ChangeLog.md

West Wind WebSurge Change Log

Version 3.03

November 19, 2025

• Update to .NET 10.0
  Updated to the latest version of .NET 10 for overall runtime performance and memory usage improvements. While performance doesn't see much change in either UI or load testing, there's considerably less memory usage which allows for tests to return larger result sets.

• Add Native Arm64 Support
  Updated the binaries to include a native Arm64 binary, so WebSurge can run without emulation on Arm64 SnapDragon devices now. Previously WebSurge ran in emulation mode, and Arm64 users should see significantly improved performance for launch, UI and actual testing.

• Many small UI and Icon Improvements
  We switched to a different newer FontAwesome icon set which results in a few additional, clearer icons being used in some contexts. Additionally several of the sub-toolbars have been reorganized for more logical operations. The Run Request button is now consistently available on the right hand corner as well as on the main toolbar.

• Allow for Request Cancellation
  You can now explicitly stop requests. Previously you had to let them run to timeout, or by re-running the current or a new request.

• Refactor of Request/Response Display
  Made the request and response view more visual with additional color cues for quick identification of success, fail and warning (auth) results.

• Improved Environment Variable Handling
  Environment variables can now be used directly in Request url, header and content as {{ %OPENAI_KEY% }} expansions. This is in addition to environment variable support in session variables (ie. app_openai_key=%OPENAI_KEY% embedded with {{ app_openai_key }}) which has the same effect. The new feature is much easier and intuitive for environment variables.

• Request Option to not follow Http Redirects
  A new AutoFollowRedirects configuration switch on the request can request to not follow redirects now. The default is to follow redirects as was the old behavior.

• Add Median Request Time to Load Test Results The median request time is now displayed on the Summary Result screen after a load test has completed running.

• Add System Information on About Screen
  The about screen now has a clickable Info icon that you can click to see complete version and system information. This information also copies to the clipboard for support purposes when posting bug or feature request reports.

• Fix: Multipart Request Parsing
  Fix bug where in some cases multi-part forms would lose their multi-part encoding and effectively fail to provide multi-part data. Fixed.

• Fix: Patch Content Support
  Fix bug that did not allow adding content to PATCH requests.

Version 3.0

February 21st, 2025

• Shared Online Sessions
  You can now share your session of requests online with other users, using your West Wind Store account to sign in. Once signed in you can create a shared session that is accessible online and can be shared with other users via its session id. This feature requires an active West Wind account.
  Licensing for this feature allows for one Shared Session for any West Wind Store registered user, 2 Shared Sessions for licensed WebSurge users, or subscriptions of Basic (10 sessions) and Professional (50 Sessions). See WebSurge Online Subscriptions.

• Improved Request Throughput
  This release features an updated HTTP request pipeline that improves request throughput significantly allowing for more requests to be sent in load test scenarios. In our internal tests for maxed out sessions we're seeing between 15-20% throughput improvements with lower memory load.

• Improved Request Cancellation
  You can now cancel interactive requests that have been started via a Cancel button when running in individual URL tests. Also navigating to a new request automatically cancels the active interactive request that may not have completed. This fixes the issue where previous long running requests may have bombed into the currently active request response which resulted in confusing display output at times. Now only a single request runs at all times for individual request runs.

• PDF, Image, Video and MP3 Response Previewers
  PDF Files, Images, Videos and MP3 files are now displayed in respective previewers by default - they show as formatted content. You now see PDFs displayed in the PDF viewer, audio and video showing in media players and images as inline images. You can still flip back to unformatted view to see the data: base64 representation (up to a certain size).

• Save as File from Raw Content View
  For HTTP responses, you can now save most file formats directly to file via the Save button. This is especially useful for binary files like image, music, video, pdf, excel, word and other files.

• Saved Request Viewer
  There's a new button to 'save' a request in a separate window that can be kept open. This allows you to capture request and/or response output for reference or potential copying parts of into other requests and for comparison. You can open as many new saved windows as you like.

• Display SiteBaseUrl under Request Url
  If you have a session level site base URL it's now displayed in the request editor underneath the URL so you can quickly see which site is selected when using site relative URLs.

• UI Options to Run Load Tests from the Command Line
  The Sessions menu now has a couple of new menu items to allow running requests in the CLI interface, or for copying the CLI command to the clipboard for easy pasting into your scripts or for manually running from the Terminal.

• Updated Main Window Menus, Toolbars and Buttons
  The user interface has been updated a bit with more convenient and efficient quick action buttons on the main menu and toolbars, with (one of) the Run and Cancel button in a consistent location, explicit Start Load Test link, and easier request navigation and management operations.

• Improve Slow Request Processing Display
  The progress display has been updated so that when running slow requests the number of cumulative seconds the request has been running are shown. The progress info only shows after requests take longer than 1 second to execute to avoid a bouncy UI.

• Environment Variables Support in Session Variables
  You can now use Environment Variable names in session variables in the format of SessionVar=%ENV_VAR% to externalize security sensitive settings outside of your .websurge file. You can declare session variables in the Session Configuration and embed them in your request data and headers as {{ SessionVar }}.

• Automatically pick up Windows Proxy Settings
  You can now specify "default" for the proxy value in the WebSurge main settings that will automatically use the Windows default configured proxy. Useful if you fire up Fiddler or other HTTP proxy so it can automatically be detected when those proxies are attached and detached.
  Note: Actual proxy changes while WebSurge is running still require a restart to see the system level changes reflected in the local environment. The new feature however automatically detects a proxy if attached when first creating a session without explicitly specifying a proxy Url.

• Allow Opening and Saving of Visual Studio\VsCode Http REST Files
  You can now open and import Visual Studio (or VS Code) .http files, or a folder of multiple .http files. Both individual requests and request lists in a single .http file are imported into the current project.
  Note: Not all WebSurge configuration features are supported by .http files so if you use WebSurge primarily, don't use .http files to store sessions and use .websurge instead. Use this new feature primarily to import and export.

• Add Median Request Time to Test Results View
  In addition to the average request time, you now also get the Median request time.

• Fix: Initial Request Entry on Startup
  When initially starting WebSurge with no session open, we now create a new empty request that you can immediately type into. Previously you had to explicitly add which caused some confusion as the initial request wasn't saved. (#113)

• Fix: Request Timeout says Ms but is in Seconds
  Fixed request timeout to properly use Milliseconds instead of seconds which resulted in VERY long timeouts if you specified milliseconds (#111)

• Fix: Swagger Import of Query String Values
  WebSurge now imports query string parameters and adds them to the imported URL using a format of ?parm1={type}&parm1={type2} (#109)

Version 2.3

February 12th, 2024

• Support for Session Variables
  You can now create a list of replaceable session variables that can be injected into content, using replacement syntax that is compatible with Visual Studio's .http files. Using @varname=value declarations (in Session Configuration) and then embedding with {{varname}} into Url, Headers and Content. This matches behavior of Visual Studio's .http file variables.

• Allow for different lookup and replacement keys for WebSurge-Request-InjectJsonToken
  When replacing values in JSON content you can now optionally specify a second key name separated by | using lookupkey|replacementkey syntax to allow replacing values that have different property keys.

• Paste CURL Commands into Request Editor
  You can now use the Paste button to paste commands from the CURL command line tool that are commonly shown in documentation, and paste them directly into the request editor. WebSurge picks up the URL, Verb, Headers and Content in the Paste operation.

• Improved Live Request Editing
  The request editor is now more selective about what can be edited in the Previewer for Url, Request Headers and Request Content. If doing a plain (non-executed) Preview of a request, everything is always editable. On executed HTTP Requests requests are editable only when requests do not contain variables or other embedded content that might affect the initial content. Ideally all editing should only

• Show Audio Files as Audio Player
  If you download MP3 files as audio they will now display as a music player that you can use to play the audio file in the Response Content area. This is similar to images which are displayed as images in the previewer.0

• Preview Zoom Sticky
  Previously you could zoom into the Preview View of the Http Request and Result pane, but the zoomed view would only be active for the current request. As soon as you re-ran the preview would resize to the original un-zoomed setting. This update keeps the zoom fixed for the duration of the application once the previewer has been activated.

• Improve Default Request Display in the Request List
  Requests in the Request List now show only the last segment of the URL as list item title rather than the full URL specified for the request. This often reduces the need to explicitly provide a display title for requests.

• Improve Emoji Viewer Initial Load Speed
  Change load behavior in Emjoi Viewer to load a small subset of icons initially, then activate the rest after brief delay. Effect is near instant render as opposed to the 2-3 seconds delay previously.

• Add Match Count to Emoji Viewer
  Emoji viewer now shows the number of Emojis that are displayed on the statusbar of the form.

• Allow Cancellation of Results Processing
  Previously you can't cancel a test, but the results of the test are still processed and it was not possible to abort the results processing for a shorter test. You can now separately cancel the result processing with a new toolbar button.

• Fix: Bearer token replacement only occurs if Authorization: Bearer is present
  Fixed behavior of authorization override for bearer token to only replace Authorization headers when a Authorization Bearer header is already present in the request headers. This is to ensure that other authentication like Basic for auth requests are still honored and not replaced by the bearer token replacement.

• Fix OpenApi/Swagger Import Dialog
  Fix issue with the import dialog that would not pre-validate JSON spec content correctly, incorrectly flagging it as invalid. Fixed.

Version 2.2

January 24th, 2023

• Add support for HTTP 2.0
  You can now run requests in HTTP/2 mode. Http Mode is specified as part of the session and is displayed in the Request Preview as HTTP/2.0. HTTP 2.0 falls back to 1.1 if the server doesn't support it and that is reflected in the response from the server which then shows HTTP/1.1.
  note: the HTTP/2 header display uses the HTTP/1.1 syntax as 2.0 syntax is much less readable/editable.

• Edit Url and HttpVerb in Preview Display
  You can now edit the URL in the Request Previewer along with the headers and request body. You can still navigate the URL as well, but it now uses Ctrl-Click.

• Specify Item to open from CommandLine
  You can now specify which item to open by using the following syntax: WebSurge startupFilename:startupItem. startupItem can be a URL, name or request ID from Session file.

• Open Request in new Window
  You can now open any request in a new WebSurge instance to allow opening and running multiple requests simultaneously. Very useful for reference.

• Copy and Paste Requests
  You can now copy a request using the copy button and paste it into a new request. Request data is copied to the clipboard in plain text, HTTP header syntax, and can also be used for easily pasting into blog posts documentation.

• New Recent SiteBaseUrl List to allow easy switching between sites
  The Session configuration now includes a dropdown for the SiteBaseUrl that keeps track of the last 5 unique base Urls used for the session. This makes it easy to switch between different sites for testing (ie. local dev, staging, live site etc.) without having to duplicate session files. The list is stored with the .websurge Session file so the list can also be checked in as part of a project and shared across developers in dev environments.

• Print Request on Menu and Button Bar in Previewer
  You can now more easily print to a printer or save the current request to PDF. This operation takes the Request output from the previewer and sends it to the Print output. Print Request is now available on the Button Bar at the top, in the Context Menu for request content and body, and in the main body of the document. Ctrl-p now also works more reliably both in the editor and Previewer.

• Add Basic Authentication Username and Password Dialog
  You can now specify Basic Authentication for individual requests via the Context Menu and the Basic Authentication option. You can enter and update and clear basic authentication Authorization headers via this dialog that handles encoding of the userid:password combination.

• Bearer Token Context Menu Options
  The request menu now has a number of Bearer token defaults that display including Empty Bearer Token (adds an Authorization: Bearer with not token header), as well as several WebSurge specific settings that can capture a token and either save it and manually assign it or set the global Authorization override in the settings automatically.

• Add Request Name to the Tab Bar
  If the request has a Name associated with it, that name is now displayed on the Tab bar above the request. This makes it easier to see what's active even when a request has already run and only shows the URL.

• Preview Request Buttons stay Visible on Scrolling
  The Request buttons in the HTML Previewer (Run/Print/Copy/Paste) now are pinned to the top of the preview window and stay visible even if you scroll down the request display. This makes it more consistent to re-run the current request.

• Preview collapses large Request Content by Default
  If the request content sent to the server is large, it's initially collapsed so the response is favored. Also: Collapsing the Request Headers now collapses only the actual headers but leaves the Url visible.

• Update to .NET 7.0
  The application now runs under .NET 7.0 which brings additional performance improvements for load testing and general UI operation.

• Improved UI Responsiveness for the Previewer and Live Request Editor
  There have been many improvements to integration with the new features of the WebView component used for the previewer, request capture and documentation window. The new async related improvements improve stability and responsiveness of any of the HTML based interfaces.

• Support for OpenAPI 3.0 Imports
  There's now support for importing OpenAPI 3.0 service descriptions as WebSurge Sessions. There are also improved error messages when errors occur.

• Fix: First time error page on Request Preview
  Fix issue where the request viewer briefly showed a Page Unavailable page when first displaying request information.

• Fix: Multipart Form Variables Encoding
  Fix issue with CRLF breaks in the form variable output - in some cases only LF was generated which breaks some servers that parse by explicitly looking for CRLF line breaks.

• Fix: Addin OnBeforeRequestSent() Timing
  Fix issue where headers were sent before this addin was fired resulting in headers not getting applied. Fixed #101

Version 2.1

March 31st, 2022

• Interactive Http Forms Editor
  Added an interactive forms editor for UrlEncoded and multi-part forms. The editor allows for interactively editing form variables and values, and for multipart forms allows for loading file content and encoding it. This complements the existing edit view, and urlencoded interactive editing in the previewer.

• Support for Custom Users
  Added support for users that can be assigned to a session. Users define session specific information that can vary between users - for example separate login credentials or variables to log in with for different users, or different values to fill into various controls. User can add global Cookies and Authorization headers, or URL specific headers and form variables.

• Separate Http Context for each executing Session
  When running load tests, each Thread or Session of requests, gets it's own dedicated Http call context that is reused for all requests on that thread. This allows separate threads to have separate context so each context can maintain its own authorization, cookie and other Http state.

• Better handling of Binary Data in Multi-Part forms
  Multipart forms now display binary content as b64_<long base64 string> in the Request editor. This format is recognized by the request runner and it appropriately expands the binary data to send the request. You can create the binary data interactively in the Http Forms Editor (ctrl-t in the Request Content Entry textbox).

• Request Grouping
  You can now optionally assign requests to a group and drag and drop between groups. This makes it a little easier to organize requests in long request lists that don't need a fixed sequence.

• Clickable File Link in StatusBar
  The open file in the editor is now a clickable link in the right corner of the statusbar, so you can easily grab the path and jump to the file location. The tooltip also now displays the folder information.

• When importing Multi-Part forms via Request Capture Parse Form Vars
  Form variables are now parsed when importing multi-part forms via the Request Capture Form. Previously data was captured as a single b64_ binary blob. You can now view and edit captured the data in the Forms editor.
  Note: Binary data still can't be captured with the Request Capture tool due to a bug in the WebView control that doesn't return this data.

Version 2.0.1

February 2nd, 2022 • Initial Release Post • Release Video

• Complete UI Overhaul
  Rebuilt user interface of the application entirely using modern, responsive and more flexible UI functionality. The new Request Previewer provides more request and response information and allows for two-way editing of request data in addition to the official request editor. There are dark and light application themes and the entire UI is now responsive and reflects changes made immediately. The new look is more modern, but also offers much better interactivity for a much improved workflow.

• Updated to run on .NET 6.0
  Updated application to run on .NET 6.0 to take advantage of new performance features. Chief functionality updates include a completely re-written HTTP request engine for more efficient request processing which much lighter processor usage. This translates into higher request load and less request overhead both in terms of memory use and load on the system while testing.

• Improved Performance and lower CPU Usage
  The application is overall faster, taking advantage of many of the performance enhancements in the .NET platform, as well as using the new interface which is much more fluent and responsive to user input. A key update is the request processing engine which has been completely re-written for improved Http request throughput and much lower CPU usage while running load tests.

• More Interactivity for Http Request Views
  The live Request Preview is fully editable now. You can edit both the request Preview as well as the Http Result Preview which also contains the result Http headers and content. Both are now editable and can update the Http Request. This is in addition to the traditional form based request editor view. The interactive editing makes it much quicker and easier to tweak Http request headers and content interactively as you run requests without constant context switches.

• New Test Results View
  The Test Results View is now browser based and uses in browser technology for faster rendering. The request per second graph is now embedded into the result view. We've also added 99th, 95th, 1st and 5th percentiles to the Results View and cleaned up the display to show data at a glance and to be more visually appealing.

• Completely overhauled User Management System
  Each executing session thread is now mapped to a User. Users contain a unique HTTP instance with its own connection state for things like cookies, caching and and authorization state. In addition, you can now capture and inject JSON tokens and Http Form variables (capture in one request and inject into another) via Http Headers and override global settings like Cookies and Authorization for a given user context.

• New User Management UI Form
  You can now interactively edit user information with the new User Management Form. This interface lets you easily create users add Urls to override behavior and more.

• Updated Addin Interfaces
  The .NET based Addin engine has been rewritten and simplified with a simple .NET Assembly based deployment model. This model is meant for extending WebSurge functionality for test processing with intercept points for OnBeforeRequestSent(), OnAfterRequestSent() and OnLoadTestStarted() and OnLoadTestCompleted(). These simple interfaces allow modification of requests while tests or individual requests are running. Using these simple intercept methods allow you to intercept each request in a test and dynamically modify requests to inject dynamic data into the Http request data. It also allows for custom logging and interfacing tests with external tools that can receive live test data as tests run.

• You can now Print and Save the Results Page
  The results page now sports the regular browser Print dialog that allows you to print or save the results page, with full fidelity to the Printer or PDF File. Accessible via context menu on the results page or via Results -> Print.

• Updated CLI Test UI
  We're now using much richer display output to show progress information during tests and to display the result view. The new view uses tables and colors to make results easier to view at a glance. For raw data result capture --json option is also available.

• Image and Html Previews
  Image results now display the image, rather than the binary data. HTML result displays HTML as unformatted (default) view and the rendered HTML in formatted view.

• Import Requests from OpenAPI/Swagger
  You can now import a session of request from OpenAPI/Swagger using either a Url, raw Json, or a local file.

• Import and Export Postman Collections
  You can now use the Session->Import and Export->Import from Postman to import Postman collections into WebSurge and Session->Import and Export->Export to Postman to export WebSurge sessions into Postman Collections.

• Import Fiddler Traces
  You can now use Fiddler to capture requests and export them via Save Sessions->Save As->Text in Fiddler to export selected Http traces and then import them into WebSurge via Session->Import and Export->Export from Fiddler.