Siilihai News

Siilihai 1.0.2 released

2011-11-26T06:26:00.000-08:00

Simple is beautiful. The progress dialog has been removed from client as it is generally not needed. Also there are a lot of code cleanups in client.

A lot of client logic has been moved to the libsiilihai. This makes it easy to write client applications with less code. It paves way for the mobile version which has been planned for long time.

Edit: This build is for Linux & Mac only. Windows build system broke down and will be fixed soon(tm).

Siilihai 1.0.1 released

2011-10-12T13:22:00.000-07:00

Most visible fixes in 1.0.1 are:
- Account Settings dialog now closes properly
- No unnecessary syncing - startup & shutdown is faster
- Fixed a crash which may occur when unsubscribing group using a debug build

The release should be in PPA soon and Windows build is available for download.
Mac version is still 1.0.0.

Mac version available

2011-10-10T01:24:00.000-07:00

Ilkka Laukkanen has built Siilihai 1.0.0 for Mac. It should work on OSX 10.5 and later. This version has not been thoroughly tested but should work.

Unzip the package and double click to start Siilihai.

1.0 Released

2011-10-05T11:21:00.000-07:00

Many older Internet users still prefer Usenet News to the currently dominant web forums. Newsgroups were quick to read using specialized graphical or text-based client applications. Siilihai is an Open Source web forum reader which brings the user experience of news readers to web forums. Due to lack of standard protocols, using forums in dedicated client requires a minimal parser to be written. Siilihai has a graphical editor for writing them quickly. Siilihai 1.0 has been released after long beta testing, and it is written using the Nokia Qt framework with portability in mind. It also has some features not found even in advanced news readers, such as synchronizing state between multiple computers.

Finally it's time for 1.0. Siilihai contains all the planned features and seems to be stable. It's not ready yet (and never will be) but suitable for daily use . Personally I'm reading 10 forums with it which would not be possible using a browser.

Known bugs
- Unchanged groups seem to be synced sometimes. This makes launching & quitting Siilihai slower than it should be.
- Number of messages to download (per thread) is not always synchronized correctly between readers.
- Color coding in Parser Maker sometimes gets confused. Clicking on "Download" fixes it.
- User account dialog does not close.

Planned improvements
- Handle HTTP 302 Redirects. Lack of this causes at least Korg Forums to fail.
- Support for changing password (also a forgotten one).
- E-mail notifications for parser authors if parser stops working.

Long term plans (Siilihai 2.0)
- TapaTalk support (is a protocol for web forum data access)
- OpenCollaboration support (another protocol for the same)
- Posting and replying
- Possibly RSS/Atom and other non-forum stuff as plugins

Demo video in Youtube

2011-10-04T06:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL_511MvMW4&hd=1

0.10.4 - aka 1.0rc1 released

2011-09-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

Siilihai 0.10.4 contains only small bugfixes here and there. If it works well, it'll be 1.0 next week. Last few releases have been working fine so regressions are not expected.

0.10.2 released

2011-09-24T04:44:00.001-07:00

Again a bug-fixing release. The client seems to work pretty well now. I've noticed some oddities in unread message counters but that'll be fixed in next release. Please report any issues you find.

0.10.1 released

2011-09-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

..which fixes several bugs introduced in 0.10.0.

0.10.0 released

2011-09-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

Siilihai 0.10.0 has been released. Main features:

- Got rid of SQLITE dependency as switched to simpler XML database. Starting and quitting is now much faster.
- Authentication dialogs work now much smarter when there are several forums needing authentication (for example when syncing for first time).
- Forums download their parsers ASAP, meaning shorter start time. I've got more speedups in mind but currently startup seems to be quite fast.
- Many clean-ups and bug fixes not visible to the user.

0.10.0 is still beta quality - there will be bugs and they will be fixed. Report any you found to e-mail address found below.

Next release coming soon

2011-09-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

I'm working on the next major release, 0.10.0. I have got rid of the SQLITE database and replaced it with XML files. This is much simpler and faster. Also there will be a lot of architecture changes which are not visible for user.

I had to delete last release from Launchpad, as the source package contained some extra build files not needed. Unfortunately Launchpad also deleted the binaries so currently the PPA is not working. I'll upload 0.10.0 as soon as it is stable enough. If you really, really need last 0.9.24, let me know and I'll see if i can upload it.

More info on 0.10.0 as soon as I finish it.

0.9.24 Released

2011-06-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

This version contains some architecture changes making Siilihai more stable and probably a little bit faster.

- Forums with update errors are now shown with red icon.
- A lot of bug fixes in updating, syncing and UI logic.
- Graphics are now included in the binary, no need for external image files.

There has also been some minor tuning on server side.

On the downside I've noticed that the sqlite database storage is slow especially when quitting Siilihai. In next release it will probably be replaced with plain XML file.

Ubuntu's Launchpad has been busy for last 24 hours so the update is not yet available. Windows version can be downloaded from the download page.

New release coming soon

2011-06-17T07:41:00.000-07:00

I've been working on the next release, 0.9.24 which will contain a lot of new fixes and improvements. Stay tuned.

Ps. I deleted old forum "MuroBBS" and fixed the working "MuroBBS (toimiva)". I renamed it to just MuroBBS. Looks like
server changed me to be the owner of the forum so i couldn't notify the original author about the change.

0.9.21 released

2011-05-08T13:56:00.001-07:00

Long time no news. There have been some minor update releases for Ubuntu lately as I've been fixing any remaining bugs. 0.9.21 is the first release which is built in release mode - i.e. without debug symbols and with compiler optimization.

Siilihai should now be faster (by compiler optimizations) and the windows installer shrank from 100 megs to 14 megs.

This will probably be the last release for Ubuntu Maverick as I'm upgrading to Natty soon.

0.9.17 released

2011-02-20T12:39:00.001-08:00

Just minor bugfixes. 0.9.16 has been working really well. If I'm happy with this, it'll be 1.0 time really soon!

0.9.16 Released

2011-02-11T15:01:00.001-08:00

Siilihai 0.9.16 has been released. This one brings huge boost in speed during startup and shutdown. Also some bugs related to syncing have been fixed.

The Ubuntu package is now for Maverick. Older Ubuntu versions won't be supported.

Have fun!

0.9.15 Released

2010-09-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

This release adds some functionality and makes updating long threads faster. From now on Siilihai remembers the last page number of thread and when updating continues from it. This should make updating really long threads much faster. The downside is that edited or deleted messages won't be detected. For this a "Force update of thread" option is added. If you think a thread is out of sync, you can use it and Siilihai updates the thread from the first page.
Because of this change, the message database schema has changed and your message database will be reset.

The message view modes have been implemented - HTML (the basic), Text (For oldschool Usenet fans) and HTML Source.

The architecture has been changed so that the same QNetworkAccessManager is used to display messages - in other words image loading on HTTP protected sites now work.

Quoted text is now shown with darker background. Earlier it was sometimes difficult to see which parts of message were quotes from previous posts.

Notes about the Windows version

2010-09-15T07:54:00.001-07:00

It has been reported that the UI on Windows version of Siilihai is slow. Also the installer size is almost 100 megs which is huge.

Current versions of Siilihai are built with debugging on. This increases the file size and makes larger binaries. As Windows lacks proper package management the required Qt libraries must be included with the installer. Qt's libs with debugging symbols are huge and explain the size and slowness of Windows build.

Releases without debugging on will be made after 1.0 is reached. It is probably be pretty soon, as the current version seems to work really well. I estimate that the non-debugging installer size will be around 20-30 megs.

0.9.14 Released

2010-09-10T11:15:00.000-07:00

This release has been worth waiting. After some major changes "under the hood" Siilihai is now much faster than before. There's also new "Next unread" button, but power users know that space bar does the same thing.

Please test and report any problems

What's coming

2010-08-16T00:08:00.000-07:00

No new release for a while so I'll brief you about what's going on:

I have noticed that starting Siilihai is slow especially when syncing a lot of new messages. I decided to optimize it a bit and ran it in valgrind. I noticed that 40% of time is done updating read message counts on UI which is totally waste of time. Time to optimize. I'm currently modifying the message-thread-group-subscription classes so that changes (such as unread count) are emitted in different signals and UI can react to only what is necessary. The work is still in progress but already shows faster startup times.

Startup can also be made faster by starting forum update instantly after forum's read status has been updated. This will be implemented later. I want all to be perfect before 1.0.

Windows and Slackware versions released

2010-08-08T09:24:00.000-07:00

A beta version of Siilihai for Windows has been released. You can find it behind "Get Siilihai" link.

By request from users the Windows version stores its configuration and database in its installation directory. This makes Siilihai a portable software, ie. you can copy the whole directory to a USB stick and run it on different PC's.

The Windows version is still beta and has been built with debug symbols. This makes it larger (installation package is 96 megs) and slower than a release version would be. Debugging will be turned off when the application is stable enough to be called not beta. There may still be bugs and crashers around so feel free to report them.

Also Lassi Kojo has created SlackBuild scripts for Slackware Linux.

Now go to download page and join the mailing list!

0.9.12 Really released

2010-08-06T10:22:00.000-07:00

Looks like Ubuntu's Launchpad rejected the last 0.9.12 but now i (hopefully) fixed the build and submitted 0.9.12-2 into repo.

This also should fix newly subscribed groups not syncing properly sometimes.

Windows version to be released soon. I already have built it and it is in closed testing right now. There have been a lot of new users registering and even adding new forum parsers. Big thanks for you!

0.9.12 Released

2010-08-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

This release brings minor tweaks:

Threads with more messages available are marked with + in unread message count.
Unread message count was not always displayed in forum list. This should be now fixed.
Optimization turned back on. Previous versions were unoptimized to aid debugging.

News

2010-07-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

Hello, I'm on my last vacation week so no much time to do any development lately.

It has been reported that the "humanity check" which is done when registering to Siilihai.com via web browser fails always. This message can be disregarded as the registration works anyway. This will be fixed soon.

0.9.11 is currently the latest version and seems to be working really well. There are some minor issues I'd like to fix before calling it 1.0 but it's getting really close now. Also I have managed to make a Windows build using Nokia Qt SDK on Wine. It will be released soon after I've verified it works on a real Windows PC.

0.9.10 Released

2010-07-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

The latest release of Siilihai is 0.9.10. Compared to earlier versions, it syncs the messages much faster. Naturally plenty of bugs have been fixed.

If this version works well enough, I'm tempted to call it 1.0.0. After that it's time to work on some new features again and hopefully I can get someone to make Windows and Mac builds also.

0.9.6 is out

2010-06-09T03:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday i pushed 0.9.6 to the repo. Changelog:

- Context menus. Right click on items to see what you can do to them.
- Properties dialogs for forums and threads. Set download limits individually etc.
- Faster syncing. When quitting only uploads the groups that have changed. I'll optimize startup syncing also later.

Known issues:
- I've seen a couple of crashes. They are under investigation.
- Sometimes sync fails with "Unknown Error" when starting Siilihai. I'm not sure what causes this as server seems to send the reply successfully. Qt's HTTP implementation reports this undescriptive error. Time to fire up Wireshark and see what's really happening.

Siilihai goes Lucid

2010-05-11T06:26:00.001-07:00

Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" was released a couple of weeks ago. It's time to upgrade - Siilihai Ubuntu packages will be for Lucid for now on. Latest version (0.9.2) has been uploaded to Lucid PPA.

After you upgrade, it's easiest to start Software Sources, remove the old Siilihai repository and add the new repository line ppa:ville-ranki/siilihai

Login woes

2010-05-04T05:16:00.000-07:00

I started implementing (or fixing) support for logging into forums. Unfortunately looks like that at least modern SMF forums use JavaScript and fixed sha1 salt to encrypt password before sending. It's good for security but causes a major problem for implementing the login in Siilihai.

The only solution i have is to open a WebKit browser and ask user to log in using it. After login is finished Siilihai would copy the cookies stored by browser and use them for further communication with the server. It just *might* work.

Let me know if you have better ideas.

PS: 0.9.2 seems to work pretty well and is available at the PPA. Launchpad has been under huge load due to new Ubuntu release and that has caused delay for the build to appear in PPA.

0.9.2 released, with http auth

2010-04-30T04:48:00.000-07:00

0.9.2 supports HTTP authentication, meaning forums on HTTP password protected sites. For example some intranets do this. Note that this is different from HTTP post authentication which is the common way of user authentication on forums. You can have both HTTP auth and HTTP post authentications on a single forum.

Also various minor fixes and enhancements as always are included.

If you wonder what happened to 0.9.1, it was also released but was just a minor release fixing
some bugs not worth of mentioning here.

Hauskaa Wappua!

0.9.0 Released with sync support!

2010-04-27T07:32:00.000-07:00

Siilihai 0.9.0 has been released to Ubuntu repository and github. This release fixes several bugs, probably adds some new ones, and enables synchronization of message read status.

What does syncing mean?

Syncing is only useful if you use Siilihai on multiple computers. Siilihai uploads list of messages which have read to server when you quit it. When you start Siilihai on another computer, it downloads the list and applies it to the current state. This way your readers stay in sync always.

Release notes:

- There have been a lot of invisible changes in this release. There may be some crasher bugs still left.

- Syncing can be enabled or disabled in the settings.

- Sometimes for example the order of synced messages may be wrong. Switch to another group and then back to update the list properly.

- Your message database will be reset after the upgrade.

- Groups and Messages that your client doesn't know about are displayed as "?"'s. Click "Reload" and they should change to the real names. This will be automated later.

Please test this and report any bugs you find!

0.8.2 released, most stable reader ever

2010-04-07T11:06:00.000-07:00

I just pushed 0.8.2 to git and Ubuntu ppa repositories. It now has all known crasher bugs fixed. If you find one, please report it to siilihai (a) siilihai.com or to the mailing list.

Next I'll probably begin work on syncing. I'd like to get it working asap as i need it myself to make Siilihai useful. I have 2 PC's home, 2 at work and i want the read status to be synced between all of them.

But for now, enjoy the most stable and functional reader ever released.

0.8.1 released

2010-03-29T09:21:00.001-07:00

Siilihai version 0.8.1 has been uploaded to repository. It fixes a number of crasher bugs and seems to be more or less usable. It's still far from perfect, but please give it a try. Let me know if you spot any bugs.

Known issues in 0.8.1:
- Unsubscribing from forum may cause crash
- Parser maker gets confused sometimes. Click on "Download" if you think it's not working properly.

These are being investigated and a new release will be made as soon as they have been fixed.

New release, Ubuntu PPA

2010-03-26T14:12:00.000-07:00

I have been tweaking the client for some time now and it's getting ready for the next major release 0.8.0. For user's perspective it now never "locks" the UI while updating so you can actually see how new messages are added one by one after you click update. Also adding and deleting forums should work much more smoother now. You can for example subscribe to new forums while the client is updating others.

I have updated (almost) all my PC's to Ubuntu Karmic so most development now happens on it. I may create packages for older releases if there is need but i suppose most users are using Karmic currently.

I have added a personal package archive (PPA) for Siilihai to Ubuntu Linux. Please add ppa:ville-ranki/siilihai to your System | Administration | Software Sources. On Karmic they've made adding PPA repos that easy! Thanks Mark!

Ubuntu's Launchpad also builds on both i386 and amd64 so from now on there will be packages for both architectures.

The 0.8.0 release is still a bit buggy - actually i forgot to push the latest version to github from my laptop so except some crashes. I'll promise to upload the fixed version as 0.8.1 next week. If you have the PPA repository added, it'll be automatically updated with your other packages.

Have fun!

What's happening

2010-01-28T04:46:00.001-08:00

There hasn't been any new releases in a while so i'd like to give a short
status update. The current client works reasonably well, but there
are some minor bugs i've found.

Currently i'm in process of rewriting libsiilihai to make better use of Qt's QObject and signal/slot functionality. Memory management will be updated so that there is only one instance per forum/group/thread/message existing so memory consumption should also go down. The most important thing is is cleaner architecture which will benefit client application writers.

So.. development is progressing but no new releases will be available until i finish and take the new libsiilihai into use in the siilihai client.

0.8.0 released

2009-12-14T09:59:00.001-08:00

This fixes the issue where some messages were not displayed as unread in thread view. Also added a feature to mark all messages in all forums read.

We have a mailing list

2009-12-13T14:24:00.000-08:00

Please subscribe at http://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/siilihai-users

Also remember the irc channel #siilihai on IRCnet (preferred) and freenode.

0.7.9 released

2009-11-29T10:21:00.001-08:00

Today's release paves way for sync support. It can already be enabled but it doesn't work yet properly. There are also some UI improvements such as displaying number of unread messages in thread subject. I've been actually using Siilihai for reading the forums and it works pretty well.

Enjoy!

Siilihai 0.7.5 released

2009-11-18T12:30:00.000-08:00

This version has some bugs found in previous version. It's available at deb package repository.

I have been fighting with Maemo's autobuilder and unfortunately i haven't been able to upload the reader successfully. It seems that new packages have about one day delay before they are really added to the repo, so updating Siilihai takes up to 2 days (library + reader). If i and users get too annoyed because of this i'll create a own package repository for Maemo also.

If you want to test the Maemo version, let me know and i'll upload the debs somewhere.

Siilihai 0.7 released for beta testing!

2009-11-11T11:46:00.001-08:00

It's out. Get it from http://www.siilihai.com/ and please report any issues. It still beta, so you are meant to find some problems. Currently i've only released x86 32-bit debs, as that is the only environment i have installed. 64-bit ones will be available later.

Also Maemo 5 version for Nokia N900 will be available soon (tm).

Almost there

2009-11-03T12:56:00.000-08:00

The client has most features i want now included. I'm currently testing, testing, testing and fixing bugs. I want it to be (almost) perfect before launching beta.

I haven' t had too much time to develop anywhere with Internet connection which makes testing with real forums difficult.

Parser Maker seems to work pretty well and makes adding new parsers easy. I'm proud of the color coding.

Screenshot & moving to beta soon

2009-10-07T11:17:00.000-07:00

Here's the first public screenshot of the Siilihai client. It's now in "usable" state. A lot of features are still missing and others do not work as they should.
The current client supports basic reading of forum messages. No authentication, replying, posting or parser editor yet. Message display works pretty well if the parser outputs good html.

If you are a developer, you can checkout libsiilihai and siilihai-client from github. For others, i'll build installable packages soon. Windows & Mac developers wanted to get builds for those platforms.

I'm on IRC #siilihai on both IRCnet and freenode. Join the channel if you are interested in testing.

News blog created

2009-10-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

Stay tuned for news.