Syrinx started out fairly simple, with only the most basic functionality to make it useful to me in day-to-day usage. In fact that’s all it started out as was something I would use everyday. Then I decided to share it. Since the 1.0 release I have added some really great customization and functionality. A lot of these enhancements came from user suggestions and others from my ever growing list of ideas. With the last release I feel Syrinx has really pulled ahead of other Twitter apps in terms of functionality.
Unfortunately this great functionality is being dragged down by the slow moving time interface. What seemed like a great idea at the time, using NSCollectionView, has really started limiting what can be done, and how well it works. As many users have experienced once a large number of tweets is displayed in Syrinx, scrolling starts to slow down. Searching becomes painful and the great new Show Conversations feature takes way too long.
With all this in mind I’ve put a temporary halt on the next feature release I was planning to dedicate some time to making Syrinx’s timeline faster and more efficient. I’ve got some ideas that I’m testing out and though it may mean losing some of the slick animations that NSCollectionView provided, I don’t think they’ll be missed if there is a suitable speedup.
Syrinx 1.3 has been released! Now with a Friends window that offers searching, following and unfollowing of friends. Also, use the new Conversations feature to see a thread of replies right within Syrinx.
New features include:
- Friends – View all the people you follow in the new Friends window.
- Follow/Unfollow – Use the new Friends window to unfollow current friends and start following new ones.
- Conversations – View conversations right in Syrinx, easily follow a thread of replies.
- UI Enhancements – Lots of small visual tweaks.
And version 1.3 contains the following bug fixes:
- Fixed a crash if a user had no tweets.
- Show Current Status menu item text is now correct.
- Scroll to Newest tweet preference now works correctly.
- Duplicate messages after unpausing is fixed.
- Preferences window no longer hides when Syrinx is inactive.
- Improved system date format.
- Replies now specify the correct replied to tweet.
At last! Syrinx 1.0 is out. You can currently find it on my website: http://www.mrrsoftware.com/MRRSoftware/Syrinx.html I have also submitted it to MacUpdate, VersionTracker and Apple Downloads.
Aside from adding brief credits to the About Box, this is essentially 1.0b4.
I’m hoping for lots of downloads, feedback and hits to the new site.
My website development has been put on hold as I work through bugs popping up in the latest Syrinx betas. I pushed out 1.0b1 on Monday. Today I have cranked out both b2 and b3, as two separate deadlock bugs appeared. The first was my fault as I had failed to properly initialize an array. The second was the fact that creating an NSAttributedString with HTML goes out to the run loop. While there it is entirely possible for Syrinx to accept more events, and then try to reacquire a lock that is already being held on that thread that was waiting for the string. While I thought I had cleaned all of that up during my refactor, I had overlooked one cause. I moved a line of code, added an if check and there we have b3. 1.0b3 is also the first release to be hosted on the new web server here at mrrsoftware.com.
Now I just need to finish up the website, which is very close to done. By then hopefully I can get Syrinx out as a full 1.0 and let the masses have at it. I already have a surprisingly long list of future features, plus lots of feedback from betas I have given out.
