Please help test: version 0.5 release candidate 1

[dooglus]

When I hover over the green checkmark in the bottom right corner, it tells me:

Code:

"Last received block was generated 54 second(s) ago".

If I go back to it 10 seconds later, it says the same, when I would expect it to say "67 seconds ago" or "1 minute ago".

I guess what the time is telling me is how much time elapsed between the block being generated and the block being received by my client, but that's not what the tooltip says.

Code:

"Last received block was generated 54 second(s) before it was received"

or

Code:

"Last received block was 54 second(s) old when it was received"

or even just

Code:

"Last received block was 54 second(s) old"

would be more accurate.  "Ago" means "before now".

[cm68jd]

It looks great! The only problem is the horrible startup screen. There should be an option to disable that.

[dunand]

It looks great! The only problem is the horrible startup screen. There should be an option to disable that.

It could be better but it's a hundred times better than having nothing for more than one minute.

[Caesium]

Code:

"Last received block was generated 54 second(s) ago".

This may be a minor point, but "second(s)" looks SO ugly. It's a real pet peeve of mine about sites and programs that can't be bothered to clean this up.

Is it really so hard to do "%d second%s", x, (x != 1 ? "s" : "")

[dooglus]

Is it really so hard to do "%d second%s", x, (x != 1 ? "s" : "")

That's not hard, but it's not correct either.  The client currently supports 7 different languages.

http://doc.qt.nokia.com/qq/qq19-plurals.html talks about a better way to support plural forms in QT apps.

[dooglus]

Is it really so hard to do "%d second%s", x, (x != 1 ? "s" : "")

That's not hard, but it's not correct either.  The client currently supports 7 different languages.

http://doc.qt.nokia.com/qq/qq19-plurals.html talks about a better way to support plural forms in QT apps.

It turns out that's exactly what the client is using.  The problem is that there's no English translation file.  That should be easy to provide.  I'll make a pull request.

[dooglus]

It turns out that's exactly what the client is using.  The problem is that there's no English translation file.  That should be easy to provide.  I'll make a pull request.

Here's an English translation that makes the strings appear correctly:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/606

[nibor]

Client must be near a version 1.0 if bugs like this are being fixed. 

[cm68jd]

It looks great! The only problem is the horrible startup screen. There should be an option to disable that.

It could be better but it's a hundred times better than having nothing for more than one minute.

Not really, because I start bitcoin on startup so now it needlessly takes over my screen for a minute when it could be started and minimizing itself to the system tray.

[dooglus]

I found a way to make the release candidate crash:

1. use bitcoind to send to an address that's not in the address book
2. in the client, right click the greyed-out address in the 'address' column of the transactions tab
3. 'edit label'
4. the address field is blank - would be nice if it was populated automatically.  type or copy/paste the address in, and type a new label name
5. click 'ok' and get a segmentation fault

[mndrix]

I finally managed to build from source on OS X 10.6.8.  I had to change the architecture from i386 to x86_64 otherwise I got linking errors against the libraries MacPorts built.

Anyway, the new client is very nice.  I especially liked the progress bar when downloading the blockchain.  That'll be great for first time users.  The client stopped downloading blocks a few times (while still thousands short of the latest block), but restarting the client got it going again.  I've seen the same behavior in the old client too.

My only complaint about the new interface is for receiving coins.  In the old interface, my receiving address was at the top of the client.  To get a new address, I just clicked Copy.  In the new interface, I have to switch to the Receive Coins tab, click New Address, click OK, click Copy to Clipboard.  That's 4 clicks versus 1 before.  I don't think it's any reason to delay the release, but it would be nice to have a more streamlined UI for a common operation like receiving coins at a brand new address.

Thank you to all involved with the new UI.  That even I could build it from source suggests we'll have more contributors going forward.