[VanillaWallet v0.5] The friendly Bitcoin wallet.

[Nyhm]

Inspired by your comments, I've released VanillaWallet v0.2 (Alpha)! See the (new) changelog at vanillawallet.com.

The code is no longer obfuscated. I took proguard out of my build process entirely. It was my mistake to include it in the first place, since it made the binary seem shady. That was not my intent.

This is not yet open source, but I recognize that this is an important aspect for the future.

Thanks to those who have tried it out and provided feedback.

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[Nyhm]

You asked for more visibility to build trust, which I entirely understand. I've included a bit about myself in the instructions, including links to find me online. I've added a contact form to the site.

How's this for visibility: Who is Nyhm? See me at Kickstarter! The Kickstarter project is for Island Forge (not VanillaWallet or Bitcoin, but I am accepting bitcoin at islandforge.com). Here's the bitcointalk.org topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91399.0

(This is also why I don't have a lot of time right now, as much as I love Bitcoin.)

[nhodges]

I don't know if this is possible but if I could point to a bitcoin folder and it could just piggy back off the blockchain there that would be cool but i guess that would have to be a BitcoinJ feature really.

Have you heard of NTFS hardlinks?

AKA "Symlinks on Windows" for those who are unfamiliar with the term. What's the difference between a symlink and a shortcut? This has been asked/answered on SuperUser: http://superuser.com/questions/253935/what-is-the-difference-between-symbolic-link-and-shortcut

[Nyhm]

VanillaWallet v0.3 (Alpha) Released! vanillawallet.com

Includes platform builds (Win .exe, Mac .dmg). Can folks confirm these work on various versions of Win/Mac? I have limited resources/time to test on multiple platforms. My thanks!

Also includes some (experimental) command-line options. Run with --help for a list (I'm interested what you think of --sweep).

Other miscellaneous internal cleanup/improvements. I still consider this alpha, and would like more feedback from the Bitcoin-savvy community before widening the audience. No, not (yet) open source. Please bear with me. Your input is greatly appreciated.

[jim618]

Hi Nyhm,

I just tried out v0.3 on my Macbook (running OSX 10.6.8 )
It worked fine.

A few things I noticed:

In the dock the icon gets 'expanded':



In your icon set file you just have a single icon but if you pop in some higher resolution ones Macs will use those where they can.


Also, it would be slightly easily to copy the VanillaWallet.app onto the user's harddisk if you put a shortcut to the Applications directory in the DMG. The user can then just drag it over to the Applications shortcut. (If you are using Maven to build VanillaWallet you can copy the code to do this straight out of the MultiBit pom.xml).


It is probably on your TODO list but for Mac apps it is really easy to register your app to respond to bitcoin URIs.  It is an entry in your Info.plist. If you have a look in the MultiBit APP Info.plist you will see the entries to add. That would make VanillaWallet respond to browser bitcoin URI clicks which would be pretty neat for the user.  (You will also need something to deal with the case of a VanillaWallet already being open and handing over the bitcoinURI when the OS creates another instance - have a look at the org.multibit.ApplicationManager class for how I did it. Using a socket for both identifying if there is another instance running and passing over the data if there is works pretty well).

[Nyhm]

Thanks so much for your input, Jim. I figured the single icon in the .icns wouldn't be sufficient (will fix). Regarding your other Mac integration suggestions, I'll have to do some research later, because I'm very Mac-un-savvy (the last Apple computer I used was an Apple ][ C+). I'm using JarBundler to build the Mac bundle (and some other command-line tools to build the disk image).

I'm a bit frustrated by the UI differences I see in your screenshot. It's rather minor (button dimensions), but I've specified Metal L&F to avoid platform differences. Still, I've seen much worse when running without Metal L&F on the Mac JVM. I don't have a Mac on hand to test against, so thanks for taking the time to provide your input and screenshot.

[Nyhm]

Thanks for everyone's prior comments. I've just update VanillaWallet to v0.4. Mostly to use BitcoinJ v0.6 (with a few other technical and cosmetic improvements).

I'm calling this Beta, because there are no major outstanding public-facing features planned (except maybe wallet encryption, which I plan to implement myself).

Thank you for your interest and input.

[Nyhm]

VanillaWallet v0.5 (Beta) released with many improvements (still needs some work before v1.0).

• The user interface is streamlined and improved
• Overall friendlier for new users
• Transaction history needs improvement
• Win (exe) and Mac (dmg) may return (just jar for now)

Thanks for any feedback.

[coqui33]

It would be nice if it had the ability to export its privkey and import a new privkey (overlaying the existing one). This is because I would like to run this client from a thumb-drive for one-time-only transactions. (Such as sweeping an existing privkey/address full of many tiny inputs into a new address.)

[Nyhm]

There are some command-line options:

java -jar VanillaWallet.jar --help
  [--help] Show this help
  [--version] Show version info
  [--log] Turn on logging (into vanilla.log file)
  [--which_wallet] Find wallet and show path
  [--export_address] Load wallet and show address
  [--export_privatekey] Show the private key
  [--import_privatekey <privkeystring>] Create new wallet with key
  [--export_transactions] Show all tx currently in the wallet
  [--resync] Resync the block chain with the wallet (runs gui)
  [--fee] Set tx fee for session (runs gui)

Some of these are mostly for debugging, and aren't well documented (or tested) yet, but the private key options may be what you're looking for.

Also have a look at BitcoinSweep to sweep values from private keys to a deposit address. This also needs more testing, so please report back if you decide to try it.

In either of these cases, when consolidating lots of tiny transactions, you should manually set a high enough tx fee for nodes/miners to accept your transaction. Neither VanillaWallet or BitcoinSweep are yet very smart about applying larger-than-standard tx fees. I've found this out myself - the tx will get to the point of sending, but nothing will happen (or it will get sent and show up on blockchain.info, but no miner will include it for a long time).

[coqui33]

Great!
Thank you very much.

One more thing, since you have been so responsive. Any chance that you might someday compile apk versions of vanilla and sweep for android?

[added later] When I import a privkey, VanillaWallet says that it imported the privkey, displays the privkey's address, and tells me to launch the GUI in order to use the new wallet. But it never actually writes the new wallet to disc. So when I launch the GUI, the button "Create Wallet" is displayed. Then, of course, if I press "Create Wallet" it creates a brand new wallet with a newly generated key-pair.