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link: https://www.ilxor.com/MacZing.zip [2020 Edit - old and broken version link replaced with v2 - most this post is outdated now]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?

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.