🚀 v0.9.7 Beta — The "Thumbnail" Update

Note: This release introduces a persistent thumbnail pipeline for instant cover art, real-time ROM status tracking, and an About section in Settings. Upgrading from <= 0.9.3 still requires a fresh install.

Highlights

• Thumbnail Pipeline — Persistent isolate-based thumbnail generator produces 400px JPEG covers with background migration on startup and proactive preloading during library scans. Game cards display thumbnails instantly with no network round-trip.
• ROM Status Providers — Real-time ROM installation tracking via filesystem watchers and download-completion listeners. No more manual polling — cards update the moment a download finishes or a ROM is deleted.
• Smart Cover Loading — Thumbnail-first display with magic-byte validation, JPEG re-encoding for corrupt cache entries, and scroll-suppressed loading to reduce jank during fast scrolling.
• About Section — New Settings section showing app version, GitHub/Issues links, and an Easter Egg tagline.

Change Log

Added:

• Thumbnail pipeline — persistent isolate-based thumbnail generator (400px JPEG) with background migration and proactive cover preloading during library scans.
• ROM status providers — real-time ROM installation tracking via filesystem watchers and download-completion listeners.
• Installed files provider — central isolate-scanned index of all installed ROM files across every system.
• Cover preload — new Settings entry to batch-generate thumbnails for all games.
• About section — app version, GitHub/Issues links, and Easter Egg tagline in Settings.
• Zip extraction limit — increased from 2 GB to 8 GB.

Improved:

• Smart cover loading — thumbnail-first display with magic-byte validation, JPEG re-encoding for corrupt entries, and scroll-suppressed loading.
• Controller button styling — pill-shaped shoulder/trigger buttons, per-layout face button colors (Xbox green/red/blue/yellow, PlayStation palette), and shape painters for Nintendo +/− buttons.
• Quick menu hints — face button hints now show layout-correct color palettes.
• Game card performance — replaced AnimatedScale/AnimatedContainer with static Transform.scale/Container; SelectionAwareItem uses ValueNotifier to rebuild only affected cards.
• Search overlay — extracted SearchableScreenMixin and moved SearchOverlay to widgets/ for cross-screen reuse.
• FocusSyncManager moved to core/input/ for use by Library and Scan screens.
• Library screen — now uses SearchableScreenMixin, SelectionAwareItem, FocusSyncManager, and scroll suppression.
• Image cache rate limiter — cancellable pending requests, increased concurrent fetch limit (50), and host-level rate-limit detection.
• Database schema v4 — adds thumb_hash and has_thumbnail columns; thumbnail flags preserved across refreshes.
• OverlayGuardedAction — generic reusable guarded action replaces per-screen private action classes.

Bug Fixes:

• Zip bomb protection — extracted archive size capped at 8 GB; extraction aborts with clear error if limit exceeded.
• Web provider path traversal — directory listing parser rejects absolute URLs and ../ href values.
• Overlay priority teardown — OverlayFocusScope, DialogFocusScope, and SearchFocusScope use addPostFrameCallback with try/catch, preventing "disposed notifier" crashes on fast screen transitions.
• Android backup disabled — android:allowBackup="false" prevents unintended data restore.
• Grid navigation guard — _GridNavigateAction now checks overlayPriorityProvider in isEnabled.
• Focus restoration — mainFocusRequestProvider now set centrally in ConsoleScreenMixin.initState.

Technical Internal:

• New dependencies: image: ^4.3.0, crypto: ^3.0.6, package_info_plus, url_launcher, url_launcher_linux.
• GameItem.hasThumbnail field added; copyWith extended accordingly.
• adjustColumnCount() helper extracted to ConsoleScreenMixin.
• Deleted 4 obsolete files: animated_background.dart, radial_glow.dart, folder_analysis_view.dart, search_overlay.dart (game_list copy).