What's New in Version 0.93.1?
After an impromptu poll on the amphetadesk-discuss
mailing list, it came to light that people wanted quicker releases,
not large "gee whiz, look at all this stuff!" attempts. As such,
AmphetaDesk v0.93.1 was released on October 31st, 2002, bringing
with it mostly bugfixes, security enhancements and minor feature
updates here and there. Read on, dear news hound:
- Improved Compatibility: AmphetaDesk once
again works on Windows 95 and Macintosh OS 7-9. I'd like to apologize
for all the Mac users that had to wait patiently, and all the
Windows 95 users that will caught unaware (as was I). Don't
hesitate to let me know if things aren't quite right.
- Optional Radio Userland Listening: AmphetaDesk
can now optionally parse the "coffee mug" icon that is often
shown on Radio Userland
produced websites. This feature is turned off by default (as it
could conflict with an existing installation of Radio Userland on your
machine). More information is available on AmphetaDesk's "My Settings"
page once you install the v0.93.1 update.
- New Minor Features: Nothing super
exciting, but noteworthy additions include:
- A channel's email address is now saved in myChannels.opml.
- A frontend to modifying the HTTP referer has been added.
- Authenticated proxies are now supported.
- Channel descriptive data is now updated after each parse.
- Channels and settings are now saved before being shut down.
- Encoded content from mod_content is now displayed.
- HTTP headers are now output correctly for proxy servers.
- PNG images are now displayed correctly.
- Templates have been tweaked for more speed.
- Security Updates: I consider these three
tiny lines to be reason alone for your updating:
- The internal server is now closed, by default, to outside connections.
- URLs are now checked for funny business.
- We no longer divulge the full path on a 404.
- Bug Fixes: For more geekish explanations
and fixes, check out the CHANGELOG:
- AmphetaDesk.log may not have been saved in the correct directory.
- Defaulting to 'index.html' on a directory request works correctly on Win32.
- Importing feeds no longer clobbers existing attributes not in the source.
- Matching filenames randomize to four places now, not two.
- Old, unsubscribed channel data is now removed at startup.
- OS X: Cleaned up some extraneous logging to the window.
- Removed our ugly onClick img hack on a channel deletion.
- We no longer crash on XML files encoded as UTF-8 with BOM.
- We no longer crash on feeds that have more than one channel.
- We no longer die when a channel has only one item.
- We no longer die when myChannels.opml only has one channel.
- Webserver shutdown was not correct, causing the port to remain open.
- Win32: Proper systray and window maximization now occurs.
What's New in Version 0.93?
This version of AmphetaDesk is what I consider a "revolutionary
upgrade" and not an "evolutionary" one. Basically, this means that
v0.93 doesn't have much in the way of new features - it's not
evolutionary in that regard. Rather, v0.93 is an entirely new code
structure and architecture, one that will make future updates
faster, new features easier to implement, and third party hacks
quick to appear. It's "revolutionary" in the sense that it's a
much stronger beginning than the other versions ever could be.
I'm really excited about the new code base. It rocks.
Shortly after this release has made it's way around the airwaves,
I'll be releasing quick HOWTOs on how to take advantage of the new
backend. If you want to keep abreast of these developments,
subscribe
to the amphetadesk-discuss mailing list. Until then, take a
look below - it contains a listing of the more important updates,
features, and bug fixes.
- Modular Codebase: The codebase of
AmphetaDesk is much stronger, much clearer and cleaner to
understand, and generally, better and faster all around. The
primary difference is a move to modularity - instead of using
libraries of Perl subroutines, everything has been transitioned
over to modules. The benefits include black-boxed routines that
can be used by third party developers without fear of knowing
every little detail.
- Improved Runtimes: Along with the new
runtime for Macintosh OS X, all binary runtimes (Win32, MacOS)
have been greatly improved so that they're now only wrappers to
the true source code living in the lib/ subdirectory. This allows
anyone, regardless of whether they have Perl installed, to tweak
and hack their installation - the runtime wrapper will pick up the
changes and execute them on the next run. In the future, this will
allow AmphetaDesk to upgrade itself via streaming updates from the
'Net... no more large megabyte downloads for each new
version.
- Stronger Templating System: The old
templating system has been been totally scrapped and replaced with
a much more powerful implementation - anything possible in Perl
can be usable within the templates. This allows for incredible
customization (like adding local weather updates, tweaking the
news display exactly how you like, etc.). Future updates to our
documentation will include HOWTOs on instructing the templates to
do your bidding. NOTE: If you customized the
v0.92 templates, we will be more than happy to tweak the v0.93
templates to match - just
ask.
- Strong Importing: AmphetaDesk can
now import Radio Userland mySubscription.opml files, as well
as AmphetaDesk or Radio Userland files available on the web through
the normal "Add A Channel" feature. Likewise, support for URLs
appended to a query string has been improved, and both individual
URLs and OPML files can be combined for massive importing power.
For more information, see Integrating
Your Website.
- New Minor Features: As we set about
implementing the new modular structure, we also finalized some
minor feature tweaks here and there. Below is a decent list of 'em
(if you really want the gritty details, check
the CHANGELOG):
- Alluringly, AmphetaDesk is faster.
- README.txt files placed in all folders.
- Screenshots no longer shipped for smaller archive DL.
- No more XML fixing. If it's not valid, it's broken.
- Minor tweaks to the Linux OS compatibility.
- Modified URLs to be relative for easier use over the network.
- Logfile now lasts up to 250k, making subsequent run debugging easier.
- mySettings.xml and myChannels.opml no longer shipped, making upgrades easier.
- User's OS now gets spit out to the logfile for easier debugging.
- "request_timeout" setting for slow/fast connection tweaking.
- Reduced filesystem checks for channel downloads.
- We now check for duplicate filenames / URLs.
- Added "title" attributes to all navigation.
- Responses added so that we can communicate via the HTML, not GUI.
- Homebrew webserver / form processing gone - now use HTTP::Daemon and CGI.pm.
- XML parsing errors passed to the templates for display.
- Popup window used for channel deletion on the main page.
- Faster main page display due to smaller tables.
- GUI images moved to templates/ to be more meaningful.
- Minor support for RSS 1.0's mod_content added.
- Email graphic now shown if we can figure out a feed's owner.
- "Check for new feeds every X hours" added. Defaults to three.
- Proxy support added, either from the environment or user-specified.
- Added ability to override the HTTP Referer we send on GETs.
- Bug Fixes: There were a number of minor
bugfixes as well. Of note:
- <pre> tags no longer cause page-wide terror.
- Better implementation of "where are we installed?" code.
- Better path handling due to File::Spec move.
- Duplicate filenames (ala moreover.com) no longer an issue.
- Incorrect webserver mime-types no longer an issue (HTTP::Daemon).
- Stopped thousands of Win32 warnings in our logfile.
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