Qwired Suite Newsblog

Update on Qwired

2010-10-22T13:26:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone!

Sorry for letting you wait - but here is that much wanted update on what my plans for Qwired are.

Private Stuff

The past few months a lot of things have changed for me. I started my own company in August and I'm spending most of my time to start everything up. Other than that I had to manage a few things within the family and my dog died.

With all this happening I did not have any spare time to work on Qwired as you might have noticed. Unfortunately Qwired was my "pet project" to learn Qt - so a lot of internals are far from perfect - and it would require a lot of time to turn Qwired into a perfect, absolutely stable product.

Original Wired/Wired 2.0

After my first efforts to make a better protocol for Qwired, Zanka Software - the creator of the original Wired - decided to switch to a new protocol (Wired 2.0), thus leaving Qwired and other 3rd party software locked out. Basically for Qwired this would mean switching the whole protocol stack - and that's a lot of work.

A lot of people asked me if Qwired will ever support the Wired 2.0 protocol. The answer is: no.

So, is there a future for Qwired?

I want to be honest with you: It does not make much sense to "fix" the current Qwired source code in an attempt to make it a stable software. Even if I spent a lot of time on that, the protocol would have to be switched at some point, and that would mean a major split in the community.

"What now?" you might ask. Well, I will mark the project as inactive/deprecated and leave it on Google Code as it is right now. I learned a lot by writing it and it was a lot of fun, but like I said, it does not make sense to fix it.

But don't cry now. I have some good news, too!

Now that I have my own company, I can decide what I do with the majority of my time. I thought a lot about Qwired and the general BBS (Hotline/Carracho/KDX) approach - but I think that will always be a niche for a small number of communities and users.

To be successful with the BBS approach, it has to solve more general problems and be easier to use. It should be extendable with plugins. It should run on all large platforms (including iOS). It should be secure and have a simple protocol. It should solve a concrete problem for its users. But most importantly - it should give you a tingly feeling and be fun to use.

Stay tuned for Qwired's successor. We are departing from Wired here.

~ Basti

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T03:43:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone. First off, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

As you might have noticed I didn't have much time to work on Qwired during the past weeks. This was due to a lot of important project work at my real job. Now that things seem to calm down again, I'm using the free time to work a little bit on Qwired again. I decided that it's probably best spend the available time into re-factoring and getting things to work properly, before I consider to implement new features.

A few people have asked me about support of the Wired 2.0 protocol, and if/when it will be supported. The only thing I can say right now is that Zanka Software did not release any specification for it yet - so that makes implementing the new protocol rather hard.

How do you like the new server GUI?

2009-10-03T05:49:00.001-07:00

Right now I'm finishing the GUI for Qwired Server. Please post your thoughts and ideas in the comments below. :)

New Logo & Icons

2009-09-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

I spend a few hours in Illustrator and created a set of new icons for Qwired.
Hope you like them. If you can do better, feel free to improve it!

Making big progress

2009-06-19T00:43:00.000-07:00

I spend some large amount of work on the issue list and resolved some long existing bugs and feature requests. Qwired now feels much more stable on all platforms.
The only thing that is left to be done are file transfers. This is what I'll be working on next, so that we finally have a good replacement for KDX.

In the meantime be sure to download a latest nightly build from the nightly build server and report issues and feature requests on the Google Code project page.

Swedish translation now available

2009-06-10T00:39:00.000-07:00

Mi provided a Swedish translation for Qwired.
Qwired is now available in Dutch, English, German, French, Italian, Portugese, Spanish, Swedish and Japanese. Thanks a lot for your work!
It will be available in the next nightly builds.

Still kickin'

2009-05-06T04:17:00.000-07:00

You are probably wondering what's happening right now.
Well, right now I'm in the progress of re-writing the file transfer code for the client (already did that for the server), in order to provide more reliable file transfers in the upcoming versions of Qwired.

The re-writing is 85% complete so far and it seems that it will only take one or two evenings of lonely coding to get them into a production state. The best way to see the progress is to download a recent nightly build and test it. :)

Qwired Server close to beta

2009-03-31T10:11:00.001-07:00

Good news! I had the chance to spend some time (possibly too much) on the Qwired Server code base. 98% of the functionality is implemented now and I'll soon enable distribution via the nightly builds. Stay tuned and prepare for some neat new features and a lot more stability than the original Wired Server. :-)

Dutch localization available

2009-03-28T03:23:00.001-07:00

A Dutch localization for Qwired is now available (included in the latest nightly builds).
Thanks go to x4ç∑ for providing it!

Nightly builds now working

2009-03-22T06:00:00.001-07:00

After some initial problems with the nightly build scripts (environment variables can be a PITA ;), new nightlies should now be available every night between 23:00 and 00:00 GMT. You can find the nightlies here.

Nightly builds

2009-03-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

I finally managed to set up a nightly build script on my spare Mac Mini and on one of my linux boxes. This script automatically compiles a new snapshot of Qwired every night (if there were modifications in the SVN trunk) and upload it to the web server.

Right now I have set it up for Mac OS X and Linux (32 bit) builds, but Windows will follow as soon as I have time to set up the cross-compiling.

You find the link to the nightly builds in the navigation bar.

We are making progress

2009-03-14T04:54:00.000-07:00

As you can see, I replaced the old-gen userlist engine with the shiny new one, so the new user row backgrounds are also available for the main chat and all private chats.

There are a lot of small enhancements in the recent SVN commits that most users won't notice (such as code cleanups, removing dead code, adding internal documentation, etc.).

Oh, by the way, I'm setting up some scripts on my machines that will provide nightly builds of the last SVN sources, allowing for a much faster test cycle. I'll add a link to the download site as soon as possible.

New messenger window

2009-03-11T01:36:00.000-07:00

As you can see, I spent some time writing a new messaging window for Qwired. I feel that the one implemented in the original Wired client is rather painful to use. This one feels more like a instant messenger, while still allowing the comfort of independent, private messages between users.

Oh, did you notice the new automatically generated row background for the user list and the nice antialiased user icons? :-)

Snapshots available

2009-03-08T01:12:00.000-08:00

Just for your information... I uploaded some fresh and shiny (but slightly broken) snapshots of the most recent SVN revision (130) to the Google Code downloads page.

Let the feedback and ideas coming (please put them all in the issue tracker) and enjoy! :)

~Basti

Back on track...

2009-03-07T03:23:00.000-08:00

We are back on track - sort of. There is a lot of things going on right now and Travis is helping out with the development. Expect regular snapshots for all platforms again and a better look & feel of the application.

Also, as you may know, Qwired Server is in work and mostly done. The only thing that is missing is file transfers.

Internally we are switching to Qt 4.5 - this will allow for some better user experience on the client- and some better performance on the server-side. All fresh snapshots on Google Code are compiled against Qt 4.5.

Alrighty...

Stay tuned! :)