fTelnet

Just wanted to post an update about the next release...I was really close to uploading a new version but I had a request for VT100 support come in, and in looking into that I discovered some of the escape sequences were being handled incorrectly, so I'm now in the process of implementing a much more complete, yet simpler, parser. So I apologize to those who I told I would be "uploading a new version later tonight", since that obviously never happened! But hopefully in the next couple days I'll have time to work on and complete the new parser.

Just uploaded a beta version of fTelnet that supports RIPScrip! Support is still in the early stages, so only a small portion of the protocol has been implemented, but it's somewhat usable so I thought I'd upload it for people to have a look at.

With the recent release of Firefox 4, I've had a few people email me letting me know that HtmlTerm isn't working. The issue here is that early beta versions of Firefox 4 did support WebSockets (which is why the message in HtmlTerm mentions Firefox 4 beta suports HtmlTerm), but then support was removed after it was shown to be vulnerable to attacks.

Unfortunately there's nothing that I as the programmer of HtmlTerm, or you as the administrator of your website, can do to fix this -- it's up to each user to individually enable WebSockets support in their browser if they want. I'm working on updating the error message in HtmlTerm to give instructions on how to enable WebSocket support in both Firefox and Opera (since it suffers from the same "disabled by default" problem). Hopefully I'll have a chance to upload this new version this weekend.

I've just uploaded fTelnet and HtmlTerm (and Web BBS Assistant, though it wasn't updated) v11.03.14! It's a fairly minor update from the last beta, so if you've been running that then there's not much new in this, but if you're still using the last non-beta version from last September, then there's been a lot of changes to digest.

Probably the biggest change is that HtmlTerm is now quite functional, so you have a decent alternative to fTelnet for users who don't run an OS supported by Adobe Flash! Although it comes with its own compatibility issues, since not all browsers support all the required HTML5 features yet.

This is kind of old news, but it slipped under my radar until just now...apparently Apple finally enabled WebSocket support in Safari on the iPhone/iPad as of the 4.2 update. So this means that HtmlTerm will now work on those devices!

The screen is REALLY tiny on my iPod Touch, so I'm not sure how useful HtmlTerm will be on that device, but it might look alright on the much larger iPad. Unfortunately the closest thing I have to an iPad is the iOS Simulator that ships with XCode (which I run on the closest thing I have to a MacBook, my Toshiba Tecra running OSX in VMWare), so it's pretty hard to tell exactly how well it works on that device.

So if you have an iPad, please check it out and let me know how it works. You'll have to click in the textbox to bring up the on-screen keyboard, but after that things should work pretty good. Well except for the fact that the on-screen keyboard doesn't have arrow keys, so if your BBS needs them (lightbar navigation or something), then you're going to have problems. But maybe I'll see about adding arrow key buttons to the webpage so you can use those as necessary.

Just uploaded Beta 4 of fTelnet/HtmlTerm/WBA. Didn't expect to have time to make these changes so soon, or I wouldn't have released Beta3 yesterday!

Anyway, this release includes several changes:

• ClientVars.js has a new ConnectAnsi parameter that you can use to specify a custom location for the connect.ans file. Both fTelnet and HtmlTerm will understand this new setting
• ClientVars.js also has a few new codepages added to support Atari ASCII (ATASCII) systems. Unfortunately this is only partially implemented at this time, so it only half works in fTelnet, and doesn't work in HtmlTerm at all
• HtmlTerm will no longer throw errors when run from IE8. It still won't work, since IE8 doesn't support Canvas or WebSocket, but at least it'll fall-back to fTelnet for those of you using that setup
• WBA had it's interface changed around a little. Now you'll use the close button to hide the form (and double click the tray icon to restore it), and to actually quit theres a File -> Exit menu option

Just uploaded Beta 3 of fTelnet/HtmlTerm/WBA. The only change in this release fixes a Firefox related fTelnet problem, where the client wouldn't display. Turns out this is due to a change I made to allow for the transparent portions of the border to actually be transparent (rather than white, like they originally were), so unfortunately the only fix for now is to take the transparency back out, which means those of you with dark backgrounds are going to see white pixels in the border again. Sorry!

Just uploaded Beta 2 of fTelnet/HtmlTerm/WBA. This release doesn't change anything for fTelnet/HtmlTerm, but it fixes a bug in WBA that prevented it from acting as a socket policy server in many cases. So if you were having problems getting fTelnet connecting to your BBS while using WBA, please download the updated version.