Moved

Monal is a free chat program for iPhone and iPad. The official site has moved to Monal.im

Monal 2.0.3 Submitted

Monal 2.0.3 has been submitted to the app store.  Below is the slightly changed final change log.   Along with 2.0.3 I am launching the new Monal site  found at Monal.im .  The new site is designed to be more descriptive for new users, allow for better social media integration and bug tracking. In addition I have started to build a detailed and illustrated  help section. The first post explains  how to use group chat

Followers of this development blog should go to the new one

Monal 2.0.3 changelog:


1. Proper multi tasking. It will run in the background
until you logout or close the app. No more 10 minute limit.
2. Manually set XMPP priority
3. Shows offline contacts
4. Added gtalk extensions for google apps
5. fixed an issue with Digest-Md5 servers and connectivity
6. Fixed a bug with some non english messages not arriving
7. improved auto recovery in the event of a network error
8. when swiping to close an active chat it says "close" instead of delete. When clearing a chat log it says "clear" and not delete
9. improved UI for adding new contact
10. shows a badge with a count of messages received on app icon
11. status is not overwritten when setting away
12. fixed misc crashing bugs with the UI
13. new buddy details screen
14  optimized and switched from GCC to LLVM+Clang compiler
15. Added Multi user chat (MUC) menus.
16. Removed browser tab from iPad UI

This blog is closing

This blog is closing. I have decided to upgrade to a proper site to better meet the needs of the massive global user base that Monal has garnered. Certain things such as help pages and bug tracking systems have become necessary. The new site is a massive improvement and will launch with the release of Monal 2.0.3. I will make one more post here later this week with a link to the new site.

Oh one more thing, you can now actively join as many groups as you like on any server that supports it (Monal will discover the service)

2.0.3 Final Change Log

2.0.3 is a major update that improves the application significantly. It is now feature complete and is being beta tested. This is the final change log. It's scheduled to be released early March.

1. Proper multi tasking. It will run in the background

forever until you logout or close the app. No more 10 minute limit.

2. Manually set XMPP priority

3. Shows offline contacts

4. Added gtalk extensions for google apps

5. fixed an issue with Digest-Md5 servers and connectivity

6. Fixed a bug with some non english messages not arriving

7. improved auto recovery in the event of a network error

8. when swiping to close an active chat it says "close" instead of delete. When clearing a chat log it says "clear" and not delete

9. improved UI for adding new contact

10. shows a badge with a count of messages received

11. status is not overwritten when setting away

2.0.3 changelog

Winter break is over and I am updating Monal again. The next release will be a pretty big update. I am sure many people will appreciate #1 on this list. Obviously, this is only for iOS4 users on 3GS and above.

1. Proper multi tasking. It will run in the background forever until you logout or close the app. No more 10 minute limit.

2. fixed an issue with Digest-Md5 servers and connectivity

3. improved auto recovery in the event of a network error

4. when swiping to close a chat it says "close" instead of delete. when clearing a chat log it says "clear" and not delete

A shameless plug

I recently released my second iPhone/iPad app. It has absolutely nothing in common with Monal.  The program is called MyNepali and uses sounds and images to teach  young children some basic animal names in the Nepali language.  It is 99 cents. If you are interested, you can find MyNepali here
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mynepali/id406911355?mt=8

And we're back

I have no idea what happened.  The email account that was used to create this blog was listed among the 1.3 million accounts taken from Gawker hack on Sunday.  While my account password was not there, I did get  locked out of Gmail because of suspicious activity, likely thousands of failed login attempts from all over the world.  I assume this blog was taken down for the same reason. This  was annoying but could have been much worse, I could have been stupid and used the same password for my Gawker account and my email account.

The Gawker hack is one more reminder of  why trusting some third party with your Gmail, Facebook  or corporate login is a bad idea. While push messages are really nice, are you sure that the database that has your username and password is secure?  Do you trust the company making your IM client with all of that info?

A note on privacy and tracking software

How many people use Monal? A lot. Thousands and thousands of people all over the world in all sorts of random places (Hello, Antarctica!). However, all I know is what the Apple download/upload  counter shows and what people tell me in emails.  Much the same way I have objections to ads in my software, I do not like the "metrics" software and libraries that are out there. Unlike many other iOS apps, Monal does not contain and will never contain user tracking software. Consider this app your refuge from ads, trackers and middle man servers.

2.0.2 changelog

This is a bug fix update that addresses issues users have raised.  I have tried to have one release roughly every month, there will be no January release.  Unless there is a major issue in this release the next release will be in February.

1. fixed a bug where some people might not show up as online sometimes
2. fixed bug where away was not working
3. added status orbs
4. fixed bug adding accounts
5. several ipad ui improvements
6. SECURITY: fixed possible XSS attack
7. active chats count update properly
8. Misc connectivity bugfixes

Always free, no ads, no creepy servers

A lot of people have told me about being willing to see ads to support development. I actually really dislike ads and all the apps that I have used that had ads were slowed down by them. I also notice that certain other IM clients released versions without ads and then pushed updates with them after the user base grew. I find that to be a rather deceptive bait and switch particularly since I know that the ad services collect and use user data --possibly based on your chats-- to present more ads. It is behavior like this, the 3rd party account sign up nonsense and the lack of direct connections that prompted me to write Monal in the first place.

There will always be a free version of Monal, it will always support direct connections and it won't have ads.

2.0.1 bugfixes

I am pushing out a quick bugfix update to fix some issues people have told me about.


1. removes a lock up when user disconnects while chatting
2. added a progress indicator to show when large chats are loaded
3. fixed a compatibility bug with some ejabberd servers
4. fixed failure to load on some devices
5. added timeouts on connection to better detect errors
6. fixed the issue where sometimes the login window spins forever

Jabberd and Monal 2

I am receiving a few reports of issues connecting to some Jabberd servers. I haven't been able to replicate this on any of my test installs. If anyone has access to a server that is not working with Monal and can give me a test account to work with, email me.

Monal 2.0 is out

The new release is now available for download in the app store. If you encounter any bugs, please email me at monaltest@gmail.com

Monal 2.0 iPad screen dump

Monal 2.0 iphone screen dump

While we are waiting for the new version to be approved, here are final screens for the iphone app's page

back on track

I hope to have a new build sent to the app store on Monday

Delayed!

A beta tester just found a rather serious bug that I need to check. I've pulled the binary and the release will be pushed into next week so I can look at this.

Monal 1.07 is now 2.0 and other updates

Monal has been submitted to the app store for approval. Don't be alarmed when you see Monal 2.0 show up on your application list.  It is what was 1.07. I had to increase the version number to 2.0 because for some reason the application loader couldn't tell that 1.07 was greater than 1.062 and refused to allow me to upload an "older" version.  It should be approved in a few days. While, this isn't how I wanted 2.0 to be released,  it is the biggest update to the software since it came out and it has been over a year since 1.0, so it's not that bad.

I have also added Monal to the business category in addition to social networking because of the cisco webex connect support.  The minimum iOS version has been changed to 3.1.2 from 3.1.3. Finally,  the application rating has been changed to 17+ since it includes a web browser.

Monal 1.07 feature complete

Monal 1.07 is feature complete and is about to complete testing. Release candidate 1 was sent out to testers today. If no issues arise this will be the build submitted to the app store.

This is the final changelog of what to expect. In addition to the graphical overhaul, the other major change that will affect many people is support for group chat.

1.07 changelog

This is a major update that significantly changes the front and backends of the program.

1. Stops crash on load on iphone 3g and fixed many other bugs

2. faster start up and much more efficient login code (3-4x faster)

3. fixed bug where chat input box was disabled after viewing logs

4. urls in chat are detected and can be tapped to bring up safari when there is multi tasking or in app when there isn't.

5. Added a logoff button for easy logoff without closing app

6. contacts listed in alphabetical order, own username not shown

7. support for xmpp tunes, option to set status as currently playing ipod song

8. New ipad UI autorotates to all orientations, supports landscape

9. new lighter, faster and more accurate XMPP parsing engine

10. xmpp uses JID for setup

11. UI improvements for consistency

12. new sliding notification when a message is received or song changes

13. status updates are immediately seen

14. added a simple web browser for non multi tasking OSes

15. Icons update correctly when buddy changes it

16. added an active chats tab to access current conversations easily

17. added DNS SRV record discovery. this enables cisco webexconnect support in addition to greater compatibility overall.

18. added support for group chat

19. added support for itunes file transfer

Cisco Webex connect support

 I can confirm that the next version of the client connects to cisco webex connect XMPP servers.  There are still a few quirks that I intend to iron out, but basic the functionality is working.

Edit 4/13/2011 :
 you can find instructions on the new monal site's  help page for webex

http://monal.im/help/cisco-webex/