What's new in Windows Firewall Notifier 2.6 Alpha
Mar 13, 2023
- it now uses .NET 7.0, with the new LibraryImport (instead of DllImport) to handle P/Invoke calls.
- I also added CommunityToolkit's MVVM, which is really great and which I use in almost all my apps.
- refined layout and design, with a dark mode and accessibility mode (relies on whatever has been set on Windows: head to the options to have a look at what's available).
- fixes and performance improvements...
- improved bandwidth graph with the awesome LiveCharts 2
- ... and a lot of other stuff you'll find in the automated changelog below.
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 2.5 Beta (Jan 11, 2021)
- This is the first beta release of WFN 2.5, with huge changes:
- migrated to .NET 5.0 (the alpha went through .NET Core 3.1 first, but 5.0 was here so... why not)
- new layout and design.
- fixes and improvements.
- an important one (do not miss it!): Notifier will now run in the background and will stay open, if you enable notification. This fixes all CPU related issues, and multiple Notifier.exe process spawning as well. Please tell us if the "old mode" was best for you, I might reintroduce it later.
- libraries updates (note: the used libraries and dependencies will be added soon in the about page - the main change being Oxyplot for the bandwidth graph instead of a custom one).
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 2.0.6636.29380 Beta 3 (Mar 3, 2018)
- Finished splitting the local and roaming profiles.
- Made the Notifier titlebar look a bit more Windowsy.
- Fixed the temporary rule functionality that got broken in 2.0 Beta 2.
- Now using product name instead of company name for a better description in the Notifier.
- Corrected columns in Event log pane.
- Fixed an issue where log events were loaded multiple times.
- Fixed a crash triggered by multiple threads accessing icons at the same time.
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 2.0.6349.19228 Alpha (May 21, 2017)
- Quoted the path in the Task. Previously, the notifier wouldn't pop up if you installed WFN in a path containing spaces. This is now fixed!
- Fully handle Windows Apps rules. WFN now understands and handles firewall rules dealing with Windows Apps!
- Added a "skip program" button to the notifier, which allows you to skip all connections from a single program with just one click.
- Another bugfix that caused WFN to report that the log file was opened in another program when many notifier instances were trigger at the same time.
- Bugfix so that the console properly detected the build-in Administrator account as an admin.
- Several other small fixes and improvements.
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 2.0.6258.20588 Alpha 11 (Feb 20, 2017)
- New in this release:
- Set the proper user environment when impersonating. This fixes the configuration file not being saved under many circumstances.
- Added some other protocols. Although not yet handled properly, WFN will now recognize several protocols besides TCP and UDP.
- Log file mutex sharing. This fixes another case where writing to the log file would fail.
- Only check against outgoing rules. This prevents WFN falsely not popping up due to outgoing packets matching incoming rules.
- Fixed a race condition in icon extraction.
- Several other small fixes and improvements.
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 2.0.6210.32868 Alpha 10 (Jan 2, 2017)
- New in this release:
- Terminate the Notifier executable if the connection is blocked by a rule. Instead of hanging around eating memory
- Further improved the service detection. WFN will now not by default create a service rule if it isn't sure which service (if any) the rule should apply to
- Better handling of more advanced rules (port ranges, special addresses, ...) Still incomplete
- Updated IPDatabase for better determining geo locations of (IPv4) IP-addresses
- Fixed the spurious columns in the service selection window
- When you move your mouse over the notifier window, it now becomes fully opaque (no transparency). Also, the window is now slightly more transparent by default
- Finally fully fixed the jumpiness of the pop-up animation of the notification window
- Fixed a few resource leaks and race conditions (thanks Coverity!), so WFN should be even more stable now
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 2.0.6146.32477 Alpha 9 (Oct 31, 2016)
- New in this release:
- Services selection window now working. If multiple services are detected, you can now select to which services to apply the rule
- Small improvements to service detection code. It should now be even more reliable in detecting services
- Improved selected port filter on rules. Don't select local port checkbox or protocol checkbox by default when they don't make sense
- Enable long path support. WFN will now handle long paths properly
- Fixed a couple of cases where the notifier would not pop up. Fixed a couple of crashes, race conditions, and other bugs related to the notifier popping up
- Slightly reduced memory usage of WFN.exe
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 2.0.6090.30343 Alpha 8 (Sep 5, 2016)
- Added a retry for the logfile writing, with an error if it fails consistently. This should finally fix all of the logfile related crashes!
- Handle non-standard ephemeral port ranges properly.
- Cached firewall profile when matching rules. This significantly reduces the time it takes for the notifier to show up.
- Fixed glitchy pop-up animation of notifier. The start looks a lot smoother now.
- Fixes to the notifier checkboxes. Services now shows correctly in the notifier, and the state of all the checkboxes is propagated properly. Note: the window for multiple services is non-functional.
- Fixed a case where the notifier would not pop up anymore.
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 2.0.6067.30468 Alpha 7 (Aug 12, 2016)
- New in this release:
- Fixed the owner column. This got broken in V2.0 Alpha 5.
- Fixed crash on Windows 2008 due to missing registry key.
- Fixes to service detection code. It now works with any OS language.
- Fixed the log file sharing mode. This should vastly reduce error when trying to write to the logfile.
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 2.0.5899.33753 Alpha 5 (Feb 26, 2016)
- Fixed the access violation crash that caused WFN.exe to die when started.
- Fixed a race condition with the log file that caused Notifier.exe to crash when started multiple times.
- Fixed a crash if coordinates couldn't be retrieved on the Map view.
- And several smaller bugfixes.
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 2.0.5666.33881 Alpha 4 (Jul 17, 2015)
- New in this release:
- New settings management and logging logic. Settings are now specific to users as they were supposed to be (accent color customization, animations, etc.). Note: logs can be temporarily found in Wokhan.WindowsFirewallNotifier.Common.log. This will change in the next version. Please be aware that logs can grow faster in this release, either in the WFN folder and in the %LocalAppData%\Wokhan Solutions\WFN user's folder as well.
- The multiple notifier.exe spawning bug SHOULD be fixed or limited. I think I understood what was happening, so if I'm right it won't happen again. And if I'm wrong, well... it probably will...
- Under the hood:
- Switched from Forms to WPF, which means better maintainability, less code, cool visual effects (while I didn't add any, it's easy to do so), improved performance...
- Upgraded to .NET Framework 4.5 (instead of 4.0). If you don't have it, the app will crash when starting, so check this requirement before telling me it doesn't work.
- Many other changes, fixes, etc....
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 1.9.2.9 Beta (Nov 17, 2014)
- Changed the "single instance detection" code to something supposedly more reliable (and the code is cleaner and easier to understand that way, no more Mutex and cross-processes messages). It should help getting rid of the "omg there are thousands of notifier.exe processes trying to kill my computer" syndrome ;-)
- Added an option to minimize the console to the system tray (check the notifications options)
- The notification will now remember if you lastly displayed the detailed dialog or the simplified one. I think it's more user-friendly this way than using a dedicated option.
- Some other minor tweaks.
- Edit: I forgot to tell I added a way to copy the information from the notification as well. Just right-click on pretty anything to get a menu (only copying is possible as of now).
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 1.9.1.9 Beta (Jun 9, 2014)
- Fixed a bug for people using multiple screens (the animation was weird).
- Modified the service handling: many services were wrongly detected, creating bad rules (explaining why some people always get the same notification while creating the corresponding rules). When the service cannot be determined, a new window offers to select which one(s) should be considered when creating the rule.
- Fixed some bugs here and there.
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 1.9.0.0 (Jun 9, 2014)
- new layout and animations for the Notifier popup.
- modifications to allow using Windows's high contrast mode (and alike) for people suffering from eye disorders
New in Windows Firewall Notifier 1.8.0.0 (Jan 17, 2014)
- Bug fixes & Windows 8 compatibility update
- Changes:
- modified the task creation for the current user so that it works properly on Windows 8.
- modified the task creation for accentuated user accounts names.
- fixed rules name/description resolution.
- minor improvements.
- added a simple update button in the WFN console (only shown when an update is available).
- fixed the logical application path resolution (could lead to improper rules creation in some specific cases).