Zing: A (beta) ILX client for Macs

I've been playing with some networking stuff on the Mac recently, and as a side effect did a little thing to watch ILX for new threads. It ballooned a bit, and is now nearly a full ILX client. I'm using it to read ILX more than I am the website, so I thought I'd let you all have a look at a beta version. If there's any interest, I'll polish it off and add the stuff that's missing.

(A chunk of this code could also go into a native iPhone client, if anybody's interested in that).

INSTALL:
Download link: https://www.ilxor.com/MacZing.zip [2020 Edit - old and broken version link replaced with v2 - most this post is outdated now]
You *must* have logged in to ILX from Safari *and* clicked "remember me". It currently picks up yr Safari cookies to log in, and breaks without them.

WHAT IT DOES:
Lets you read and post.(Screenshot)
Remembers threads you've read
Has a floating "ticker" window that lets you watch a board for new and updated threads (Screenshot)
A pop-out "chat" window that lets you treat a thread a bit like an iChat window. Kinda.(Screenshot)
A pop-out message window to let you see a message in full, with images. (Images don't display in the main window as it kills performance)

STILL TO DO:
There's no support for bookmarks. It's coming, though.
You can't start a new thread.
Polls don't display their options/results, and you can't vote.
Killfile for boards/threads/posters
Choose amount of old posts to view. (Just now it's either the most recent 100 or the whole thread)

KNOWN BUGS:
The post parser needs more work. Right now it handles bold and italic natively, but inserting lists is funky, and the drag-and-drop for images and links is hosed.
Admins can see deleted threads, but nothing happens when you click on them.
The menus only work on the main window, and "Quote Message" and "Bookmark" do nothing.
Collapsing the source list leaves the spinner a-spinning.
You sometimes can't click the sixth thread down. This is an Apple bug. Just scroll a bit.
The message table has odd redraw bugs. I think I've fixed this, but resizing the window definitely sorts it.
(There are probably plenty more. I just found a howler as I was about to post this)

OK, this is all kinds of awesome, you have made my time wasting so much more efficient.

So great.

no youtube :<

(Of course the next step is an iPhone app :-D )

k what am i doing wrong? i logged out of ilx in firefox and logged in in safari

did you definitely choose the "remember me" box?
Oh, also: Needs 10.5 Leopard.

ahhhhh leopard would be the big ish here.

damn man i want to use this, maybe you will result in me updating.

Oh, yeah: Youtube doesn't work because Flash doesn't work with Garbage Collected apps, and Adobe are fucking about with fixing it.

Is showing images inline on the to-do list?

lol stet u madman

I like the "faster pussycat xpost xpost" error message

Inline images is definitely coming, but is a bit of work, as it kills scrolling with an ordinary table so I'll have to write my own (but need to do that anyway)

Also, the trucker had icon is good too, is it dirty?

haha i cant use this on my work computer but this looks hilarious and amazing

It's not making long-lived connections is it, Stet? I shouldn't have thought so, but if it is, it's likely to make 'poxy fule' type errors pretty quickly. Just noticed the length of time it took to connect after I stop/started there.

oooh, fun!

whoa, i'm posting from this now!

No, there's quite a lot of caching and stuff in there to stop it being boisterous. It should just appear like a normal browser session. xp

So it's making an HTTP connection to the server, getting the data and dropping the HTTP connection?

lol trucker hat icon

Anyway, got to head out - looks cool.

(Although when I fixed one bug earlier, it fired off a request for every thread in the table if you scrolled down it. Which wasn't great.)

xp Yep. Though It won't make a connection at all if it's previously loaded a thread or recently polled a board etc.

hey stet, may i suggest putting something in that allows u to see the thread's URL in case you want to email or IM a link to a thread

If you do shift-apple-O it'll open the thread in the browser so you can copy it, but yeah should do that.

how cool! using this right now. at least i hope

oh also... is there any way to make links to threads in threads open in zing instead of the default browser?

sorry i know it's probably too early to be making feature requests!

can you hear me? yeah this is cool.

i can't hear u, speak up

wheres the suggest ban link

how about a refresh button?

geuess papers app

there's a few different ways to refresh things. If the thread's in a separate window, you can refresh with the weird button at the top right. Otherwise it's shift-apple-r to reload a thread, and option-apple-r to reload new answers. Do you want buttons for them?

hahaha

t-t-t-totally duuuuude @_@

this is amazing stet

(also things do refresh themselves automatically -- it can just be a bit slow if a thread's moving v. quick, but I don't want to poxy fule the server)
xp tx!

STET FOR PRESIDETN

gonna d/l when i get home, awesome

we need this ON IPHONE

Tried to post --

"Failed: For Mysterious Reasons"

Otherwise, very cool!

How do I post from it?

Can you make a new thread from it, too?

Looks way cool. The icon's a trucker hat!

iPhone app of this would, of course, be the coolest motherfucking thing ever. I'd sling 59p your way for it.

are you gonna post the code anywhere?

so maybe you are aware of this but the auto-refresh affects the thread you are currently reading and makes the thread jump down to the bottom so you have to scroll back up to catch your place again.

ok, now posting from zing...

cool!

Nick: no new threads yet. Press the pencil to show the post box, or double click thread to show in new window

WmC: that's usually the not-clicked remember me that causes that.

Tza: shit, thought I'd fixed that. Is it doing it in the main window or in a pop-out?

My post attempt timed out?

That's a new one, not seen that before. Are you on a slow connection?

in the main window

Jesus, this has grown legs somewhat since I last saw it. And arms. And got itself a hat.

Huge respect.

Broadband; uploads can be slow but I've never had a problem with posting or emailing without attachments.

tza: am finding it hard to replicate that scrolling bug. Is it doing it every single time?

Nick: that's very odd. I'll go on modem later and see if I can make that happen. Sorry!

You rule, stet. Love this.

tza: got it! It scrolls to end when the boards refresh, weirdly. will fix.

plz port to windoze

Can I post from Zing now, I wonder?

It seems that I can!

Huzzah!

plz to finish ifone app k thx.

This is a fucking awesome little tool. Any way I can increase font / fontsize?

xp "Hey guys I just spent untold hours building this really cool thing that you can now have for free!"

"Yeah, great. I want it to do this other thing."

Plz allow me to pay u money for iPhone app.

I only use ilx to sb these days where's my sb link fool!!!!!!

haha

poor pc-using me doesn't get to play with the cool kids' toys "-/

http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/nelson-muntz.gif

Go play Flight Simulator, Rev!

I'm not sure about all the space that's taken up by the board list in the left column. I doubt most ILXers look at it all that often. Maybe a way to select your favourite boards from a drop-down?

if you press the circle button on the bottom left the list does go away, if that's any help?

(Ah! I haven't actually downloaded it. I'm just looking at the screen shot.)

You can also adjust that column to make it thinner. I use it reasonably often, if only to flit from ILE to ILM.

!!!!

I missed this thread earlier

holy shit

i am truly stunned

I haven't forgotten about this, but since the most asked for feature was an iPhone version I decided to have a stab at that. It's not *too* shabby, so far.
http://www.ilxor.com/~stet/zingimg/ZingMsg.png
http://www.ilxor.com/~stet/zingimg/Zingborads.png
http://www.ilxor.com/~stet/zingimg/ZingThread.png

arg forgot to resize them, sorry

ooh looks cool

at last, a reason to buy an iphone.

seriously, beautiful beautiful work. I want.

Oh wow.

Seriously, let me pay you for this.

stet! <3

Brilliant. :-D

you tha man

[not sent from my iphone which i don't have yet]

wow AMAZING!!!

Will this work on an iPod touch as well? *curious*. If so, what v of the s/w do I need cos I think I'm a couple revisions behind.

Thanks guys! Yeah it will work on iPod tooch, but you'll need a wifi connection to use it (I played with storing threads offline, but to be useful you'd want to dl a whole board, and that's server killing. I might try to just dl all yr bookmarks, for a short tube trip or something)

Oh buttered corpse, yeah. I like to ILX in bed, sometimes.

Hm... TMI, perhaps.

Oh forgot to say, it needs 3.0. It's worth getting anyway, it's miles better.

Arse, I dont have 3.0 yet, but this might be an incentive to! :)

Excellent work btw :)

AMAZONG. want!

has it been submitted to appledapple?

you are so awsum

thought of making it (the full Mac OSX version) growl? </moon + stick>

Does anyone know about a mac emulator that will run this on a pc? (Yeah yeah, nelson ha ha again)

It's not at Apple yet, there are a few bugs still (mostly with bloody webkit and with the OG phone running out of memory on big threads). Next week I reckon.

Al: yeah, that looks easy enough. In my build here I post notifications when new bookmarks or new posts arrive, so I could stick Growl on the end of that.

this combination gives me chills

Just wait until Stet programs it to have each post talk in the original poster's voice.

who is the original poster, if not you ned?

Mysterious.

WANT. You are awesome, Stet.

Yeah once this is on the app store ima get it for sure, even if you wanna charge for it :)

bug report? i had zing running earlier and it just randomly quit. i wasn't even using it, it was just on. that is probably not so helpful!

Ah, yeah, it'll have been the session timing out. It falls on its ass if that happens, but i've fixed that now. Much better Mac Zing coming when I get this iPhone one out.

^ilx's most inspirational figure

we need a bait thread for the apple testers

You snake.

<3

Any idea of an ETA on the iPhone app? I'm salivating.

I'm goin to submit it on Thursday and then it's down to Apple ...

does zing refresh in realtime?

Is there anyway to get apps other than via the App store?

yeah can you not let 10 of us test it or something? or did they do away w/tht

woo-hoo, this is all kinds of awesome

No real-time refresh, that'd take server push and that's a lotta work for not much better than hitting refresh.

I can do private builds but they're clunky a kind of a pain. Will look into it if Apple drag their heels

is it really bad i finally got the ipod touch upgrade so i can use this when it is eventually available?

what in the hell, how did i miss this

this post is coming from inside the app

Hahah tza thats what is going to be my impetus too ;_;

I know, this has persuaded me into buying an iPhone finally :-)

Is it on the store? How've you got it gbx?

i think he meant just zing for regular computers?

Ah.

Any word from the app store?

keep your pants on

where my zing at

I thinking it going to be this week. Surely.

While I'm waiting, I'm adding bookmarks to Zing Mac, but was also wondering if anyone would like a like menubar thing that glowed when you had updated bookmarks, showed you what they were, and opened them in a browser?

Bugger. Rejected for having "henfap" as one of the keywords. Had to submit new binaries, so could take another 7-14 days. Sigh.

I will never buy another Apple product as long as I live, this is lunacy.

heh, meant to quote there. Anyway, f u apple and your henfap hating ways

Rejected for having "henfap" as one of the keywords.

Umm...could this be explained, somehow?

You're not allowed keywords that aren't linked to the app, and I figured it'd take even longer to explain the link as to just take it out.

"it's, uhh, something you need to have." lol, might not cut it with testers. thanks for all your work, stet, this is gonna be great.

Any signs of a new update to the desktop app?

Oh, yeah! Are folks still using it? I don't get any stats, so I didn't know. If you are, yeah, I learned a lot from the iPhone version so could do a pretty big update, with bookmarking and polls etc. I'll see about making some time for it.

roxor!

i would be interested in this

<-- also interested

<-- could also assist with development

If I do the work required to make an iPad version it'll make doing a new Mac version way easier. I cld just do a framework that wraps the API essentially, and you could build on that maybe?

I would pay for and use both.

So there y'are, six quid guaranteed.

can i just say that with the new system font on iOS this is finally REALLY THE WAY ILX IS SUPPOSED TO BE

where did the top left "back" button go in this new update. is it just me?

oh nm I thought it was on the home screen but it's in thread view, sorry

https://i.ibb.co/MRMPZp5/Screenshot-2020-05-14-at-17-27-09.png

🤯

only took ten years, like :/

(the last 1% of bugs will take another ten years at this rate)

whaaaaaaat

is that a desktop client?

YESSS

holy cow! might finally be time to switch my work PC to a mac. :)

i’m not sure how i feel about this

Me too. I spent ages wondering if it was worth it now that browsers are so good and fast. But I got tired of testing Zing Touch in the simulator so then I made this as a wrapper ... and then I found I was using it nearly exclusively.

Need to add search but it's pretty usable. I'll put up a beta if people would like a play.

yes, please!

I'm in.

OK, here goes!

It's definitely a beta but it's OK to use for checking bookmarks and posting.

Notes:
- Search isn't implemented yet
- Nor are themes (but dark mode works)
- Can't favourite borads
- Can't cmd-c on selected message text, you have to right-click
- Single-pane mode (close the message list from X) is a little buggy.
- The menubar checker drags off but doesn't resize.

Download here:
https://www.ilxor.com/MacZing.zip

(Oh also: drag it out of the Downloads folder before opening it for best results)

downloading now - thanks stet. zing is genuinely one of the best apps on my phone, so looking forward to giving this a go.

and posting from it now : )

Stet is the man

Trying this now. thanks. Right now all my bookmarks are duplicated. Two lines for every one (to the tune of "Surf City").

oooh that's weird. Can you check you don't accidentally have two accounts listed? (In preferences go to the accounts tab)

Same account listed twice, yes.

I deleted one at which point it logged me off. I logged back on. Now it shows no accounts.

well done me - if you trying adding once more it should hopefully work

Now it's there twice again.

But this time I deleted the first and not the second and now I'm back down to one.

Trying this now -- works very nicely from here!

Works pretty good for me. ILX links in posts open in my browser though.

Yes, this later was kind of shocking, tbh, although I suppose it makes sense.

i don't prefer it to the website (and i think it's a little slower) but still v cool

Works fine, but I'll have to stay with the browser until I can enlarge type in zing.

It’s obvious how much Apple has neglected the Mac when you start coding for it again. Like on iPhone I can really easily set everything to the user’s preferred text size. There’s no support for that on Mac at all.

Changing the link behaviour is really easy, I’ll do that.

So cool. Couple things:
- I can drag to change the width of the threads list, but as soon as I let go it snaps back
- It'd be nice if arrows/PgDn/PgUp worked to scroll

posted from MacZing

thanks! got the width bug. The page up/dn thing is harder - it's the same bug as copy/paste note working. will take a look over the weekend

oh maybe that's what you meant by menubar checker

haven't tried writing a Mac desktop app but it doesn't surprise me they've let the frameworks stagnate.

Now I have five copies of each bookmark. Only one account listed in Preferences.

What version of macOS are you running? It seems like this might be linked to how the keychain stores passwords

Mojave, sorry.

It actually went up to six for a while. Just logged off and back on again

Maybe it has to do with logging onto the browser at the same time?

grasp✧✧✧@str✧✧✧.c✧✧

Lol. That was supposed to be grasping at straws dot com.

Are you running from the Downloads folder?

The problem (I think) is that it is trying to save your settings and somehow failing and repeatedly trying. Quarantine might conceivably cause that; and moving it out of the Download folder will remove quarantine from it.

(You might also need to erase ~/Library/Containers/com.haunteddancehall.maczing (or similar) before trying again. Sorry! Beta 4 lyfe

Yeah, I might be doing something like that, thanks.

Might be nice to see the current thread with some kind of subtle highlight in the threads list.

This is how I read ILX now. Shut up and take my money, etc.

I'd been wondering whether to bother doing more work on it, so that's good to hear! I'm getting quite into using it in one-pane mode (cmd-1, cmd-2) in a small window over to the side — it sits nicely beside Tweetdeck.

i'm not sure it *really* has enough over the browser functionality, then again, i'm using it now. Ctrl+D for bookmarking open threads is *incredibly* useful (would be useful to have a shortcut to unbookmark as well). Second lukas's request for some sort of shading in the open thread when using it in 2-pane mode. i can see if it had a bit more functionality it could easily become my default on mac.

actually i was just thinking how nice it would be to have full reader/email shortcut functionality - p/n for going up and down between messages, j/k for going up and down between bookmarks/threads. r for replying to a particular message in focus, automatically taking the message body and putting it in quote or italic bbcode brackets etc. so consider me interested!

and actually *is* there a way to remove a bookmark from a thread?

and filtering bookmarks according to boards. sorry i'm getting carried away now - i know this is a spare time thing. on a basic using it point - it would be nice if clicking on a thread took you to the most recent post, or the most recently read post – i can't quite understand the existing behaviour about which post it goes to when you click on a thread.

no, keep this coming, I love it! The only way to remove a bookmark right now is to right-click (or ctrl-click) on the bookmark itself and choose "remove".

Board-level bookmarks is a great idea, too.

The thread behaviour isn't right, no. The way it works right now is that if you click a bookmark you see the thread starting from your last bookmark, if you choose a thread from new answers you get shown the 50 oldest and 50 most recent posts, with a fold in the middle. What it should really do is know if you've opened a thread before and if so take you to the most recent posts.

ah right, interesting, thanks stet, and thanks on the remove bookmark instructions. also, i *think* if you have something that looks like bbcode that's incorrectly closed out, it will just go NOPE, rather than allowing a 'post anyway?' option. tbf my bracketing so often does require checking and revising you could argue this is *no bad thing*.

using now, seems great. will update if i run into any trouble. thanks for working on this :)

using MacZing for the first time right now! boldly, in italics, underlining...

formatting: CHECK

having a great time! i'm also going to throw some ideas out as i go - take with a grain of salt, of course.

Is there a way to increase the size of the text submission area? i see that if i keep typing, it starts to add extra space, but it would be great if it could be manually resized by dragging the edge of the pane.

(by the way, for people who haven't checked this out - one really cool quality of life thing is that you can scroll through the rest of the thread while keeping the message submission box on the screen. will be very handy for composing ridiculous messages in threads where people are rite and rong all over the place

another small thing that might be nice - a subtle visual cue showing you which thread you're viewing from the site new answers and/or bookmarks. pro mock-up:

https://i.imgur.com/nPkIWvH.jpg

finally, would be neat if clicking the little red hat in the corner made a frog croaking noise

a more serious bug - i keep getting the Poxy Fule error when clicking the "view previous page..." link in a bookmark.

one more thought for today - is there a way to open multiple threads at once? i am an ilx multitabber, in general

If you CMD-click or double click on a thread it should open in a new tab, yep.

would love a Linux version I'll see myself out

just remembered at one point I had started writing an emacs mode for reading ILX. any interest? I'll see myself out again

Only if make a vim version as well.

I’ll give you details of the API if it’d help, diamonddave85

I've fixed that horrible poxy fule error on previous pages – if the thread view looks unstyled after the update, right-click on it and choose "refresh" to fix.

New release looks good thanks.

If you CMD-click or double click on a thread it should open in a new tab, yep.
This was working for me at one point but not anymore.

looks like there's a crashing bug there if you cmd-click in certain circs, thanks

Hm. Didn’t actually crash for me, just wasn’t working but now it does again.

Oh wait. I see, it works with bookmarks but not from Site New Answers.

Zing isn't remembering the window size between launches. Is this a known thing or should I toss prefs? (I'm on build 88)

It’s a known thing, I’ll upload a fixed version when I get near WiFi again

uploaded a new version now to sort that

thanks!

Possibly an option to open threads from SNA at the bottom / newest?

Here to a report with this revealing hidden text when returning search results or displaying latest post of a bookmarked thread in the left panel. See for instance Babylon 5

thanks - the next beta fixes it. haven't pushed it out yet because it's broken in dark mode

Thanks!

Don’t what was going on with the beginning of that sentence.

Any chance of adding a preference panel for changing the app icon? I was about to screen-share with a work client and had sudden dread that they would think I was using some secret MAGA chud.net client.

Oh my god I never made the connection. Fucking Trump. Yes, I’ll come up with something.

yeah can’t unsee now :(

Wait, ILX isn’t a trump fan forum? I’m out of here!! ;)

Make America Gear! Again

If I were home I could whip this up quickly, but I’d like to see an icon with hundreds of tiny mouths talking to Raul how other, with twice as many ears - at ILX, we sure do talk a lot. But we also listen.

That garbled by my lord Raul, but hopefully the meaning comes through

The view previous page Poxy Fule bug went away on MacZing when I updated my OS this morning.

So I never noticed until today that I could click on a timestamp and the relevant permalink to the post would show up in Safari.

Similar to Facepalm permalink trick I also just learned.

Would like to request a hide threads feature whenever you have time to look at zing again, would make the zing experience that much better I feel.

sure – just checking, zing for mac or iphone?

I’d like to request the hide tags being added to the iOS apps formatting list.

sure – just checking, zing for mac or iphone?

Has anyone else had a problem where as it's left open, accounts appear to duplicate, and bookmarks with them? I'm not sure if they're doubling every time, but so far I have had 2, 4 and 8 accounts showing.

screenshots:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/r3u0y6yflfkbh9o/Screenshot%202023-07-27%20at%2014.14.55.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ggvnvw9xkrb5zz2/Screenshot%202023-07-27%20at%2014.15.04.png?dl=0

if I delete any of these extra accounts and restart, I have to log in again.

What build are you on toby? There was a bug in older ones that caused that but I thought it had been fixed

I had that problem for a long time on my desktop.

I *think* the way I solved it was by staying logged off in certain browsers and only using the app.

(For reference, the latest build is "101".

Like in 1984 or the pre-Clash Joe Strummer project.

Where does one even get the latest build? I tried the link in the first post and it seemed to be an older build.

I've just uploaded the latest build to that same address - https://ilxor.com/MacZing.zip - and if it's stable enough I'll push it to existing users soon.

If you are still seeing the multiple-accounts bug, you might need to quit Zing and trash the ~/Library/Containers/MacZing folder before trying again

Thanks. Downloaded. I keep getting a color wheel of death when I try to load threads, both with the old build and new. Not sure if it is a proxy issue or some cache I need to clean or restart. Also having some problems loading virtual backgrounds on Zoom, maybe it’s related.

Aka Spinning Wait Cursor or Spinning Beach Ball of Death (SBBOD)

Got rid of all my bookmarks to see if that would help. Wonder if there is some other cache I can clean or delete. Before I resort to trouble-shooting 101, restart your machine.

The only cache relevant to Zing is that folder listed above, if you delete that you should be all set.

It does use the system networking so if you have system-wide problems I can see that affecting it.

What version of macOS are you running?

Monterey. Can't upgrade this old mac much further. But restart did the trick, restart was the ticket, fixed my other problem as well. Thank you for your support in this matter.

Build 101 has a NOT sign on top of the grayed out red trucker cap. Assuming that means it's not considered production yet.

One thing I love love love about MacZing is the persistence of the last search term.

Doesn't persist through a restart but I'll live.

Any new features I should check out. I see "History works a bit better" when I click Help>What's New? not sure what it means exactly.

It’s a euphemism for “the old history was incredibly buggy”

Lol

So now it should work as expected. I think.

I seem to remember that but had just stopped using it for ages.

I just redownloaded from the link above and reinstalled (now build 102), I still have the excess of bookmarks but I'll delete the account and see if it happens again. Thanks!

Oh also: don’t run it from the Downloads folder, drag it literally anywhere else first - there’s a special quarantine state for apps in there

I think deleting the cache was the key, thanks - it seems to be doing OK now.

Really enjoying using this now - thanks for making it! Stupid question: is it possible to navigate completely with the keyboard? e.g. I can go up and down the bookmarks list, and once I've clicked on a bookmark and then on the answers pane I can scroll up and down, but I don't know how do this from the keyboard (I tried hitting enter, for example).

That’s the ambition, but it has proved a bit trickier to implement than I expected. I’ll have a think about how to do it.

Great, thanks!

Also - any chance of killfile? I miss it from the phone.