Alhena 5.5.8
Changes
- Defer layout when restoring state for big performance boost
- Honor Unicode variation selectors for displaying symbols vs emoji
- Add "Split Top" and "Split Left" to Split View options
- A closed Split View panel can be re-opened in tab with Restore Tab
- Restore missing art
- Tab focus traversal could break if clicking on scrollable pf text
- Update vert.x and netty to latest versions
- Reduce connection and ssl timeout values
- Print cache size and pruned page URLs to stdout when saving app state
Nutshell highlights
Restore Tabs At Launch is significantly faster than previous versions. The feature should probably be called Restore State At Launch because it also remembers window sizes and positions. (To only save window state but not content, use Settings->Commands to set pagecache=0).
The other big feature is proper detection of the emoji/symbol variation selector. This is especially important for expected appearance and alignment in games and art expecting a specific variation. A few examples being a chess piece or playing card suite.
Testing the new features on different JVMs leads me to conclude there's a small but noticeable performance boost between Java 21 and Java 25. If you're using your own JDK to run Alhena, you might want to consider upgrading. The pre-built installs for the major platforms all use a custom embedded JVM based on Java 25.
Until next time, enjoy!
Posted in: s/Alhena
🛸 bluesman [mod]
May 10 · 12 days ago · 👍 gritty, ps
🍀 gritty · May 10 at 13:24:
This split view is pretty neat!
🍀 gritty · May 10 at 13:33:
unrelated question - how do I get Alhena to connect to a localhost server? I tried gemini://localhost and just localhost but I get an SSL handshake error.
🛸 bluesman [OP/mod] · May 10 at 13:50:
@gritty I know I've tested my server by creating a domain name and adding it to /etc/hosts (mapping the domain to either 127.0.0.1 or the IP of the machine). Maybe I did that because I had the same issue but I can't recall at the moment.
I'll dig deeper after my Mother's Day obligations are fulfilled (later today).
🍀 gritty · May 10 at 20:15:
no problem, no rush. I was developing on my laptop and had a local server instance running.
🛸 bluesman [OP/mod] · May 10 at 22:50:
@gritty Hmm. When I try gemini://localhost/ on Ubuntu with my Gemini server running on the same machine, I get a warning about "server certificate from the wrong domain" (the server uses a test cert generated for the /etc/hosts domain mentioned previously). If I agree to continue, everything works as expected.
Do you get a stack trace or a more detailed message? You may have to run Alhena from the command line to see stdout messages. Feel free to email me any additional info.
🍀 gritty · May 11 at 16:28:
sounds good, I'll try and get to this when I get home