The major new features/fixes for the 8-February-2009 release are:

SOCKS4, SOCKS5 Proxy Support for POP3, SMTP, IMAP, FTP, MHT, HTTP, and Socket.
The following properties have been added to each component for SOCKS4/SOCKS5 support: SocksHostname, SocksPort, SocksUsername, SocksPassword, and SocksVersion (4 or 5). Setting these properties to non-empty values is all that is required to use SOCKS4 or SOCKS5 proxies.

Chilkat Socket: Added a SocksProxy class to make it easy to create SOCKS4/5 proxy servers.  (Documentation and examples are forthcoming.)

Chilkat FTP2

1. Restarting uploads is improved (didn’t work with all FTP servers, now it does).
2. otp-md4 is now supported.  (in addition to otp-md5 and otp-sha1)

Chilkat HTTP

1. HTTP proxies with SSL/TLS now working correctly.
2. New LoginDomain property for NTLM/Negotiate/Kerberos Authentication.

Chilkat Zip

1. VerboseLogging property to help diagnose issues with AppendFiles.
2. QuickAppend method fixed.

Chilkat Crypt2

1. New hash algorithms: MD4, RIPEMD128, RIPEMD160, RIPEMD256, RIPEMD320
2. New hash methods:  HashBeginBytes, HashBeginString, HashMoreBytes, HashMoreString, HashFinal, HashFinalENC
3. NTLM object/class for NTLM authentication.  Documentation and examples are forthcoming…

Chilkat Email

1. ComputeGlobalKey method added to email object.
2. Performance and memory usage improvements.

Chilkat IMAP

1. Performance and memory usage improvements.

Chilkat SSH/SFTP

1. “Exceeded window” error fixed.
2. Added the following new methods to Ssh:  OpenDirectTcpIpChannel, GetReceivedTextS, GetReceivedDataN, PeekReceivedText.  (Reference documentation to be updated soon.)
3. Added SshTunnel object/class to allow for running SSH tunnels in a background thread.

New versions of most Chilkat components were released on 3-November-2008. This blog post lists the major changes and new features. For those components with no apparent changes, minor new versions are released to take advantage of any underlying improvements in the internal (Chilkat) libs that form the base of all Chilkat products.

New Products, Features, and Fixes

• Chilkat SSH / SFTP official released.
• Chilkat Zip problems with the ZIP64 extensions were fixed. There are no limitations on zip file size, the number of files that may be included within a zip, or the size of individual files within a zip.
• Long filepaths are now supported in all Chilkat components.
• (.NET) The Dispose methods will ensure that any open TCP/IP (or SSL) socket connections are closed. This applies to all components that communicate over sockets: IMAP, Email (POP3/SMTP), FTP2, HTTP, SSH, etc.
• SSH Tunneling (port forwarding) was added to the IMAP and Email components. It is possible to achieve SSH tunneling for IMAP, SMTP, and POP3 by adding a few additional lines of code. The remainder of your application code remains the same.
• Unlock codes for unpaid, overdue invoice payments are invalidated in the new version. Those customers with overdue invoice payments have already been notified.

Chilkat v8.6.0.0 is being released today. Here’s a list of the major new features/fixes. Documentation and new examples will appear soon after the new version is available at http://www.chilkatsoft.com/downloads.asp

Zip:

• ZIP64 extensions are now supported. There is effectively no limitation on the size of individual files that can be zipped or unzipped. There is also no limitation for the total zip size. There is no longer a limitation on how many files may be included within a .zip. (The previous limitation was 65536 because the zip file format uses a 2-byte unsigned int for the file count, but this limitation is removed with the ZIP64 file format.)
• Unicode extensions are now supported.  It is possible to create zip archives with mixtures of filenames in any language.  (Previously, it was possible to create zip archives containing filenames in any language, but you couldn’t mix languages, except for us-ascii + any other language.)
• Performance should be improved.
• Optimizations for “storing” already-compressed files will also improve performance. As an example, if a .zip is present in a directory tree that is zipped, you’ll have a .zip within a .zip. Re-compressing a .zip is generally a waste of CPU cycles because no additional compression typically occurs. Files like this are simply “stored” within the .zip without re-compressing.

Ftp2:

• Automatically handles One-Time Password (OTP), also known as S/KEY authentication.

RSA Private Keys:

• Able to read/write the encrypted PKCS8 key file format.

SSL:

• Bug fixed if an SSL server issues a renegotiate. This underlying fix applies to all components that support SSL/TLS: POP3, SMTP, IMAP, FTP, HTTP, Socket, etc.

Socket:

• New functions available for converting existing connections to/from SSL/TLS.

DSA:

• The DSA component is fully functional and released. Documentation and examples will be posted soon.

Diffie-Hellman:

• The DH component is fully functional and released. Documentation and examples will be posted soon.

SSH Keys:

• The long-awaited SSH component will make its first appearance with the release of the supporting SshKey class/object that will provide the ability to read/write Putty and OpenSSH format keys. RSA and DSA keys are supported, as well as encrypted/non-encrypted, and public/private keys. The SshKey class is freeware because it is a supporting class. The upcoming “Chilkat SSH” component will not be freeware.