Change Log
- February 13, 2012
- Added a new ArrowKeys configuration setting. Probably not useful for anybody, but I use it in the webOS version so that people can have an on-screen arrow key (since the default virtual keyboard doesn't have them, and the bluetooth keyboard ones don't work)
- Change the way the ConnectAnsi parameter works, so if it is left blank then it won't try to request a file from the web server
- Updated to FLEX SDK 4.5.1, which now requires a minimum Flash version of 10.2 (I know SDK 4.6 is out, but it requires Flash 11 which is not supported on my TouchPad yet!)
- Cleared the keyboard input buffer after a connection is made (so login prompts don't have garbage added if you hit a key before connecting
- January 11, 2012
- Updated WBA so it can act as a websocket proxy for multiple destinations. This means you'll need to update your .ini file after updating!
- Updated WBA to support Chrome 16, which implemented a newer version of the websocket protocol
- Reverted the oct 23 change that re-displays the connect.ans file 5 seconds after disconnecting
- Updated default RIP screen to mention fTelnet/HtmlTerm/R&M Software, rather than Shotgun/GUNN Data Systems
- Renamed connect.ans and connect.rip since many webservers don't like serving files with those extensions
- November 2nd, 2011
- Updated WBA so when I add new configuration options, it will automatically add them to the .ini file the next time it is run (so then you can close WBA, edit the new setting, and re-run WBA)
- Hopefully fixed the RIP icon loading problem (don't have LORD setup right now to test, so please let me know)
- October 23rd, 2011
- Zipped the JSON encoded stroke fonts, so RIP users will only have a ~75kB file to download, rather than a ~537kB file
- Adding the JSON and ZIP code increased the fTelnet.swf file by a bit, but it's still under 110kB (so far)
- Added support for custom Connect and Save buttons again. I removed this awhile ago since it involved extra HTTP requests that slowed load time, but in adding the feature back in the extra HTTP requests will only be made if the configuration option is set, which means people using the default buttons won't suffer a delay
- Removed the scaling of the connect and save buttons for non-9x16 fonts. It was just plain ugly!
- Added a timer to re-display the connect screen 5 seconds after disconnecting
- Fixed a problem with RIPIconPath not being used
- October 22nd, 2011
- Much clean-up to help reduce the fTelnet.swf filesize, including:
- Removal of the BorderStyle configuration option. Borders can be added via HTML, if desired, so removing this shrank the .swf by 33kB (~10%)
- Removal of all embedded text mode fonts, except the default CP437 at 9x16. All the other fonts are still supported, but will be loaded on demand. This shrank the .swf by 95kB (~31%)
- Removal of the ebmedded graphic mode stroke fonts. Again, these are still supported, but will be loaded on demand. This shrank the .swf by 84kB (~27%)
- So these 3 simple changes mean fTelnet.swf went from 311kB to 99kB, which is a reduction of ~68%. What does this actually mean? Well here's some examples of load time before and after:
- 10 megabit upstream (higher end server): Before = 0.25 seconds, After = 0.08 seconds (0.17 seconds faster = probably not noticeable)
- 1 megabit upstream (higher end consumer broadband connection): Before = 2.43 seconds, After = 0.77 seconds (1.66 seconds faster = might be noticeable)
- 512 kilobit upstream (average consumer broadband connection): Before = 4.86 seconds, After = 1.55 seconds (3.31 seconds faster = definitely noticeable)
- So depending on what type of connection you're hosting your BBS on, these changes may not be noticeable to you, but some will definitely benefit
- October 15th, 2011
- Fixed a bug in WBA.exe that caused it to hang if you used the STOP parameter to close the running instance
- October 2nd, 2011
- Fixed the RIP command recognition function, so it doesn't think !|<ESC> is a command anymore (ESC is only a command in level 1 or 9, not level 0)
- Fixed the free proxy running at proxy.ftelnet.ca to handle non-alphanumeric characters in the domain name (previously they were stripped
- Updated fTelnet to send \r\n instead of just \r when sending the target hostname to the proxy
- October 1st, 2011
- Added \r\n to the default RIP screen, so the RIP parser knows when the screen has finished displaying (so if the BBS sends a pipe character as the first character after you connect (like NetFoss seems to), the parser doesn't think it's a RIP command)
- August 22nd, 2011
- Fixed a bug where the cursor wasn't wrapping properly when writing to the 80th column (recently introduced with the VT100 changes)
- August 12th, 2011
- Fixed a problem with the telnet option negotiation that caused file transfers to fail for some people
- Added a javascript method to enable / disable local echo (ClientSetLocalEcho())
- July 28th, 2011
- Removed the Auto Update feature from WBA (fixing the annoying error at startup). This feature wasn't ever used anyway, since WBA is not a stand-alone application, but is bundled with fTelnet.
- July 27th, 2011
- Fixed the disconnect button -- I forgot I overrode the button to open and display a local ANSI/RIP/VTxxx screen (which is how I was testing the various parsers). The button will now open a local file when in the disconnected state, and will act as the disconnect button when in the connected state.
- July 26th, 2011
- Fixed the "clear to end of line" code, which wasn't removing the character in the rightmost column
- Fixed the "clear from beginning of screen" and "clear to end of screen" codes, which were clearing the whole line not just the start/end of the current line
- Fixed SetScreenSize(), which caused scaling when the cursor position was outside the new screen size
- Added preliminary support for VTxxx terminal emulation (see ClientVars.VT to enable)
- Added ability for characters to have underlines
- Fixed echo telnet negotiation (was mistakenly trying to enable local echo)
- Removed ClientVars.Blink variable -- Blink is now always available
- Added ClientClrScr() to ClientFuncs.js -- This allows you to add a link/button to the page which will clear the client display
- Fixed ClientFuns.js to not throw errors in fTelnet only mode (was complaining about HtmlTerm not being defined)
- Added control key parsing to RIP buttons (so if a button's command was "^M/L", then now ^M will be properly converted to a carriage return)
- Added STOP command-line parameter for WBA.exe, which will cause the running WBA.exe process to terminate (useful for scheduled maintenance)
- July 10th, 2011
- Wasn't keeping great track of changes over the last few months, so I'm lumping all the ones I can remember into this date. I'm sure I'll forget some changes too though.
- Added AlertDialog* configuration options, which will allow you to specify the position of the alert dialog boxes (such as the disconnect dialog)
- Added ConnectButton* configuration options, which will allow you to specify the position of the connect button (so now you can move it out of the way and not have it block the middle of your intro ansi!)
- Added ConnectRIP configuration option, which should give the absolute path to the .RIP screen to display behind the connect button at startup.
- Added ProxyRLogin* configuration options, which allow you to define a proxy server to route rlogin connections though
- Added RIP configuration option, which allows you to enable RIPscript mode
- Added RIPIconPath configuration option, which tells fTelnet where to find the RIP *.ICN files in RIP mode
- Added RLogin* configuration options, which allow you to enable connecting via rlogin instead of telnet
- As mentioned above, RIPscript support has been added. It's still a work in progress, but the majority of the features from the 1.54 spec have been implemented. Not everything has been tested though (as I don't have screens using all the features to test with), so let me know if you notice any discrepencies in how your screens are displayed
- Fixed the ESC key -- I unintentionally broke it when adding support for international keyboards, and only noticed it the other day when trying to quit scfg!
- Added support for a few more CTRL keypress combinations (so for example CTRL-[ will now work in Synchronet's telnet door)
- March 12th, 2011
- Removed support for custom connect/save files buttons. Not sure anybody used them, and it'll speed up the load time. Can always re-enable this if it was actually a useful feature
- Relocated connect.ans from the img subdirectory to the root directory, so if you have a custom intro ansi, you may have to move it (probably not though, unless you change the ConnectAnsi configuration variable to match)
- March 10th, 2011
- Added support for international keyboards
- February 24th, 2011
- Added support for proxying the connection. Helpful for the cases when it's not possible to run a flash socket policy server on the same machine as the telnet server.
- January 18th, 2011
- Added ConnectAnsi parameter, which allows you to specify the location of your intro screen
- Added support for the Atari ASCII (ATASCII) character set
- Suppressed page errors when loading HtmlTerm in IE8
- January 17th, 2011
- Disabled transparency, which caused the client to be hidden in Firefox
- December 13th, 2010
- Updated examples to allow fail-over from fTelnet to HtmlTerm (or vice versa) when one of the clients is not supported
- Started bundling Web BBS Assistant (WBA for short), a Win32 flash socket policy server and WebSocket to Telnet redirector
- Septermber 27th, 2010
- Removed the minimize and maximize buttons. Might add an option to add them back in if anyone actually liked them
- Added Amiga fonts upon request
- Released the source under the GPLv3 license.
- Septermber 5th, 2010
- Implemented handling of ESC[5n, which is used by ProBoard to detect ANSI emulation.
- August 25th, 2010
- Fixed a stupid bug where a reply to ESC[255n was incorrectly being sent when ESC[6n was received
- Fixed YModem-G uploads where the receiver does not properly ACK header packets (Async Pro does this for example)
- The TAB key no longer switches focus away from the flash client in IE
- New variable: BitsPerSecond. Let's you get all nostalgic and slow your display down to what it would have been like with a 300bps modem! (Or any other bitrate you'd like to use)
- August 24th, 2010
- Implemented a custom ANSI escape sequence to allow the BBS to change codepage/font size. Useful for foreign BBS's that want a custom codepage for their BBS menus, but then want 437 for BBS door games to ensure they display correctly.
- Implemented a few more of the less common ANSI escape sequences (L, M, 255n)
- Fixed TAB to not be destructive
- Incoming data is processed in blocks of 1024 bytes at a time, which helps ensure the screen is updated often enough to prevent pauses while displaying large ANSI's
- New Capture Screen entry added to right-click context-menu allows users to easily take screenshots of their current session
- Pressing tab now correctly sends that key to the remote server (instead of switching focus to the min/max/close buttons)
- Added a confirmation dialog to the close/disconnect click (thanks to a class found at http://fatal-exception.co.uk/blog/?p=69)
- August 23rd, 2010
- One last font optimization to get the file size down even further. I think that's all I can do now though!
- August 22nd, 2010
- Border styles with control buttons now initiate a download with a minimize button click, or an upload with a maximize button click
- Added the CTRL-PAGEDOWN and CTRL-PAGEUP key combinations to initiate a download or upload
- Added a bunch of new codepages at the 9x16 font size
- A "Save File(s)" button pops up after a download completes, helping to make the process simpler
- Batch downloads are now saved as a TAR archive, removing the need to save each file individually
- August 21st, 2010
- Built in release mode, further shrinking the SWF size and increasing it's speed
- Further optimized font handling to reclaim speed lost to August 20th size optimization
- Re-organized event handling to hopefully prevent the rare data loss cases
- August 20th, 2010
- Optimized font size to allow for embedding without bloating the SWF by 2+ megs
- August 19th, 2010
- Removed the statusbar (will implement popup alerts for things that need it)
- Fixed a character handling bug in the connect.ans display routine
- Created a CodePage 866 font (9x16 only)
- Fixed CodePage 737 and 862 again (saved as wrong file type before)
- August 18th, 2010
- Fixed character 31 in CodePage 737 and 862
