Over, Open and Out
Damn, I’ve been fighting with myself quite some time now but in the end a decision had to be made and finally here it is:
With the beginning of 2015 I have stopped all my commercial products like Winslew, Nymphicus or Chapper. This means you can’t buy new licenses anymore but the apps keep working.
I came from the Open Source community and tried to get at least enough money out of Windows tools to cover the costs (which it did some time for the direct costs but not for the extended like the German taxes) but failed.
But this does not mean the end of the tools – maybe it’s even a new start for some of them as I will Open Source all of them (give me some time, need to remove the licensing code and strip out confidential api keys first. They’ll be on my Open Source GitHub. I am looking forward for Nymphicus as there are some real fans out there who might want to extend it and even more for Menere which didn’t start to fly but as soon as you will see the source you notice quite some progress between last release and current state.
To summarise the reasons: never got the business to fly completely (I was very close to on the peak of App.net), not having enough time (full-time employed) and since the end of 2014 not having a Windows PC anymore.
Really looking forward – if you want to contribute to one or more of the projects let me know and I speed up the process of cleaning the code for GitHub. And to be clear again: I will not stop woking on the projects – my pace just has become – well, you know the frequency of my last updates.
Nymphicus for Windows 2.2 out now
Well, this update has been overdue quite some time now but in the end I am back and finally here it is: Nymphicus for Windows 2.2!
This version is mainly a bugfix release with some nice new small additions as well as changes according to the current reality of the Twitter ecosystem. So what’s new?
New features
- Option to start Nymphicus minimized (in fact a user wish some time ago)
- Thumbnails of embedded images are now shown for Twitter
- Images are now uploaded to Twitter image service
- Compose: When an image is attached to a Tweet a small preview is shown on the upload button
- Compose: An added image to a tweet can now be removed again by clicking on the upload button with the right mouse button
- Thumbnail size of App.net images now bigger and the same as in Twitter
Functional changes
- Removed TweetMarker (commercial license needed) – I am aware this used to be a big plus in the past 🙁
- Removed all automatic scrolling code (which was the main source of temporarily freezing application)
- Updated about window to show the actually used libraries
- Added additionial optional debug output on Twitter timeline retrieval
- Removed TwitPic upload option
- Temporarily removed url unshortening for external services except Twitters own one
- Switched to .NET 4.5 (faster)
Bugfixes
- Different compose buttons are now only shown if Twitter/Facebook/Apn account exists
- Possible empty Views on parsing problems of Tweets – now they are simply skipped
- When following a new user the user info is updated
- The boarder around items did not fit into window on Windows 8
- Now the counter of characters left is right again as it is aware of the Twitter url shortening rules now
- Quite some possible crashes / empty timeline problems
And as it didn’t take to long till this update came – I had quite a hard discussion with WordPress so in fact it is already out for more than two weeks without this news entry 🙂
Chapper 1.5.2 has been released
I know the last update was some days ago but as my Windows 8.1 system is so annoying I start it only seldom and than it goes crazy more than 50% of the time. So I use my Mac instead…
Anyway – Chapper got a new update:
- When Snarl is (re)started Chapper now (re)registers on the fly
- Display of receiver in Patter names removed as wrong anyway with multiple members
- Fix: Patter messages are now sent with the right class name for the Snarl notification
(this is especially important if you want to handle some of the Patter rooms differently – I for example do forward some of the Snarl notification to Prowl to get push notification on Patter messages :))
Prowl is included in Snarl – in case you missed it so far…
Chapper 1.4 has been released – User Streaming included!
Just uploaded Chapper 1.4 to the download server and activated the auto update for it.
Chapper 1.4 now supports user streaming – this means timeline, mentions and and even messages are now fetched immediately when written and not with a gap of quite some seconds.
This means in fact that you can use now messages (PM, Patter) as a realtime chat as you see the answers immediately. You need to see this live to get how great it is (or maybe you’ve seen it previously with some Twitter clients).
I planned to add another feature to Chapper 1.4 but have been overtaken by a really bad bug of mine: since 2 days or so Chapper 1.3 started to refetch the same entries again and again and again which of course made it unusable. Becasue of this Chapper 1.4 is also a MAJOR BUGFIX so please update your installation as soon as possible.
Chapper 1.5 will bring the other big feature I was currently working on (the search API) later on.
Sorry for the inconvenience and have fun with the streaming.
The bird is flying to a new 2.1 world…
Long time ago in a far … no, wait, not that long ago but quite some months now Nymphicus didn’t get any real update.
But today my little bird is flying again – and even higher than anytime before: Nymphicus for Windows 2.1 has been released!
This update has been so overdue that the changelog is so long that I only will point out the most important points (or, to be honest, all of them I do remember :)).
Let’s start with my favorite social network – the App.net part of Nymphicus is for sure the one with the most changes. This is mainly because of Chapper (and Spinnaker) having been my playground in testing new festures in a “small” environment – but now it’s payday and all the stuff is coming back to Nymphicus.
But the first (and in my opinion) most important feature is one Chapper does not have (till now, stay tuned :))
- Nymphicus now supports user streaming for App.net
This means you retrieve new posts and messages immediately now. When you have seen it in action you don’t wanna live with the old up to 90 seconds delay anymore 🙂
The second one is from Chapper and Spinnaker
- Nymphicus now is able to add and parse MarkDown links
Also the third one is something already seen with Chapper
- Image uploading using the File-API is now included
(and also images are shown inline and when hovering with the mouse over them they are shown in full)
Now again a feature only Nymphicus has
- Repost (and favorite) a post using another account than the retrieving one (this one might stay within Nymphicus only – Chapper is a single account client as you know…)
And a long overdue one
- Account colors now do work with App.net account
so you see which account has been the retrieving one immediately
And a final small one for App.net
- the new App.net logo is used instead of the Alpha logo
That’s it for App.net. But even as I don’t will push the Twitter part anymore (you know why, don’t you?) I of course stabilize stuff in there so here is a quite important fix
- Retrieving saved search results works again
A very short one for Google Reader
- Google Reader has been removed completely
(I’ll think about adding some RSS later on – but not before someone places a wish for that :))
And some general stuff
- The quick filters (the button which used to be in the upper right corner) has been completely rewritten and is now a dropdown menu
- … and App.net has been added to the quick filters
- … and those App.net quick filters now feature a “show only post with images” filter – I think I will extend this part later on 🙂
Finally much (oh yeah, really much) code refactoring, smaller design changes and many bugfixes. I think in sum the changes are quite bigger than those from 1.4 to 2.0 by the lines of new code 🙂
Oh, one more think – as I have posted during the development phase:
Nymphicus for Windows is now 4.99 € and Chapper is now 2.99 €. I should have written this in the middle of the post as I learned recently in the “Sandwich method” – but who cares 🙂
Chapper 1.3.1 has been released
Chapper 1.3.1 is mainly a bugfix release which brings the following changes:
- Links are now send clickable again even when not added as MarkDown-links
- Interacations tab is now before the private messages (so dropdowns are grouped at the end)
- Unified stream is now the default setting on new installations
- All private messages channels are now listed on the dropdown regardless if the API only returns zero items for them
- The user info tab now has a “send private message button”
- Fix: Private messages tab was hidden if Patter was disabled in settings
I will now start with the development of Chapper 1.4 – plans are adding user streams and the change of the setup from the current setup one to clickonce (like e. g. Meneré or Spinnaker feature already today).
Chapper 1.2 has been released
I am very happy to finally announce Chapper 1.2.
This is the biggest update Chapper has seen so far – so get it here for download now.
There are so many changes – where to start? Well, the most visual change is the possibility to theme Chapper to your needs. During the beta phase some of the users (and I) already created quite some really great themes – and if you want to create your own feel free and have a look at the documentation.
And it’s not “only” about themes in general – you now can change the font sizes to your needs.
Next big thing: Links can now be inserted using the MarkDown syntax (like [Link title](http://www.example.com)) which will be rendered by most client as linked text. The same is true for images. Oh, and if you have an Url in your clipboard while pressing the add link button the title of the page will be retrieved automatically.
Want to get rid of a user? Chapper now has a context menu on the users to mute and/or block users. (Sorry @timpritlove in the screenshot – I wouldn’t block you for sure :))
Having posted something wrong or in the wrong context? Well, you now have a button to delete your post or message (yes, even in Patter rooms @nhk :)).
Patter rooms became quite confusing as every single one needed its own tab. This is gone and they are now shown in a dropdown instead.
Let me summarize all the other new and changed stuff for you:
- Tabs are now represented by icons instead of text (less space needed)
- Completely rewritten code about the compose box (getting post target etc.)
- Direct message button is now hidden if user will not receive your private messages due to privacy settings
- Replying to a post with multiple mentions now also mentions those users
- When closing a tab Chapper now jumps to the previously selected tab instead of the last one
- Images are now also shown if they are within a repost
- Verified domain is now shown in user info
- On personal messages the receiver is displayed if you are the sender
- Replying to a post with multiple lines now not shows multiple lines as overlay in compose box anymore
- Displaying and sending error messages on posting fail added (optional)
- Finally fixed stream markers in my and unfied stream as well as in mentions (they broke in 1.0 final and I did not notice till now…)
Chapper 1.0 out now!
Finally Chapper got all the features I planned to be in 1.0 – so here it is!
The most important change (since the last beta) is the option to upload photos directly in Chapper.
Also the sometimes very massive RAM usage has now been killed – even when I ran Chapper many, many hours it always stayed under 100 MBytes (which is still much but WPF always needs quite some RAM).
Also included is the fix for the posting time display which didn’t respect local timezones in the betas.
Finally I updated all internal code to the current API of App.net (meaning Chapper now has all migrations set to “current” and the change by App.net by the end of March will be no problem for Chapper (Nymphicus to follow).
Notes for users of the betas
- Your beta just stopped working – this not because I want to be bad but because of the migrations now set to current (see above). So please update to 1.0 now
- When starting Chapper 1.0 for the first time you need to reauthorize as Chapper now needs persmission to access the File API
Nymphicus for Windows 2.0 out now (Twitter API 1.1)
I just pushed the button and released Nymphicus for Windows 2.0. Due to Twitter forcing all of us to move to the API 1.1 this release needed to be pushed out by now.
I have to say I never would have called this a final version if the pressure wouldn’t be so hard…
So what’s new compared to 1.4.x:
- App.net support
- Facebook integration fixed
- Twitter API 1.1 support
- New design
- Many bugfixes
- Performance tweaks
The downside is due to the hurry in the end some things are not completed by now and will be added / fixed on next 2.x releases:
- Twitter streaming is disabled (polling used for now)
- TweetMarker is disabled (I am aware this is a blocker and will reenable it as soon as possible)
- Image upload is broken
Also on the downside are the limitations out of the Twitter API 1.1 Display Requirements – most important:
- No more mixed Views with Twitter and other services (only Twitter and only anything else but Twitter now)
- The “Send to”-menu is gone from tweets
See the complete changelog for all the many, many details.
And now I do pray everything works for you…
Please report problems to @lighun either on App.net or Twitter.
!!! Note: if Nymphicus crashes on first start after upgrade please reset all your settings as described in the FAQ !!!
About Twitter API 1.1
Beginning on March, 5th – in three days – Twitter starts to push users and clients from Twitter API 1.0 to 1.1. As you might have read already this means there will be quite some restrictions for clients which “only show the timeline” (and are not social media analytics and such f***ing stuff).
What are the most important parts?
First of all it’s about development at all. The new API is quite similar to the old – but as always there are the small changes which give headache. @Failabrion ported all used API calls in Nymphicus for Mac already and the new version is in review currently in the Mac AppStore (so we assume it won’t be available on tuesday but it’ll come).
With the Windows version developed by me it’s a little bit more difficult as I use an external library called “Twitterizer” – and this one is now discontinued over the massive needed work on the 1.1 transition. I already migrated it myself in most of the parts but some of them still don’t work (getting lists and saved searches for example). I hope to get most if not all working again till tuesday but no gurantee. Technically this will mean that Nymphicus for Windows 1.x is deprecated starting March, 5th and to continue using Twitter you have to upgrade to 2.0 (which I will push out regardless if feature complete – I am just in a hurry now).
The second part are the Display Requirements – there are easy ones (like the timestamp now shall be clickable to open the tweet in browser) but some are quite hard. So connecting to other networks is forbidden (no more send to Pocket, Instapaper, …). For the Windows version the worst part is that mixing Twitter timelines with other services like Facebook or App.net is a no go. So in the Windows version I now have two View types – one for Twitter and one for the rest of the world. Goodbye one of the greatest features of Nymphicus for Windows and thank you Twitter!
Besides those rules there is the third one – and this one is even worse than the others: Twitter just doesn’t like us developers to use their API to build great clients. Even if we do with old clients still having the permission (like Nymphicus does) there is the 100.000 token limit – and as the testing version is free I have no idea how many are left (I assume quite many – I just don’t know!). This means even for the paying users of Nymphicus I can’t guarentee that Nymphicus will work with their account. And why is this the worst part? Well – because I am just pissed completely by Twitter and if I wouldn’t have promissed otherwise I would simply drop Twitter at all from Nymphicus for Windows 2.0! But I promissed and so this evening and maybe monday evening I hope to get Nymphicus for Windows 2.0 with API 1.1 inside released with all (allowed) features working. This will be quite some hard work as Twitterizer is not my own code – and changing someone else’s code who did do it in a quite advanced way (my own App.net libraray is much more simple) is just hard. I hope anyway to find the last open issues till monday…
Personal note: I completely stopped using Twitter myself in any other way than informing about Nymphicus updates and sending App.net invites (by the way – I have many of them – just ask :)) and am very, very happy with App.net now. They do love us developers, the APIs are straight forward and the overall feeling is just great. And with the free accounts being available since monday I do not miss many of the followings I have had on Twitter.
No more mixed Views
- Send to menu before API 1.1
- Send to menu gone due to API 1.1
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