Category: Development Blog

I updated Monal after the 2.9.2 release to work again in the background. It appears that Apple has not just deprecated but removed the VOIP socket that Monal has used since iOS4 to run in the background. For the time being I am going to build with the iOS 9 SDK and things will continue to work. However the point where that is not a valid option will arrive at some time. When that does happen Monal for iOS will move to using an APNS notification and the XMPP push mechanism.  Google talk will likely no longer work.

Xcode 8 and iOS 10 have introduced a change that breaks a deprecated feature  Monal uses to maintain connectivity. Do not update to 2.9.2, the app does not run in the background anymore. I will submit a build soon that will hopefully get the app working again.

If you are eager to test out  the new image handling, check out the new beta for OS X  .  I have made this an opt in only feature for now. To get inline image support, go to preferences -> display and check the option for inline images.  While you are testing this, try out drag and drop to the text field and markup (the little arrow in the upper right of the image when you attach it).  Clicking an image in chat will bring up preview and you can use the export button to send that image anywhere you want.  Animated gifs are not animated in the thread (yet) but will be when you click them.

I had a few spare minutes today, so I decided to finish support for inline images in chat in the OS X client. Most of this will come to the iOS client as well. It does not yet support the privacy setting to disable checking the HTTP head of every link to identify an image  but beyond that it is mostly done.  I also added support to OS X’s quick look as well as markup for images that can now be dragged into the text field before uploading. 

For those who are interested in the collaborative effort to have a standard modern encryption scheme on the major mobile and desktop clients. You can see where things are for Monal and Chatsecure at the github issue.

 

 

Now that the app is mostly done I’ve put in some nicer images in TV portal.  IT also supports viewing scheduled recordings now. Going to keep testing (aka watch tv) to see what bugs arise but this is mostly done at this point. Please contact me at info@monal.im if you would like to help test this. 

I spent the day learning more about how tvOS and the focus engine work. I’ve further improved the UI for TVPortal.  I think the details screen is final, the recordings screen is almost done and playback screen is done.   This has been an interesting project and quite educational.  I haven’t really dabbled in media streaming in a while.  

I have changed the minimum requirement for TVPortal to MPExtended 0.6 (there is beta available).  This enables certain useful features like delete.  After tinkering with TVML quite a bit I ended up making the UI with UIkit directly. Though, it should look vary familiar to tvOS users.  I’ve included some screenshots of completed screens below. I need to update the UI for one final screen and we are ready to release. 

Ignoring the UI, if you are interested in seeing where HDTV streaming on Apple TV via Media Portal is. I have made a small video.   I hope to have live TV streaming working next followed by ad skipping and seeking (with comskip data) .

https://monal.im/appstore/tvportaldemo.mov

 

There have been many people who had problems with HTTP upload in the most recent versions. It appears the vast majority of connection issues with http uploads appear to be related to one of the following:
1. Monal requires HTTPS
2. iOS requires a valid certificate
3. iOS requires a certain set of ciphers (anurodhp/Monal#35 (comment))