Updated HttpClient 4.4-beta1 release notes

git-svn-id: https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpcomponents/httpclient/trunk@1626740 13f79535-47bb-0310-9956-ffa450edef68

RELEASE_NOTES.txt

@@ -1,4 +1,35 @@
-Changes since 4.4 ALPHA1
+Release 4.4 BETA1
+-------------------
+
+This is the first BETA release of HttpClient 4.4. Notable features and enhancements included
+in 4.4 series are:
+
+* Enhanced redesigned and rewritten default SSL hostname verifier with improved RFC 2818
+compliance
+
+* Default SSL hostname verifier and default cookie policy now validate certificate identity 
+and cookie domain of origin against the public suffix list maintained by Mozilla.org
+<https://publicsuffix.org/list>
+
+* Native windows Negotiate/NTLM via JNA: when running on Windows OS HttpClient configured to use
+native NTLM or SPNEGO authentication schemes can make use of platform specific functionality
+via JNA and current user system credentials
+
+* More efficient stale connection checking: indiscriminate connection checking which results
+in approximately 20 to 50 ms overhead per request has been deprecated in favor of conditional
+connection state validation (persistent connections are to be re-validated only if a specified
+period inactivity has elapsed)
+
+* Authentication cache thread-safety: authentication caches used by HttpClient is now thread-safe
+and can be shared by multiple threads in order to re-use authentication state for subsequent
+requests
+
+This release also includes all fixes from the stable 4.3.x release branch.
+
+Please note that as of 4.4 HttpClient requires Java 1.6 or newer.
+
+
+Changelog:
 -------------------
 
 * [HTTPCLIENT-1547] HttpClient OSGi bundle doesn't import the package "javax.naming".