So much going on! A new semester has befallen me at school, so the releases won't be as frequent- but the latest release (a bugfix, 1.4b) is very usable and I'll be doing some testing on it while I'm on campus. Sadly, extended use in Windows leads to some slowdowns, so I've added the Garbage Collector which simply calls Java's garbage collector. Also, the picture-doodad is now properly cross-platform for either type directory separator (POSIX or DOS). I hope a lot of people get this download, as it is the best one yet.
EXCITING new download. All the former bugs have been resolved, and a few new ones created. Download File now works for binary files (as long as they are small enough to be loaded into memory), and there is an image viewer for those of who who can't seem to find your way around without seeing those pretty JPEGs and whatnot. It's been pretty thoroughly tested and there are only a few minor qualms: Firstly, in Windows, the LocalFile button of the Image Viewer doesn't work because, well, surprise-surprise, Windows doesn't use standard slash-separators. That will be fixed either in 1.5, or there might be a 1.4a fixing that problem. Secondly, you cannot use the Download File for things larger than the amount of memory your JavaVM allows. It's because the downloader loads it in memory rather than dumping it straight to the hard-drive. This will also be fixed in the next release. But, aside from the apologetic nature of these past few sentences: I am proud to state that there have been some major major updates in the code, and a lot of annoying little bugs and things have been removed. And, finally, I've added a search feature (which was coded in about a half-hour about two hours before I wrote this news segment). It's been tested in Linux and (to a lesser extent) Win32. As always, it's available in the Downloads section.
History has been made. Since the very first version, it appears that more than 100 downloads of MAJOB have occurred, and we haven't even made it out of α (alpha) yet! Keep those downloads a-coming. Don't be shy to test it out. The 1.4 release will be coming up soon enough. I've been making good progress with it. Some much-needed features are going to be made. The reason for this is that I want to be able to take MAJOB with me when college starts up. For that to happen, it has to be useful. Therefore, I have to make my improvements. Anywhich ways, thanks for the centennial download; hopefully the next 100 will come much faster.
While I have been making some strides with MAJOB, I have also diverted some attention to other Java projects. One such is a binary clock. It's a fun little program that does exactly what one of my old PHP projects does-- tells the time using binary numbers. It's pretty useless, unless you want to impress some friends. You can e-mail any bugs to me, but I'll warn you it was written in a couple of minutes as a test of some new naming conventions I should start using. Anyway, the file is here if you're interested; otherwise, keep on the lookout for future MAJOB releases. Speaking of business, I have decided that the next release will have something to deal with URI data. I posted a Livejournal Entry from MAJOB and all the %20s and such were giving me a headache. So, for those who don't feel like peering at a Unicode chart every time they try making some post-data, I think a little window that converts spaces to %20s and all the other punctuation to its proper value is in order. That's all for now. And don't forget to give that binary clock a try.
Some new progress made on the 1.4 release. It's still a ways off, but I've at least fixed some issues with the HTML parser and made a successful post on Livejournal from MAJOB. It is currently possible with 1.3, but it requires that you turn off HTML parsing so that you can read the FORM elements like "textarea" and "option." All that's fixed so the parser doesn't over-zealously parse the important bits out of the form. Otherwise, binary data handling still isn't finished, and, to be quite frank, I'm not sure when it'll be done. But, MAJOB is still very useful in its current state. I was rather surprised about how many of the bugs have come out. There's still a lot of work to do, but, at least it's got a lot of features in it for a browser coming from scratch.
Two news posts in one day, before 1PM even. Last night, shortly after my previous news post (which was something like at 1AM), I actually wrote a successful algorithm for dechunking HTML files. So, now you guys have it, a new release with a beefed-up (but slowed down, sadly) HTML parser, and real monospaced fonts. Also, get this, it actually asks you before writing over your existing data. We're still in alpha, though, and the "download file" class can only handle ASCII files (that is .txt, and whatnot). As always, it's available in the download section. Also, sometime later today there will probably be a website update to fix some style concerns I have. Exciting things lie ahead.
Alright. I've got some emails regarding MAJOB's rather poor condition. The truth is that Version 1.3 will fix some problems (not all, of course), and is coming along more slowly because I'm not anxious to throw out a new release. Some issues are still unresolved. It's still running slowly in Windows, but that's being resolved. Un-chunking of data is still the largest HTTP-related problem, next to LiveJournal being un-cooperative in Windows. Be patient, and don't throw away your main-stream browser, by any means, in favor of this one. The releases may say 1.x, but MAJOB is still less than three months old. It's a toddler. It's alpha.
Happy 2007, folks! The MAJOB code has been getting cleaner and cleaner. I think all the code that was supposed to come out in 2006 will definitely come out in 2007- most of which are actually scheduled and [at least partially] implemented in the 1.3 release. The next release is looking quite promise. Some of the code will be borrowed from a local backup from 1.2 that was discarded due to over-simplification, but, the un-chunking problem is getting to the point where I need to re-investigate some code. More updates later. I definitely want that implemented in the next release.
There is some good news, but there is some bad news, too. The good news is
that there is a sleek and flashy new release. The annoying button interface
has been replaced by this technological breakthrough called "menus". They
allow one to create many buttons where just one was previously. I should
have thought of putting those in a few releases ago. Also, the HTML parsing
has gone up a bit. The bad news, though, is that there are still a lot of
features that were supposed to come out in this release that aren't in
this release. These include finally being able to parse chunked HTML files
and more complex cut-and-paste handling. Not being able to un-chunk
downloaded data means that there is no real file-handling yet, because if
you were to download a chunked file without de-chunking it, every file
a user would try to download would be corrupted. But, it's a release, and
it does,for all intents and purposes, work. In the next release, expect
to see some more documentation.
More news: Old versions are being uploaded of the primitive and rather
embarrasing beginnings for MAJOB- they are versions 0.9 and 1.0.
Second news of the day-- I downloaded and gave the new JDK 6 a run and discovered that the antialiasing doesn't work in the new JDK, so it's been removed, as well as some extraneous code that this version of MAJOB isn't using yet. So, to help out the filesize, 1.1a has been released.
The website was started today with only the latest release of MAJOB. The previous versions will be uploaded at a later time. The latest version fixes many of the problems that were present in the earlier versions. The earlier versions, will, however, be uploaded for posterity's sake.
This page was created by Mark "ScottishPig" Burger.
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