Wednesday, June 22, 2011

bitBulletin 1.4 has been approved

bitBulletin 1.4 has been approved by Apple and is now available in the App Store.

[B]What's New In Version 1.4[/B]

- New: Small status bar at bottom displaying more information while working.
- New: A-Z index display in Sites list.
- New: Invalid unicode characters handling.
- New: Site error is now directing you to web browser and gives you a Error button in the toolbar.
- New: New font sizes for posts.
- Fix: Image caching issue.
- Fix: Invalid URL crash in Sites.
- Fix: Better error/warning handling.
- Fix: Fixed URL reformatting when character # is used it.
- Fix: Missing forum id, thread id and post id error messages are not showing anymore, the element is simply deleted from the list now.

http://itunes.apple.com/app/bitbulletin/id396660789?mt=8#

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

New theme

Here is a preview of a new theme we are working on for version 1.21. It is vaguely based on the Android GUI but it will be called WB theme.

Version 1.21 is on the way.

Work on version 1.2.1 has started today. We are focusing on fixing login issues for this release.
  • Fix: Login menu option will now work even if forum engine type has not been already discovered.
  • Fix: When closing last tab for a site, it now keeps forums detection information.
  • Fix: Fixed NULL error message showing.
  • Fix: Can show sub-version numbers with 2 digits.
As many of you might have noticed, bitBulletin can update it's forums definition files directly from the Internet. This allows us to provide you with fast updates. So login issues have mostly been resolved yesterday. You won't need to wait for an official update on the App Store.

Monday, March 21, 2011

bitBulletin 1.2 has been submitted

bitBulletin version 1.2 has finally been submitted to Apple. In this new version you will find the following new features:
  • Threads subscriptions maintenance and syncing with bitBulletin's favorites.
  • Better redirection support.
  • Ability to search in the Forums list.
  • View new posts menu option. 
We have worked really hard to get IPBoard, phpBB and vBulletin support in bitBulletin. We are now happy with the results. There are, of course, tons of things to add to bitBulletin and some things to fix and improve but we are happy with the state of the app right now.
You can check out bitBulletin at the following address in the App Store:  http://itunes.apple.com/app/bitbulletin/id396660789?mt=8

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Work on update 1.2 is under way.

Even if update 1.1 was submitted over the weekend, it does not mean we will take a rest from improving bitBulletin. So today, we did just that, work on improving the app. We also started working on a nice little video to demonstrate the prowess of bitBulletin.

We have started implementing advanced features that we were planning for later on. The first one displays the number of new posts in the Sites menu as a badge on top of the site icon. The second is if you click on a link in a post and that link points to a valid forum address, then instead of using the internal web browser to view that link, normal bitBulletin display will be used. There are quite a few more new features we will add in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

Here are today's changes which will make it into update 1.2:

  • New: Option to reset settings (preferences) to their default settings.
  • New: Sites, Tabs and Favorites are sorted by site names now.
  • New: If a link is clicked within a post, if it points to a forum, thread or another post, it will go there, not within the internal web browser.
  • New: Browsing integration for phpbb v2.x sites.
  • New: Integrated web browser toolbar buttons (refresh, back, forward) are enabled/disabled appropriately.
  • New: New posts count badge showing in Sites list.
  • New: Ability to "View new posts..." only from Sites popup menu.
  • New: New option to change font family for posts.
  • New: Post's quotes show with nice styled box.
  • Fix: In phpbb 3.x, show all threads by default.
  • Fix: If no post # is found, the date/time field width will be expanded.
  • Fix: Redone css stylesheets internally.

 Here is a screen shot for the new posts badge icon in the Sites list.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

bitBulletin 1.1 has been submitted

After a long hard working week, we have finally submitted version 1.1 to Apple yesterday. This update is going to be HUGE. We literally mean it. We have rewritten a lot of code internally, optimized it and tested it extensively.

We hope to prove to you that this new product is important to us and that we will keep on updating it to make sure it meets our standard of quality.

Here is what update 1.1 will bring:

Fix: Optimized the data extraction engine even more.
Fix: Data encoding fixed. Support for any non-ascii characters is now in place.
Fix: Cached icons duplicate for two domains.
Fix: Cannot activate  site's tab.
Fix: Open first page in new tab.
Fix: Search bar handled properly when logging in and out.
Fix: Error reporting has more information for us.
Fix: Rewrote login/logout code. Way more robust.
Fix: Looping issue, causing double-posts. This should also bring faster data processing.
Fix: Popup menu positioning on iPad.
Fix: Categories not needing a valid url to be displayed (internal stuff).
Fix: Popup menu on iOS 4.2 in landscape view. (known Apple bug)
Fix: Base URL issues.
Fix: Login issue and forum engines using forum.php instead of index.php.
Fix: Logout crash issue.
Fix: When a connection error occurs, it does not crash anymore.
Fix: Memory leaks when accessing the Tabs and Favourites menu.
Fix: Crash when connection fails while other tabs are still loading.
Fix: Posts not being the right width (only 320 pixels wide) on the first load on the iPad
Fix: Issue when a site is removed while tabs are still opened.
Fix: Speed improvement while analyzing data.
Fix: Back button disappearing.
Fix: Faster posts refresh when rotating device.
Fix: Removed duplicate forum categories.
Fix: Once a site's forum type detection has been done once, it won't be again.

New: When displaying a web page on iPad, always does it in fullscreen.
New: News will be showed automatically when updated on our server.
New: Sites and categories are now sorted alphabetically.
New: Added over 45 new sites in our ever expanding list.
New: Tabs icon now displays the number of tab items in a badge.
New: Support for 'forum.php' URL style forums.
New: Ability to have disabled forums in sites. (Some forum types are not supported).
New: Multi-part content-type HTTP support (for phpBB and others compatibility).
New: Full phpBB 3.x support. (Including login, search, quote, reply, new thread).
New: Posts font size customization.
New: Selected tab name shows in bold.
New: Basic browsing (no login, no search, no posts/replies creation yet) for phpBB 3.x.
New: Ability to Reply to a thread from within the posts.
New: Added the ability to have different button styles in toolbar.
New: Better error reporting message dialog.
New: Device and bitBulletin app information is provided in support emails. Without this information we won't be able to provide technical support.
New: When application becomes active (on iOS 4.x and up only), forums recognition engine definitions and forums list is reloaded so you don't have to restart bitBulletin manually anymore.
New: Added around 40 new sites in our ever expanding list.
New: Added support for dates like 11 Minutes Ago, 3 Hours Ago...

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

It's coming

We should be able to resubmit 1.1 either tomorrow or Thursday. Great progress has been made today. Check our news page for more information.

News Page