28/05/2006. SupportDesk version 0.5 released.
This is the fifth official release of SupportDesk, the open source internet chat system for websites. If you want to know more about what SupportDesk is, please read the about page and look at the screenshots.
This release is BETA status. Please submit a description of any bugs you find to me by email and they will be addressed in an upcoming release.
Some of you may have noticed it has been quite a while since my last release. The short explanation is that I have been living and travelling in India for the last year - I find myself with only an old laptop to develop on, intermittent internet access, and very little spare time on my hands :)
It also happened that I didn't receive any bug reports or feature requests for a long time, so development pretty much got neglected. However, recently a couple of people have given me some cool ideas for new features, and someone has discovered a rather serious bug relating to extended character set support that I really ought to fix. So it's time for a new release! For everyone out there who uses SupportDesk: if you want to see more development, send me more feedback :)
This release sees the addition of the new "Accept Chat / Leave Chat" feature that allows an oper to view a chat first before deciding if he or she wants to join it. It also sees the addition of ISO-8859-1 character set support. What the heck I was thinking using 7-bit US-ASCII in the first place I'm not quite sure :) Doh. As a side note, I hope to move to full Unicode (UTF-16) support soon, I just have a few issues to work out with it first. Hopefully it'll make it in to 0.6.
You can grab a copy of version 0.5 from the usual place. Enjoy :)
SupportDesk v0.5 changelog:
- added Accept/Leave feature to allow opers to view chats without joining them
- reorganised / rewrote several classes to improve code clarity
- fixed "dropped network connection when extended ASCII is entered" bug
- added support for the "ISO-8859-1" character set (UTF-16 coming soon)
25/05/2005. Bugfix release -- version 0.4c
A serious bug has been discovered in the Java applet client which can occasionally mangle messages or crash it. This bug can not wait until v0.5 so the current v0.4, recently updated to v0.4b to restore Java 1.4 support, is now being updated again to v0.4c to fix this bug.
It is available from the download page now.
23/05/2005. Java 1.4 support restored.
Feedback from several users has lead me to think that dropping support for Java 1.4 was a Dumb Idea (tm). Whoops :)
So I've decided to quickly backtrack and release a second copy of version 0.4, called version 0.4b, which supports both Java 1.4 and Java 1.5.
It is identical to release v0.4, posted below, except that it supports Java 1.4 again.
23/05/2005. SupportDesk version 0.4 released.
The fourth official release of SupportDesk, version 0.4 brought some necessary interface polish, allowing easy unbanning of individual users without having to edit the banlist file by hand and providing a much needed help dialog box.
SupportDesk v0.4 changelog:
- moved to Java 1.5, dropped 1.4 support
- fixed "improper logout when browser changes page" bug
- fixed "crash with leading newline character in banlist.cfg" bug
- added a help dialog box for opers
- added "lift ban" feature for opers
- updated protocol documentation to include LIST_BANS and UNBAN commands
- removed redundant "reload server banlist" option
18/05/2005. SupportDesk version 0.3 released.
The third official release of SupportDesk. Version 0.3 brought the addition of message logging on the server and more options for opers, as well as a general cleanup of config files and code.
SupportDesk v0.3 changelog:
- fixed US-ASCII charset bug
- changed config files to an XML format for flexibility
- cleaned up code, replacing manual linked lists with java collections
- added message logging support
- added new icons to indicate conversations you're currently watching
- added option to stop watching a conversation
- added "kick" feature to disconnect users without a permanent ban
06/02/2005. SupportDesk version 0.2 released.
The second official release of SupportDesk. Primarily a bug fix release, v0.2 also included password encryption and a new set of icons.
SupportDesk v0.2 changelog:
- Added support for transmitting encrypted passwords
- New icon set for oper mode
- Opers can now talk to each other correctly
- Fixed bug that caused the client's JList (in oper mode) to sometimes display a cell with far too much white space
- Fixed bug with server reading windows-format (CRLF terminated) config files
- Fixed bug that caused the client window to hog the focus
- Fixed bug that caused the server to crash when when transmitted an improperly terminated (no "LF" character at the end) string
- Changed server "HELLO_USER" and "HELLO_OPER" command replies to be consistent with those specified in the protocol documentation
27/01/2005. SupportDesk version 0.1 released.
The first official release of SupportDesk. All major functionality implemented, only a few known bugs ;) No changelog.