Beaker 1.0, Beta 5

Paul Frazee / Jun 19, 2020

New Beaker release! With 1.0 Beta 5, we added “Minimizing” to tabs, expanded on the folder-sync tools, improved query() output, and more.

Minimizing tabs

As we discussed in our roadmap, a very common need with peer-to-peer computing is to run Web apps in the background. This makes it convenient to run indexers and network-services.

Rather than create a complex “background scripts” model, we decided to make it possible to minimize tabs to a background tray. A minimized tab will continue to run as before and will be restored after quitting and restarting Beaker.

Minimized tabs are very useful for your long-running processes, but they’re also nice for “putting away” tabs that you want to read later.

Folder sync, part deux

In 1.0 Beta 4, we introduced a tool to sync Hyperdrives with folders on your device. We got some quick feedback and decided to make some tweaks. Folder sync now uses a modal with tools to explore the changes, a “restore back to folder” button, and a .gitignore style ruleset for choosing which files to skip.

You should find folder sync much easier to work with now! Read more about it here.

Better query() output

The hyperdrive query() function is a powerful tool for reading data in the Hyper network. It’s like a SELECT for files.

With this release, we added an origin object to the results which gives detailed information about a file’s owning drive. This is especially useful when dealing with mounts.

For example, imagine a folder structure which looks like this:

hyper://foo/
hyper://foo/mount-folder -> hyper://bar/
hyper://foo/mount-folder/index.html

The file hyper://foo/mount-folder/index.html is originally from hyper://bar/index.html. The query results will now help you discover this:

await beaker.hyperdrive.query({
  drive: 'hyper://foo/',
  path: '/mount-folder/*'
})

Result:

[{
  drive: 'hyper://foo/',
  path: '/mount-folder/index.html',
  url: 'hyper://foo/mount-folder/index.html',
  origin: {
    drive: 'hyper://bar/',
    path: '/index.html',
    url: 'hyper://bar/index.html',
  },
  // ...
}]

Learn more in the query() docs.

Changelog

• Added tab minimization
• Updated folder-sync tools
• Less page-flicker when switching tabs
• Less flickering in the “favicon” and loading spinners of tabs
• A “tab close” animation
• hyper:// responses now stream, improving page-load speed
• Added “Add to dictionary” to context menu on spellchecked words (thanks Matthew Auld!) #1745
• Added settings to set the default search engine (thanks Matthew Auld!) #1722
• Beaker now indicates that shutdown is on-going #1712
• The Webterm font no longer has the purple text-effect as it was hurting accessibility #1570
• Added the ability to cmd/ctrl+click or middle-click on menubar items to open them in a new tab #1626
• Added more detail to query() output #1699
• Added configuration for whether new tabs take focus or not #1634
• The Network Stats page now gives better descriptions of the drives #1628
• The tab-close button is now hidden if not the active taab #1720
• Relative imports now work in custom webterm commands #1680
• The window.beaker object will not be set if the APIs are not supported in the protocol (such as file:///) #1713
• Saving from file editor no longer overwrites the file ctime #1659
• Writing to file using writeFile no longer erases metadata. #1714