A quick overview of the new Connections window: This window is hopefully fairly self-explanatory. To create a new connection click the "new" button. To change an existing connection click the checkbox to the left of the item and click the "properties" button. To connect to a server click the server "link". To disconnect click the link again. Also, in the server properties form there's a new checkbox called "Connect on Startup". If you check that box, you will automatically connect to that server when you start FoopChat. And remember, you can connect to multiple servers at the same time.

I hope everyone enjoys the new functionality. And if you find any issues, please bring them up in the forum. Oh, and Happy Winter Folk Season.

List of changes for 1.60b...

• Major changes for allowing simultaneous connections to multiple servers.
• The client will now attempt to automatically reconnect when server connections are lost.
• The vocabulary builder "upload/download" functionality has been changed to "merge". All words on the remote list will be added to the local list and vice versa, and the resulting list will be automatically uploaded to the server.
• The client will no longer crash if a chat room is open and the client is disconnected from the server.
• Fixed the black background on mng images that were converted from gif.
• Fixed vocabulary builder issue where the definition hint wouldn't appear unless you focused the chat area.
• When changing a room to private, it will now be removed from the public room list.
• Moved to a single servers.cfg file rather than one per connection, and now only allow one instance of the app. Before, you could run multiple instances of the app if you wanted to connect to multiple servers. Now that you can connect to multiple servers within a single instance, it's cleaner to only allow one app instance.
• Fixed a bug in the packet sending code where an endless loop occured if a packet was sent after the socket was disconnected.
• Fixed issue where the server tracker wasn't being properly updated when exiting the server.
• Fixed problem launching FireFox for links when it’s the default browser
• Various other fixes and minor enhancements.

There will also be some minor fixes, such as the black background issue when using png/mng images; some display problems when switching a room from public to private; and a problem introduced with 1.5 where the vocabulary builder definitions wouldn't pop up properly if the chat view field wasn't focused.

I decided on doing the multi-server functionality because it's the next step in an exciting feature I've been wanting to add since releasing the first version of FoopChat: Peer-to-peer file sharing. I want to be able expand the file browser to allow browsing your friends' files, not just the files on the server. While it's not the huge peer-to-peer networks you're used to with Kazaa and similar networks, it is still peer-to-peer sharing - you just have more control over who you're connected to and who you're sharing files with. So, you can look forward to that in the near future, after this next version.

• In Quick Notes, made the “send to” field a combo box containing your friend list. You can still type in whatever target you want, but the friend list makes entering the target of the note easier in most instances.
• Resized autosave checkbox so it no longer overdraws another control.
• If autosave is enabled, the chat room text is saved when the chat window is closed.
• Queued file transfers were broken – client received a message stating the transfer was queued and this was treated as an error and the transfer failed. This is fixed.