on a file or copy/remove files locally).

With eyeSync (that will ask you for the eyeOS server you’re working on, your username and password, and the path you want to sync with local folders), eyeOS will include a brand new functionality for the whole system: an online backup of all your data, which can be accessed (and many times also read and updated) from everywhere in the world with an Internet connection, through eyeOS.

eyeOS Mobile Access (see blueprint)

With the new eyeOS Mobile Access (accessible from every mobile phone with a WAP/Mobile HTML browser) you will be able to access your eyeOS files, download them to your mobile phone and upload new ones.

The new Mobile Access will provide a new cool feature for mobile phones: Office files viewing, through the existent eyeConverter to read Office and OpenOffice documents. This means that you will be able to see documents, spreadsheets and presentations from your mobile phone, without installing any new software into it.

Desktop Widgets (see blueprint)

The new eyeOS 1.6 desktop will include three default widgets activated: miniCalendar, miniMessages and miniHome, that will inform you what do you have planned for today (and optionally navigate to other dates with the included calendar), see new and last received messages in eyeMessages and see how much space do you have occupied in your account.

The new widgets will be controlled with a new Widgets Box app which will allow you to see which widgets are installed in the system, add new ones to your desktop and remove existent ones.

Improvements in Calendar and Contacts (see blueprint)

As we did with eyeOS 1.5 and Office, eyeOS 1.6 will include hot improvements for eyeCalendar and eyeContacts, making easier to share information between users using this applications, providing more usability and options.

With the improvements and the XML-RPC system, we can expect for next versions sync tools between the most used desktop apps for calendar and contacts (Microsoft Outlook, Novell Evolution, Mozilla Thunderbird…) and eyeOS PIM tools (eyeCalendar and eyeContacts).

Integrated add-ons from eyeOS-Apps website

eyeOS 1.6 will integrate some cool add-ons (from themes to apps and games) from the eyeOS-Apps community.

For example, the new version will come with the Light Desktop theme, the eyeTetravex game -being the second official game in eyeOS-, eyeXMLViewer and some more.

Improvements in eyeSheets

The Save function in eyeSheets was removed in the eyeOS 1.5 release. Hard work has been done from then, creating a new library which is being used in many projects now, with the collaboration of an eyeOS community member (Juan Lao Tebar). This library (php-ods in Sourceforge) will be used to provide the save functionality in eyeSheets.

Improvements suggested by the community

After the release of eyeOS 1.5, Alexandre Mejat (an eyeOS community member) started a topic in the forums called Suggestions for eyeOS 1.6. While lots of the ideas that appeared there do need some hard work on the system, we have read all the ideas and some of them will be included in eyeOS 1.6.

This ideas include improvements in the themes system (allowing the customization for the four borders in the windows or allowing themes to auto-run applications in the user’s desktop when activated or deactivated, for example).

Note that this kind of topics should be now posted in the new Development Community, specially in the Blueprints pages for registering projects and ideas around eyeOS, which will make much easier to find developers for each idea and get it implemented in the next eyeOS versions.

Optimizing the downloaded data

A new effort on minimizing the amount of data which is sent to the user’s browser on the eyeOS login is being done. eyeOS 1.6 will come with optimized JS libraries and CSS files.

The goal will be to save a 30% of the sent data.

Summary and dates

The new eyeOS 1.6 release will come during April. You can expect the eyeOS 1.6 Beta on an online server to test it (specially the new mobile and sync platforms) by April 15th.

We have noticed the Developers Community it’s starting to rise. We would like every eyeOS developer or user interested in the eyeOS development to join the project’s Mailing Lists to make everything easier to coordinate.

The new ideas have been also added to the eyeOS Launchpad page for Blueprints (ideas and projects). You can follow their continued development from there.

Once again, thanks to the whole community which does help to improve eyeOS day after day.