0.9.15 Released

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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.