Halcyon 1.2.0 - The next big step and a view into future

We've released Halcyon 1.2.0 a few days ago!
It has been months since we released Halcyon 1.1.0 and we did much within that time.
We released many patch releases for fixing bugs or implementing smaller features.
Desktop notifications which were announced by our 1.1.0 blog post have already been around since Halcyon 1.1.4.
Another big step was optimizing the Pleroma compatibility as much as you don't feel the difference between a Mastodon and Pleroma backend anymore if you use Halcyon.
With the 1.2.0 release we added another thing we've already announced in our previous blog post.
You can now change your profile settings in our completely redesigned settings menu which also got some new Halcyon settings.
We want you to be able to do everything within Halcyon without needing the Mastodon frontend.
Only if that's possible Halcyon is really complete.
Well,there are still many things missing until we achieve this goal and there will come even more as Mastodon doesn't stop implementing new features which Halcyon needs,too.
But I think we're on a good way to make Halcyon more useful with every release.
Unluckily we still don't have a dark theme,a mobile version,support for multiple accounts and translations.
These features require very much time and work which we currently prefer to use for implementing many smaller features.
An emoji picker isn't available currently,too but that will come sooner than the other big things.
An short look into the future of Halcyon:

• Implement all things we announced in the last post
• Custom profile fields
• Trending hashtags
• Full mute and block management
• Larger who to follow page
• And much more

We hope you like what we did and are happy with our plans.
If you have any feedback,please let us know in the comments,NotABug issues (please don't use our Github repo anymore!) or using Mastodon or Pleroma to @halcyon@social.csswg.org
You can download Halcyon for free at NotABug: halcyon-suite/halcyon
By the way our network grew extremely.
We do now have many instances which you can all use for free and without tracking our ads.
Please consider donating to your instance admin if they accept donations.
They give it to you for free but servers are expensive!
Here are the instances which are currently available (that may change over time,our NotABug repository does always contain the current list):

• https://social.dev-wiki.de
• https://halcyon.toromino.de
• https://itter.photog.social
• https://halcyon.bka.li
• https://halcyon.tilde.team
• https://halcyon.distsn.org
• https://halcyon.cybre.space WARNING: Very old release,doesn't get updates!

Our move from Github to NotABug

Some days ago Microsoft announced that they'll buy Github,the worlds leading developer platform.
Microsoft has already bought many things - and changed them to worse.
We believe that the same thing will happen with Github and well,there are actually many coders changing their platform or at least announcing to do so.
As one of the first we really did it and we didn't only change to the next centralized closed source platform like most others did.
We decided for the open alternative - We decided for the non commercial way - We decided for privacy,for trust and against ads and tracking.
When I wrote my announcement at Mastodon I first thought there'll be many people raging against us and complaining about having to change their platform.
But actually nothing of that happened: We received 13 likes,13 boosts,some new followers and not a single complaint.
This community is great!
We consider this change as the first step into an even more open world and we hope many coders will change,too.
Thank you for your support!
Our new repository is on https://notabug.org/halcyon-suite/halcyon

Roadmap

We haven't planned disappearing from Github at all.
Starting with version 1.2.0 new releases will be available only on NotABug.
Instead we will disable the community functions step by step while leaving an unmaintained mirror at the end.
Today we will close all open issues and write them an notice our change while solving the issues in the new repository and keeping them in our todo list.
10 days after that we will completely disable the Github issues function for this repository.
The old repository will stay online to prevent people from creating fakes under our well-known link but we will put it into read-only mode without any future changes.
If you want to share your opinion about that, you can do so using the blog comments or write an Mastodon/Pleroma post to @halcyon@social.csswg.org

Halcyon - What we did and what we will do

We're happy to annouce that we've just released Halcyon version 1.1.0!
It's not an aprils fool,it's our easter egg for you!
That's a very big step as this release is much more then just a bugfix.
We did much to come to this point and fixed many bugs in Halcyon with minor versions but don't forget that Mastodon often gets new features and Halcyon needs them,too.
So we've just implemented the things we think you missed most in the past.
Custom Emojis are now in Halcyon starting at version 1.1.0!
They are fully supported now without any limitations or known issues.
An emoji picker isn't yet available but it's planned that one will come with a future version.
While most Mastodon instances use the standard char limit of 500 chars for a toot,Pleroma is also compatible with Halcyon and often has different limits.
So if you're using Halcyon with an instance which allows a custom toot length,Halcyon does now also allow that and automatically detects your instances limit.
If your instance doesn't send an custom limit over the /instance API call,Halcyon will allow you to use the default limit of 500 chars.
Another change in this version is that Halcyon instance admins do now have the possibility to change the terms of service by changing the terms.txt file with support for HTML formatting but without the need for HTML knowledge.
You can use HTML there but you needn't to say it in simple words.
Modifying the login/terms.php file is not needed anymore.
While the previous Halcyon version finally solved the weird Who to follow suggestions,it also had a new bug because of that which required you to reload the page after the login for the toots to load.
That bug has been solved now and the toots should load fine directly after the login.
But is that everything you want Halcyon to do?
Surely not and that's why we've already had a very big list of upcoming features from the beginning of this project and now we'll make a short list of the most important ones of them:

• Mobile design that makes Halcyon usable in every phone browser
• Dark design for both desktop and mobile
• Support for multiple accounts at the same time - switch between them with a single click
• Desktop notifications which are also visible when you're in another tab or window and appear when you get a new notification
• Support for translations - use Halcyon in your own language
• An emoji picker for selecting the custom emojis of your instance
• Edit your profile settings using Halcyon
• We hope you're happy with what we're doing.

If you have additional ideas or thoughts about our plans,please write them into the comments,create an Github issue or write us a toot to @halcyon@social.csswg.org
You can download Halcyon for free at GitHub: halcyon-suite/halcyon
Or you can use it for free on one of two publicly available instances: https://halcyon.toromino.de - https://social.dev-wiki.de

The first new Halcyon release is on GitHub

It has been two weeks now since we took over the Halcyon client for Mastodon.
The original developer hasn't done anything new with it for months.
Two weeks ago,he deleted the original Github repository and took the official demo instance down.
We didn't want to let the best,easiest and most beautiful client for the worlds best social network die.
That's why we recovered Halcyon from a fork,reopened the original Github repository and uploaded the original source code.
That all was two weeks ago but we also said that we want to continue this great project and create future updates.
Today we released Halcyon version 1.0.0 which doesn't bring any new features or bugfixes.
It's the base of every upcoming Halcyon release where we changed all files to our own code style to make future updates easier.
We also removed the need for a MySQL database because it was used so few that it can be also done with text files what makes installation faster and easier and requires less programs installed on the server.
Sure,you're waiting for new features and less bugs but the most important thing was updating the code base to make that possible in future.
There are already very many things on our ToDo list,so stay tuned.
Probably we will publish a list of planned features in future but not today.
You can download the source code for free at GitHub.
You can also use it online for free at halcyon.cybre.space but please note that we don't own this instance,have no control over it and don't know if the administrator will install our updates.

Our new forum is online

Two days ago we brought the new inofficial German Deepin community online.
We worked some weeks at this forum with the goal to create something unique which doesn't look like thousands of other forums do, too.
Now we think we have archived this goal because our forum is different like all our services are.
The feedback at the official English Deepin forum was very positive.
We hope we can give users of this great operating system answers to their questions in German in future.
Additionally to this forum we will also put the link to our German Chromebook community at our homepage.
This was started as a hobby project first with the intention to have an quick and dirty alternative to the only other German Chromebook forum which was seen by some spammers.
Now we will have both forums as normal services, not just hobby projects.
Deepin forum: www.deepin-forum.de - Chromebook forum: chromeos-forum.forumieren.de

Happy new year!

We wish you all a happy new year 2018!
In 2017 we did many new things.
We published YouFail on which we started working in 2016 and we published a completely new overview page.
The next thing to come at the beginning of 2018 will be an inofficial German forum for Deepin Linux.
Don't worry if you speak another language,we didn't forget you.
The official Deepin Forum is English and there already are some inofficial ones in other languages so it wouldn't make much sense to open another one for them.
But our new bigger services will definitely come international as always.
The first international thing to come is our new account system but at the beginning,you can't do anything with that account.
After that the completely rebuilt Sites will come and that's what you need the account for.
That's all for now!
We already have a list of other planned things but it's not sure that all of them will be realized and how long that all takes so we will keep the secret a little bit longer.
Now have a nice year!

Our new website is now online!

We've now already managed a big part of recreating ourself.
The new Nikisoft site is now online at www.nikisoft.one.
We're very happy to announce this.
The next step will be the complete recreation of the Nikisoft Pages admin panel and some updates to the client side too.
It will be easier with more functions and it will get a completely new design.
Most things will be done with AJAX in the admin panel so it will be much faster.
We can't provide a release date for now but we will work hard at it.

YouFail is now online!

It has been a long time since our last site,this blog,went online.
Now we're happy to announce that YouFail is online!
It's available in four languages:

• English
• German
• Russian
• Chinese

There isn't much content now.
Content should be created by the users.
Participate now and give others something to laugh about!
We would be happy to read your feedback in the comments.
Open YouFail

Our new blog is just the beginning

It has been 9 years now since BW5RWS was started.
It was never popular and the services weren't really special.
Now we start the completely new Nikisoft with new services and, of course, a new blog.
Some differences of the new Nikisoft:

• It's available in more languages
• You don't need an account for many things
• New services won't be combined in one big site

See this as the first step into Nikisofts future.
Our completely new site and some new services will be online soon.
The old BW5RWS will stay online but will only get important bugfixes.
What services we are planning:

• YouFail, a site where you can share funny fails
• VeriClick, a human friendly Captcha service
• A remake of our homepage builder BW5RWS Sites

That sounds interesting?
Stay tuned and come back in a few weeks.