Update Blogging has become pretty sporadic around here. From time to time there's something that I come across in the newsreader that may be worth posting about but then I realize that someone else has already posted about it (that's why I'm reading about it in my newsreader). Also, the whole photoblogging thing seems to be more interesting as well to me. I can take a picture, it can be absolutely crappy, but it's still wholly original.

However, there's hope for Going Nowhere. The plan is start blogging more about Gush development. I think it's good to let people see some of our thought process, and hopefully with some reader comments along the way, we could make adjustments to "features" before they become bugs in the next release.

So what's so great about the new release? First, tons of performance improvements in the UI. Wes found a hidden feature in Flash that makes the program 10x faster! Actually, that's not true. He's just re-written anything that's list-based like the roster, the news panel, and the newsreader. The new list code is at least an order of magnitude better than the old code. People will finally be able to load as many feeds into the news panel without having a Cray as their desktop machine. We did all of this because we want Danny back!

The other thing that's finally done is Gush's (Text Conferencing) implementation. It's really a thing of beauty, if I do say so myself. It pretty much supports all the features as outlined in the MUC specification. Well, we haven't gotten the stuff working where a one-to-one conversation gets turned into a conference room. Then again, I'm not sure if any of the server implementations support it either. I've tested our MUC implementation against most of the servers that I can get my hands on, and I was surprised by the number of implementations that don't support list operations for editing owners, admins, etc.

Those are some of the exciting updates. At this point all I have to do is put up a screenshot, and then the next version officially becomes vaporware.

Some things outlined in our roadmap are not going to make it into the next release. We're kicking ourselves about it, but that's the reality of developing software. There's some other software realities that I want to rant and rave about, but not in this post and not today. Like my dad says, "Don't spill all your candy is the lobby."