News

Chat Everywhere has reached the stability and functionnality criteria I had set for 1.0.0. It is now stable enough to run for months, support 100 users at the same time, without taking more than 1% CPU or 1 Mb of RAM on a server.

This release comes a long time after the previous one, but development has still been going on on CVS, and will still be. My personal situation has evolved, and I am no more a student... Moreover, I just got married ! So do not expect releases very soon, but development is not over, keep on sending me your support and good ideas !

The next big milestone would be 2.0.0. The functions that needs to be implemented before that, are multi-room and moderation support.

It is now time to head toward the D/L page to check the real stuff about 1.0.0, and do not forget to send me your support / comments / flames :-)

Chat Everywhere 0.0.17a has just been released on sourceforge.net. I tried to release this package early, since we are still in alpha. All the changes this week have occurred on the server side. Its mainly an enhanced configurability of the server through new directives : RestrictCommand, to allow ta given command only from a certain level, or to forbid it completely, and AllowNickChar and DenyNickChar to change the set of allowed nick characters. A new command /gag has also been added to globally ignore an annoying users (nobody can hear him anymore, but he does not know it). Also, bans and gags can now have an expiration time (in minutes).

Some new sections have appeared on the website. The Screenshots section contain some screenshots of the java and Swing client. You can also try these two clients in the Live! section. I modified the code to make the clients appear in a popup window, feel free to use it for your own website!

The link section has been created, with a link to the Sourceforge development site.

At last !

It is been a long time since the last release of Chat Everywhere, but it was worth it... Here is 0.0.16a. This release has been tested mainly for stability and portability. It compiles on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, HP-UX and MacOSX without any special tricks. The java client has been worked on to improve its MS-IE Java compatibility.

But there are also some exciting new things :

• a Swing applet. This applet is only compatible with the Sun Java plugin but it is really spiffy : chat coloring, nice menus, smileys as pictures (optional...), support for non-latin alphabet and much more. Its considered as fully stable.
• the server now stores the list of the connected users in a text file. This can allow you to display this information on your web-site, without the need for your users to load the Java applet (check out the UsersFile directive).
• more technically speaking : the server now uses non-blocking I/O for receiving and sending data to the clients. This should fix the "mass ping timeout bug" that some of you have been encountering.

So, have fun with this release, and keep me updated !

After the last release, I have been too busy to follow on the development as much as I would have liked to. I now have much more time, and this is the client turn to get some lifting and corrections. I changed the core code to make it more robust and asynchronous.

The Swing applet is also perfectly usable with the Java plugin and I think it will be included in the next release. If you'd like to try it, just click here. Stay tuned !

At last ! After two weeks of bug chasing, this new release of Chat Everywhere should be rock-solid as far as stability is concerned ! Some huge changes have been made to the core code of the server, to allow the new password authentication code, and this has been shaking up some part of the code that I had not think of...

As I said, this comes with added features, like the new and much demanded nick password protection. This is done through MD5 hashing, so neither the storage on the server side nor the password transmission are done in clear-text.

Added to that, the java client has increased its set of functionnalities, mainly by the addition of a user options menu such as auto-scrolling, bip when some new text is displayed, and connection notification dialog. I also at last get that code fully compliant with Java 1.1 (instead of Java 1.0 before) and this allowed me to correct some nasty bugs such as the popup menu positionning.

But there is one thing I am very excited about, but which is not in this release : a brand new java client. This one uses the Swing API, to have a nice interface. The biggest change is perhaps that chat zone coloring (the standard client's one lacks of "sexyness" !) and a full Unicode compliance which allows to get rid of these alphabet problems (i.e : cyrillic and other non iso-8859-1 character sets should be fully supported). If you are interested in testing this client, just checkout the CVS repository. But be aware that you need the Java Plug-in to run it.

Hi guys... It seems that the next release is not yet completely ready. The changes in the core structure of the server helped me to discover some nasty bugs, and I wanted to do some complete tests to ensure that the server would not crash anymore.

Moreover, I also started changing the client. It is now faster to load and start in a browser, and some display bugs have been corrected.

Upon looking at the feature requests, and users feedback, I saw that I had pushed Java AWT to its limits, and that to implement all the nifty things that you are asking for (especially a more "sexy" interface!), I had to make a big jump. So I rewrote the entire client to make use of the Swing API, and this is very promising. I already have some nice popup menus, and the chat window is now colored, to better separate server messages, error, normal talk, etc... But Swing is not fully supported by a lot of old JVM and I will continue to enhance the standard client. I am currently looking for a way to start automatically the good applet depending on the end user java version.

So, stay tuned, and if you want to be on the edge, try the CVS, but be advised it is still work in progress (although the server should be pretty stable now).

Well, how could I imagine Christmas without a little present :-)

Just have a look in your CVS, and try that brand new password authentication. You will have to figure out a bit how it works: I still have to write the documentation. Have a look at the chat.passwords file in the src/ directory for some explanations.

To put that in place, I did some huge changes in the core code of the server (some parts were as old as 1998!), so all this is still little tested. Please do not put that out of a test server, it is far from being ready! I plan a release by the mid of January will all that neat stuff in it :-)

See you guys, some Champagne is calling me now...

Here is it ! I just released 0.0.14a. Changes include :

• correction of the NICK applet parameter bug
• added client ip address in usersinfo
• Ping Timeout support
• lag measurement (in user stats)
• translated applet interface in 5 languages (english, french, deutsch, polish and czech)

Time to fire up your compiler guys.

Oh ! And many thanks to Piotr for the nice logo :-)

Humm, not so many news for a long time. But Chat Everywhere is still under development! In the CVS : correction of the applet NICK parameter bug and internationalisation of the applet interface (currently english, french, deutsche, polish and czech).

I have some exams arriving quickly, and some busy Christmas Holidays, but I should soon be working on the next big step : translating the messages that the server sends to the client (help for example).

I have also been looking lately for a better text area than the standard Java one. One which would allow me to put some nice colors and simple text styles (bold, italic...). I am looking for a GPL component, Java 1.1 compatible, which would allow that, if you have any idea, drop me a mail !

Wow, what a day today, here is a website (at last!), tell me what you think of it!

(I'm lazy, so this is just a cut'n paste from my announcement on the mailing-list)

Since the latest release, a lots of new changes have been made...

The most exciting (to me), is now the support of signed applets. You may have the applet on a website, connecting to a remote server (previously, the http server and the chat server had to be on the same machine, due to a Java security limitation). See the Live! section for a demo.

Another thing is the redesign of the login page in the applet, allowing you to see who is currently chatting before login.

The userfriendly-ness of the applet has also been improved a lot, by adding input memory (with up/down arrows), nick completion (with the tab key), multiline input support (easy cut and paste!), and several bug fixes and small enhancements.

Another improvement, still experimental, is for all of you who use foreign charsets. Although Java natively supports ISO-8859-1, some other charsets have great difficulties (Russian and Polish for example). I added the Language, Country, UIFontName and TextFontName to try to improve that. I would like some feedack on that one !

Lots of bug-fixes, performance improvements, and new things on the server (for exemple, a much demanded /me irc-like command).

The roadmap for next release is full internationalisation of the client, with the support of localized interface (translated). If some of you are available to translate some small files in your own language, please let me know, and I'll contact you as soon as translation will be needed!

I will also start to do a little website (at last!), but my graphic skills suck... If someone feels like making a nice logo for the project, it will be much appreciated :-)

Ok, let's end the talk, let's start the downloading ;-)