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Stop software bloat!

K

KevinMU1

Senior member
In a Recent Thread on software bloat, I was amazed to see how many people care about software bloat today, and expressed that they would do something about it.

If all you need from IM is encrypted text messaging and file transfers (with some useful addons, like logging, message auditing, offline messages, invisibility, and more), I offer up my BitWise Chat to you (it's free, with no ads or spyware! God bless University bandwidth 😉 ). We've got all the essentials with none of the fluff. BitWise takes only a couple megs of RAM, uses a singe executable less than 300k, and runs even on a 486 running Windows 95. It's fast, portable, and small, but still packs a pretty good punch. Quite a number of users tell me that they find it more reliable than MSN, and certainly much smaller than almost any other IM service. Older computers run BW without a hitch.

It's not for everyone, especially people with an extensive list of contacts that would never make the switch. But if you're interested in trying something a little different, you might be pleasantly surprised.

I'd be happy to talk to you online if you give it a try and have questions.
 
Ah, yes, and those light bulbs are ugly 🙂 Please draw up or steal a good icon for online/offline 🙂
 
VBboy--you will find that Alt-S is already implemented. We have not done hotkeys yet across the board largely because it is not easy to decide what the keys should be and what is most intuitive. If you have other specific requests I would be happy to hear them along with why a particular key is the right key. As to the lightbulbs--we haven't stolen anything yet b/c we don't want to get in trouble, and we haven't made no ones because we haven't been inspired yet. We are actively seeking to change them, but not until we know for sure what we want.

notfred--sorry, no, we don't have any immediate plans for OS X. We are always evaluating our options, though.

SSP--I understand, people are very much attached to what they use, and that's understandable. It's a battle we will always be fighting.
 
Originally posted by: KevinMU1
VBboy--you will find that Alt-S is already implemented. We have not done hotkeys yet across the board largely because it is not easy to decide what the keys should be and what is most intuitive.
Click to expand...

No, I mean mnemonic keys, not accelerator keys for the menu items 🙂 It is a convention to provide a mnemonic key for each command button. Simply using "&" in the button's caption in fron of a letter will make that letter a mnemonic. Pressing "Alt" along with that letter will simulate a button click.

By looking at this screen shot (http://www.bitwisechat.com/images/screens/screen7.png) I can say that it would be nice to name the buttons "&Add", "&Preferences", "&My Profile", to give them mnemonic keys of "Alt+A", "Alt+P", and "Alt+M", respectively. Many experienced users do not use the mouse and rely on the keyboard instead. Therefore, many programming manuals suggest accomodating such users by providing as much keyboard functionality as possible. Using such mnemnonic keys is a great way to do it.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but you can assign a mnemonic key to a label control (CStatic control if you use C++/VC++). Pressing that mnemonic key will then trigger the click of the control whose Tab Order is one after the Tab Order of the label control.

P.S. It is not recommended to use the following letters as mnemonic keys because underlyning them will be hard to see:

i,j,l,p,q,y
 
VBboy--we have those keys. For some reason, Windows 2000 hides them until you actually press Alt, and then they all show up. Most, if not all, of our screens already have those, you just can't see it from the screenshots. If you download the program, get a sceern up, and press Alt, you'll find what you are looking for. I don't know why 2000 does it this way, 98 shows them all the time.

Sorry for the confusion about what you were referring to. 🙂

TuxDave--you can't talk to your AIM buddies using BW, but nothing precludes you from running both. AIM interoperability is just not stable enough, and it would limit would we could do.
 
I imagine you could get a lot of people to switch if it was compatible with AIM. I read somewhere that all IM technology is going to be standardized soon, maybe then it'd work out well.
 
Originally posted by: yoda291
I imagine you could get a lot of people to switch if it was compatible with AIM. I read somewhere that all IM technology is going to be standardized soon, maybe then it'd work out well.
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Unfortunately AIM does not support some necessities. Encryption being a big one. Plus, these guys wanted to start a project for fun and to learn something. Using aim wouldnt accomplish that 😉
 
yoda291--AIM compatibility is not practical for 2 reasons:

1) The standard that is open, the TOC protocol for AIM, is severely crippled, and wouldn't be usable with any satisfactory results.
2) The OSCAR protocal has been reversed engineered, but Trillian has had AIM connectivity problems (remember about a year ago?) Plus, AOL now has the patent on IM, so I woudln't want to attract their attention. Plus, if they change OSCAR, BOOM... there goes our interoperability, and nobody would be happy with that either.

In the end, using our BitWise protocol allows us to add more unique features and simply do more. We aren't for everyone. But we offer some things that some people will like. We take what we can get. 😉

And n0cmonkey hit it again--we are having fun & learning doing something. Using AIM would definitely not have accomplished that. And if some folks can benefit from our work, then we're even happier.

If you sign up and want to post your username here so others can talk to you, that's cool too. 🙂 Thanks again everybody.
 
Originally posted by: KevinMU1
yoda291--AIM compatibility is not practical for 2 reasons:

1) The standard that is open, the TOC protocol for AIM, is severely crippled, and wouldn't be usable with any satisfactory results.
Click to expand...

If you dont mind, expand on this a bit. Im using toc with an unofficial client, and I have absolutely no complaints.

2) The OSCAR protocal has been reversed engineered, but Trillian has had AIM connectivity problems (remember about a year ago?) Plus, AOL now has the patent on IM, so I woudln't want to attract their attention. Plus, if they change OSCAR, BOOM... there goes our interoperability, and nobody would be happy with that either.

In the end, using our BitWise protocol allows us to add more unique features and simply do more. We aren't for everyone. But we offer some things that some people will like. We take what we can get. 😉

And n0cmonkey hit it again--we are having fun & learning doing something. Using AIM would definitely not have accomplished that. And if some folks can benefit from our work, then we're even happier.
Click to expand...

If you open sourced it, we could benefit much more 😉

We have gone back and forth on that issue in the past, but I still have to pester you. 😛

If you sign up and want to post your username here so others can talk to you, that's cool too. 🙂 Thanks again everybody.
Click to expand...

n0cmonkey, if anyone cares 😛
 
Originally posted by: KevinMU1
yoda291--AIM compatibility is not practical for 2 reasons:

1) The standard that is open, the TOC protocol for AIM, is severely crippled, and wouldn't be usable with any satisfactory results.
2) The OSCAR protocal has been reversed engineered, but Trillian has had AIM connectivity problems (remember about a year ago?) Plus, AOL now has the patent on IM, so I woudln't want to attract their attention. Plus, if they change OSCAR, BOOM... there goes our interoperability, and nobody would be happy with that either.

In the end, using our BitWise protocol allows us to add more unique features and simply do more. We aren't for everyone. But we offer some things that some people will like. We take what we can get. 😉

And n0cmonkey hit it again--we are having fun & learning doing something. Using AIM would definitely not have accomplished that. And if some folks can benefit from our work, then we're even happier.

If you sign up and want to post your username here so others can talk to you, that's cool too. 🙂 Thanks again everybody.
Click to expand...

touche.

I'll try nearly anything once. sn is 'dpapprentice' if anyone wants to talk.
 
I havn't tried it yet, but I'd like to ask a question. What type of connection is made? Do all messages get routed through a server that is running on your computer? If so, how many people are currently using it?
 
Regarding TOC--it is my understanding that many of the features are missing, some that even seem very basic. For example, I am under the impression that TOC clients cannot even initiate reading an away message, although if you message someone who is away you can get their auto-response. Further, I also was under the impression that TOC did not support file transfers. If your unofficial client supports these things, then it is using the reverse-engineered OSCAR and not TOC. If you want I can dig up my links.

On open source... yeah we've been around this block too. 😉 If I open source it then I lose a lot of the experience in learning how to do things. It may eventually go that route, just not yet. And a lot of the source is rather scattered, part of what I'm slowing doing is cleaning it up now that I know better what I'm doing.

XZeroII... messages are sent client to client if at all possible. Only when a direct connect is not possible in either direction are messages sent through the server. All messages are encrypted between clients and between the client and the server. The server is most definetely NOT on my PC, we have a dedicated server. We have over 1200 registered accounts, and normally there are anywhere between 15 and 35 people online, of course, that has been steadily rising on average ever since we started.

I would be happy to field any other questions if anyone has them. 🙂
 
XZeroII--we do have offline messaging as well, so those messages are stored on the server. Thought I'd add that in.
 
Originally posted by: KevinMU1
VBboy--we have those keys. For some reason, Windows 2000 hides them until you actually press Alt, and then they all show up. Most, if not all, of our screens already have those, you just can't see it from the screenshots. If you download the program, get a sceern up, and press Alt, you'll find what you are looking for. I don't know why 2000 does it this way, 98 shows them all the time.
Click to expand...

This is a basic option in 2k... Just hit Start.. Settings.. Control Panel.. Display... Effects tab and uncheck the box that says "Hide ...s.dfsgfdgkjl whatever"

 
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