[ANNOUNCEMENT] HttpComponents HttpClient 4.1-alpha1 Released

[Oleg Kalnichevski]

HttpClient 4.1-alpha1 builds on the stable 4.0.1 release and adds 
several functionality improvements and new features.

* Simplified configuration of connection managers.

* Persistence of authentication data between request executions within 
the same execution context.

* Support for SPNEGO/Kerberos authentication scheme

* Support for transparent content encoding. Please note transparent 
content encoding is not enabled per default in order to avoid conflicts 
with already existing custom content encoding solutions.

* 5 to 10% performance increase due to elimination of unnecessary Log 
object lookups by short-lived components.

Please note all methods and classes added in this release and marked as
4.1 are API unstable and can change in the future 4.1 ALPHA releases.

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Download -
<http://hc.apache.org/downloads.cgi>

Release notes -
<http://www.apache.org/dist/httpcomponents/httpclient/RELEASE_NOTES.txt>

HttpComponents site -
<http://hc.apache.org/>

Please note HttpClient 4.x currently provides only limited support for
NTLM authentication. For details please refer to
<http://hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-client/ntlm.html>
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About Apache HttpClient

Although the java.net package provides basic functionality for accessing
resources via HTTP, it doesn't provide the full flexibility or
functionality needed by many applications. HttpClient seeks to fill this
void by providing an efficient, up-to-date, and feature-rich package
implementing the client side of the most recent HTTP standards and
recommendations.

Designed for extension while providing robust support for the base HTTP
protocol, HttpClient may be of interest to anyone building HTTP-aware
client applications such as web browsers, web service clients, or
systems that leverage or extend the HTTP protocol for distributed
communication.