Xblaze

Just a quick bug fix. 1.1.2 fixes an issue that would cause friends that were both a friend and a clan member to fall out of the Xfire group when a new friend was added.

Hot on the heels of Xblaze iPhone 1.1 is Xblaze for Mac 1.1.

That’s right folks, again, I promised you that I would merge the changes I made to the Xblaze iPhone source back into the Mac version. That is now done and you can download Xblaze for Mac with clan support and less crashes than ever!

Head on over to the Xblaze for Mac OS X page and hit up the download link!

So last week, I promised all Xblaze iPhone users Communities (clans/guilds) support.

Those waiting will be happy to know that today I submitted Xblaze 1.1 to the App Store reviewers. Xblaze 1.1 contains the communities support that I promised, and it’s working really nicely, if I do say so myself.

I’m hoping that the update won’t get held up too long being reviewed, and that you can all get hold of it soon.

Meanwhile, check out the screenshorts of clan Xblaze’s communities support:

Xblaze iPhone Communities Support

Also in this update is

• Manage your Xfire preferences
  • Turn nicknames on and off
  • Hide/show offline friends
  • Hide/show friends of friends
  • Hide/show timestamps in chats
• Numerous bug fixes
  • Prevent a crash when a friend logs off while you’re chatting to them
  • Corrected ability to add friends of friends or clan mates to your friend list
  • Corrected the behaviour that allowed a user to attempt to delete a Friend of Friend from the FoF group (which also prevents a crash)
• Spruced up the Xblaze icon somewhat, looks a little flashier.

So I hope you all enjoy this eagerly anticipated update. And thank you all for your continued support for Xblaze!

Just got the email last night that Xblaze iPhone 1.0.2 is now live on the App Store .

New in this update:

• Better support for Avatars
  • Xblaze iPhone will now download the same avatar that is shown on your Xfire profile page, regardless of whether it is a custom upload, a screenshot clipping, a gallery avatar or the default Xfire avatar.
  • Avatars are cached properly, Xblaze no longer relies on the system level cache, and the avatars are written to the filesystem for faster loading and to prevent unnecessary network access
• A few UI tweaks, mainly using a grey selection style for the table cells and a new icon to dismiss the keyboard in the chat view.

Go grab it!

An update for Xblaze iPhone has just gone live on the App Store.

This update fixes a timing issue where the app could get stuck on the “Connecting…” screen while attempting to log in. This seems to happen more often on very fast internet connections (so using Xblaze over 3G is more likely to work than on a super fast wifi connection).

This has been fixed now, so those of you with super fast wifi connections can rest assured.

I’ve also just pushed the 1.0.2 update into review, which includes better support for avatars and caching, and a few UI tweaks too, so there’s something to look forward to in a few days.

(Ps. I’m absolutely loving this new faster turnover with the App Store approval process! Hehe)

Very happy to announce that Xblaze has just been approved by Apple and should appear in the App Store very very shortly!

I’m really happy about this, and I’m really impress at how fast Apple worked through my submission. The app went into review at 9:15am EST, and was approved by 15:51pm EST. That’s just over 6 and a half hours! Excellent work Apple!

So everyone must go and download it, and don’t forget to leave a review!!

PS. I’ll have a page up soon where you can see a screen cast of the app…

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who signed up for the Xblaze iPhone Beta. Your input and feedback has been extremely useful throughout the testing period.

I would also like to announce that Xblaze iPhone has now been submitted to the App Store for review! I’m hoping the approval process won’t take that long, and Xblaze should be available to download very shortly.

Here are some screen shots to tide you over

Xblaze 1.0.3 is available on the download page. Go grab it.

New in this version:

• Fixed a bug that prevented Xblaze from connecting when Adium starts if you check the “Connect when Adium opens” option.
• Fixed an issue where Friends of Friends were randomly bring shown in the contact list. Current solution is to not show any friends of friends at all. A friends of friends solution will be worked out in a later release.

Hey guys, just a heads up that Xblaze 1.0.1 is up on the downloads page. Go grab it!

• Xblaze will now show typing notifications when your friends are typing, and send typing notifications to your friends when you are typing.
• Plugged a few minor memory leaks

Ok, so I’ve submitted Xblaze 1.0 to the Adium Xtras site, and it would seem that either someone or something has submitted it to MacUpdate and Version Tracker – so I’m hoping the word is getting out there pretty quickly. Everyone tell all your friends that use a Mac and Xfire!

I also wanted to tell you guys that a 1.0.1 update will be released pretty soon with typing notifications. After that I’ll be working on getting some game/server info into the tooltips that show up for each contact when you hover your mouse over them. I think Xblaze used to do this in previous versions, so it seems it was something I missed when re-implementing everything from 0.8 into 1.0.

The way that Xblaze reads its games list has changed in this version. It’s somewhat more complicated than it used to be, and requires a little knowledge of XML to edit the list. The icons for the games are bundled into a .mar archive file, which means to add new icons requires regenerating that archive. Fortunately when Archon was developing MacFire, he wrote some handy tools to make this a little easier. They should be scriptable, and I hope to have a guide and possibly a script that will auto-generate a new games list and icons archive to be used with MacFire.

Also, some people may notice that the buddy list refreshes quite slowly when you first login. I’ll admit that the code to update the buddy list is really bad, and not in any way optimised, so I’ll be looking at how to make that a little better at some point too. Those of you with larger buddy lists will notice it more.

Don’t forget that you can e-mail me if you have any problems, and the forum has been cleaned up and ready to use too. If there are any old-skool Xblaze users out there who would like to contribute some guides on how to get Xblaze up and running for new users,  feel free to post them in the forum and I’ll sticky them.