Today we announce the release of JIRA Client 2.1, and its free edition, JIRA Client Lite 2.1, a new version of our desktop front-ends for Atlassian JIRA.

For this release we have resolved over 150 issues, focusing completely on user interface improvements and bug fixes. We've steered away from adding any new features to make the ones we already have better and more enjoyable.

If you haven't checked out our beta version announcement, here are the brief highlights of what you can do with this release:

• attach files and screenshots when creating new issues;
• create and configure JIRA connections with our new friendly wizard;
• search for values in almost any list by typing a few letters;
• quickly find out important facts about the current issue, and take appropriate actions — all in one place, the message panel;
• avoid illegal values in issue fields — JIRA Client will warn you about them;
• enjoy a better user interface with many little touches, including a redesigned main menu.

Looking under the hood, we've made a lot of bug fixes, optimizations, and improvements:

• you can now reassign issues even when the "Assignee" field is removed from the issue editing screen;
• the dependencies of issue types and security levels from projects are now fully supported;
• conflicts involving issues moved to other projects can now be resolved;
• and many more.

What's New Since the Beta

Since the beta release last December we have fixed a few problems specific to that beta version, and a few general ones including these:

• JCO-690 Synchronization fails with https proxy when authentication required
• PLO-594 Simplify connection setup procedure for servers with self-signed SSL certificates
• JCO-377 Field values for a new bug are lost if the fields are missing on Create Issue screen in JIRA configuration
• JCO-679 JIRA date format is incorrectly determined on JIRA 4
• JCO-682 New connection initialization incorrectly reports failure when Remote API is off
• JCO-642 Issues created through HTML interface can get duplicated in JIRA Client in some cases
• JCO-674 Version Picker and Single Version Picker fields do not display versions when edited on a workflow action dialog

The user interface has also received some extra love:

• When you change Components, Fix Versions and other multi-valued fields using drag and drop, you can now choose what you want to do — simple drag overwrites all existing values with the new one, while alt-drag adds one more value to the list.
• When you paste an image file onto an issue, the Screenshot editor is opened, so that you can add your comments, emphasize or blur details, or crop the image — complete with full Undo/Redo support.

Switch to Java 6

Starting from this release, JIRA Client leverages the benefits of Java 6. Windows and Linux distributions include bundled Java 6. On Macs, Java 6 is supported on:

• Mac OS X Snow Leopard on any Intel-based Macs, and
• Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.2 and above) on 64-bit Intel-based Macs, if you have Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 1 or newer.

You can easily find out whether JIRA Client 2.1 will run on your Mac by launching the Java Preferences application and looking for "Java SE 6" on the "General" tab.

Upgrading to JIRA Client 2.1

To upgrade from a previous version:

1. Backup your workspace.
2. Install the new version over the old one and start JIRA Client.
3. Reload JIRA configuration using Connection | Reload JIRA Configuration.

This version may be used in a free 30-day trial mode or with any JIRA Client license key with active maintenance subscription.

We appreciate your feedback! Problems and feature requests can be posted directly to our issue tracker.

Pavel Zvyagin
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download JIRA Client
• Change log
• Forum
• Issue tracker