We’ve been getting a few questions about how things will work for existing customers, we’ll outline the details below.

Q: If I bought Linkinus from your site can I get updates through the Mac App Store?

A: Unfortunately Apple does not allow us to migrate existing customers to the Mac App Store. If you purchased Linkinus from our website you can continue to receive updates from our website or the “Check for Updates…” menu inside of the application, just as you always have done.

Q: I want to buy Linkinus from the Mac App Store but it says it is “Installed”

A: If the App Store replaces the buy button with an “Installed” button, you have an existing version of the application on your system. To be able to purchase Linkinus from the Mac App Store you have to move the copy you purchased to the Trash.

Q: Are you stopping updates for Linkinus if I didn’t buy from the Mac App Store?

A: Absolutely not. We will continue to support and issue free updates to all customers who purchased Linkinus 2.x outside of the App Store until version 3.0.

PS: If you’ve bought Linkinus on the App Store, we would absolutely love it if you could rate and/or leave a review. This really helps others find our great software!

Please note that this upgrade does require Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). If you haven’t upgraded to 10.6 yet (tip: you should!) you can always get a copy of Linkinus 2.1.2 here.

I am not talking about the Christmas pickle. Even though it does fit the description pretty well. No, I am writing about an update!
It may or may not be overdue. It is in any case and regardless of whether you choose it to be late or not, great news.
Our little elves in Santa’s workshop have been put to labor over the past few months and let me tell you they sweat more than salty water in the process. So, what have they slaved over this long? Well, long bloody (there I said it) story short: an update for Linkinus.

I guess what you really want to know about (fact aside that there is an update) is what this update will bring to you on its sleigh:

• Greatly improved overall performance and CPU usage:
  Greatly is an understatement at its best. Speed and responsiveness have increased by several orders of magnitude!
• Multi-line input field:
  Requested long ago, finally implemented. Note this only works if you have enough vertical space beneath the application window.
• Channel listing up to 20 times more responsive
• Better support for /who and /names
• Revamped IRC identities – set them up the Preferences:
  One place to set them all, one place to find them, one place to bring them all and in the preferences bind them
• Updated Styles:
  This includes new embed features for e.g. Whisper (instragr.am and cloudapp). Also the evergreen Simplified is going through rejuvenation!
• Improved support for systemwide SOCKS proxy
• Added UPnP support for file transfers
• Fixed issues with PCRE regular expression supports in Highlights:
  You can now fully enjoy being highlighted all across IRC because your malformed regular expression finally works as expected!
• Fixed an issue where Filters wouldn’t stick across sessions, not to mention that we decided to take pity on the poor souls who wanted to add new filters and henceforth provide an appropriate button for precisely this
• Fixed IRC Quit messages
• Fixed an issue where the main window would be blank on first launch
• Added shortcut to clear all queries
• Improved contextual menus relevance
• Added an option to hide the ‘Groups’ button in the title bar
• Improved SSL support
• Faster processing of bouncers backscroll
• Fixed a bug preventing users from removing certain channels or queries (‘phantom channels’)
• Improved ‘/msg nick’ with no content
• Allowed the main window to resize to a smaller size
• Greatly improved DCC support
• Now up to 1000 (that’s a thousand for those that can’t read Arabic numbers) lines of backlog per channel
• Updated SysInfo plugin
• MOAR, specifically, more options for queries and channels, including Growl/sound muting
  Please note that “rejoin on kick” and “automatically join on connect” have been moved from their global settings to the respective channel inspectors
• /mark … mark my words (slow clap) here comes a command you can use to add a marker to the current channel
• /delay (a new plugin) that enables you to delay execution of commands e.g. when chaining them in the alias section

Changed on the 27th of December and later

• ‘Join on kick’ is now disabled on new channels by default
• Fixed minor log viewer issues
• Fixed a bug where the ‘Linkinus 2 Logs’ folder would be created even when logging was off

The beta is public (learn how to participate here) and we’ll make our way to release status based on the feedback and any bugs we may yet find.

As a Black Friday treat, we’re offering discounted prices on iOS versions of the Linkinus IRC client. For a few days only:
- Linkinus for iPhone is $0.99 instead of $2.99.
- Linkinus for iPad is $1.99 instead of $4.99.

On a related note, updates of these apps are being reviewed by Apple, and add full multitasking support as well as iOS 4.2 compatibility, as well as a few bug fixes. The updates should be up soon.

Get them while they’re hot on the App Store!

Just wanted to let you all know that Linkinus for iPhone 1.1 and Linkinus for iPad 1.2.1 are now available in the App Store. This pair of updates fix several user-reported issues and are highly recommended for all users.

What’s New?

• Support for /ignore and /unignore
• Font size and other style preferences now take effect immediately
• Fixed a bug where certain visual settings weren’t applied properly
• Fixed a bug where input bar may be hidden below keyboard under certain circumstances
• New Style: I Are Sea!
• Updated Styles: Better link detection, removed flash embeds, resolved several minor UI glitches in Control, Circus, Midnight, and Whisper.

Linkinus is the most powerful and flexible internet relay chat (IRC) software for iOS there is, yet it’s easy to use and newcomers will instantly know how to use it thanks to its elegant design and over 330 built-in networks. You can purchase both Linkinus for iPhone and Linkinus for iPad on the App Store.

• (new!) Multitasking: stay connected in the background for up to 10 minutes at a time. You’ll receive a notification when your about to be disconnected so you can jump back in if you’d like to remain online
• (new!) New Styles! Control, Circus, Midnight, and Whisper!
• (new!) Media Embedding: Just like the desktop! Get inline images, audio, and some HTML5 video. (More embedding options coming soon!)
• (new!) Configurable style options including font size, emoticons, timestamps, nick coloring, and more!
• (new!) Adjustable scrollback buffer
• (new!) Sort user list alphabetically or by privileges
• (new!) Redirect CTCP requests or notices to console, current window, or separate window
• (new!) Auto-correction (toggle on or off to your liking)

Aside from these great new iOS features, it shares many great features found in the Mac and iPad versions, including:

• Network selector helps you pick servers from the most popular chat networks
• Connect to an unlimited number of networks and channels
• Highlights: IRC can be overwhelming, but with Linkinus you’ll never miss an important message. When someone mentions your nickname, that line will be highlighted so you don’t miss it.
• Identities: it’s you, on IRC. Save your preferred and alternate nicknames in a reusable fashion. And if you provide password credentials, Linkinus will automatically authenticate to NickServ, NickOP, Q, X, G, SrvAuth and AuthServ.
• Displays IRC colors
• Autoconnect/autojoin features
• All standard IRC commands supported from the input field, such as: /me, /all, /away, /ban, /bankick, /clear, /nick, /join, /query, /notice, /quit, /part, /topic, /server, …)
• Blowfish support in channels & queries (/setkey sets the key, /delkey removes it, /key shows it). Automatic key exchange is also support via /keyx
• Channel op commands (/op, /deop, /voice, /devoice, /halfop, /dehalfop, …)
• OPER commands (/oper, /kill, /gline, …)
• Exploding emoticons (tap to cause them to explode)

Linkinus for iPhone costs $2.99 and is available now in the App Store.

PS: A note to our iPad users: These great new features will be available in Linkinus for iPad 1.2, submitted to Apple and waiting for approval.

This has the much-wanted SSL fixes. There is more detail below:

- SSL support improved

- Added dialog to trust self-signed SSL certificates

- Fixed a crash in the input field

- Improved channel topic display

- Performance improvements when scrolling

There are other fixes and enhancements planned for future releases, and I will update you as I have more information.

Cheers,
Aaron Kulbe
a.k.a. SuperLag

UPDATE: It appears that some users are reporting crashing when clicking on links in 1.1. We found and fixed the issue and submitted 1.1.1 to Apple for approval. Sorry for the inconvenience.

UPDATE: 1.1.1 was approved and released on 6/21 – please update now!

A lot of programs start out by doing just that. A developer has a personal need, and then writes an application to meet that need.

It’s how I approach purchasing software, as well. I needed an IRC client for work. We use it to share information about support calls, in real time. Being a Mac user, I wanted something with some *beauty* to it. Something in GUI form. That’s what good Mac apps are made of.

I’d used irssi previously, but as someone said today on IRC, that’s using the terminal in a way it wasn’t intended to be used. Why resort to a hack, when you can use something that builds on the strengths of the Mac?

Linkinus scratches my itches. I like an app with a well-designed interface. As I’ve said before, I think Linkinus is the best-looking IRC client on the market.

I needed an IRC client that had the options that Linkinus provides, and it’s only going to get better from here!

What do *you* use IRC for? How does Linkinus meet your needs?

Come on in to #linkinus on the Conceited network. Share your stories with us!

Aaron Kulbe a.k.a. SuperLag

What’s new?

• Added interface for adding custom networks
• Added support for extended /server syntax: ‘/server hostname:port password’ (standard server) and ‘/server hostname:+port password’ (SSL server)
• Fixed an issue with the ‘/whois nickname’ command
• Fixed a bug where channels/connections wouldn’t be deleted appropriately
• Redesigned app icon

Screenshots

Here is a screenshot of the new custom server screen:


We also made some slight modifications to the interface to make things a little easier to use. For example, you no longer have to go into Edit mode to connect or disconnect to servers. Simply click on the blue disclosure button and you’re off to the races.

The navigation bar button layout has changed a bit, so that the + and Edit buttons are aligned more closely with Apple’s built-in applications and now the Channels tab is the default, allowing you to start chatting immediately after opening the app.

This should address our two most requested features: Custom servers and SSL. We’re already hard at work on version 1.1, subscribe to our RSS feed to stay up to date on the latest and greatest.

Some of our new customers are reporting that there is no way to connect to custom servers or IRC networks not provided on the list. It is true that there is not currently any user interface for doing so, however it is possible to join custom servers using the /server standard IRC command. Simply click in the input bar, type /server followed by your host and port and you are off to the races.

An Update is on the way

We have an update, which includes a user interface for adding your own servers, specifying an optional server password if so desired, as well as some additional bug fixes. We will be finishing our testing and submitting the update for Apple’s approval tomorrow.

Linkinus for iPad is at a very early stage and will continue to improve. If you have any suggestions or bugs to report, please let us know!

Update: If there are any IRC networks out there that aren’t on our list and would like to be, please contact us and we’ll add it ASAP.

With the US iPad launch in just a few hours, we are extremely pleased to announce Linkinus for iPad. Linkinus, the most powerful and flexible internet relay chat (IRC) software is now available on your brand new iPad. It’s easy to use and newcomers will instantly feel right at home thanks to its elegant design and over 330 built-in networks. We are launching with the introductory price of $7.99.

While Linkinus for iPad is at a very early stage, it provides many great features provided in the Mac version, including:

• Network selector helps you pick servers from the most popular chat networks
• Connect to an unlimited number of networks and channels
• Highlights: IRC can be overwhelming, but with Linkinus you’ll never miss an important message. When someone mentions your nickname, that line will be highlighted so you don’t miss it.
• Identities: it’s you, on IRC. Save your preferred and alternate nicknames in a reusable fashion. And if you provide password credentials, Linkinus will automatically authenticate to NickServ, NickOP, Q, X, G, SrvAuth and AuthServ.
• Displays IRC colors
• Autoconnect/autojoin features
• All standard IRC commands supported from the input field, such as: /me, /all, /away, /ban, /bankick, /clear, /nick, /join, /query, /notice, /quit, /part, /topic, /server, …)
• Blowfish support in channels & queries (/setkey sets the key, /delkey removes it, /key shows it). Automatic key exchange is also support via /keyx
• Channel op commands (/op, /deop, /voice, /devoice, /halfop, /dehalfop, …)
• OPER commands (/oper, /kill, /gline, …)
• Exploding emoticons (tap to cause them to explode)

Linkinus for iPad costs $7.99 for a limited amount of time, and is available now in the App Store.

And what a treat it is. Ever experience problems with large log files or lacking the option of plain text logging? You are going to like what I am about to write.

To briefly describe the problem mentioned above: the current stable release logs messages in a database that has the tendency to grow a little larger than average for a fixed period of time compared to plain text.
We are, of course working on this size issue as well as reintroducing plain text as logging option you can optionally toggle. This means, you can have the database (with all styles, highlights and colors) log for a couple of days only* and keep it at a more than handy size but keep all logs in plain text and move them as you wish.

* The next version of Linkinus will allow you to set an automatic pruning time for old logs. I.e. you can have Linkinus prune logs older than days.

So what else is new? Tab completion will also receive a spec bump. You are in a very crowded channel and want to highlight a person somewhere in the middle of the nicklist? If he was talking to you a minute ago you’ll now be able to tab complete his/her nick way faster than before because Linkinus can now tab complete in “last spoke” order as well as alphabetically.

Stay tuned and if you want to give it an early try, why don’t you opt into the beta program?

That aside: Now with Apple having released Snow Leopard to the general public you certainly wonder about Linkinus’ Snow Leopard compatibility – aside from Rosetta of course.

Due to some … let’s say fancy bone of contention concerning scheduling the final 2.0.2 build will be delayed a little while.

Wait, wait wait a minute … to ease the transition as well as give you some chance to test 2.0.2 on Snow Leopard before it’s actually released for real we give you the chance to join the free and public beta so you can see for yourself. Just follow this link and read the instructions that’ll appear on your display drawn in your own blood assuming you agree to the horrible terms.

One thing in particular you beta users will most likely have notice presuming you take a look at the Styles preferences and Simplified in particular: Linkinus now supports Variants.

Variwhat? Variants are, essential the same theme in different color settings. Like Whisper originally shipped separate as Light and Dark version, Simplified now ships as a single theme – with two Variants. This is one of the many new additions to the theming engine. More detailed changes about this and other shiny things we included secretly in this build will be disclosed later in more detail.

This isn’t all, though! For good measure we’re going to throw in a couple of updated scripts and new themes: I Are Sea! (by drudge) and Simplified (by Cowboy). All of you calling out for “classic” IRC client themes will be delighted to hear that both are variations of the classic [timestamp] [name] [message] layout.

For more Information concerning Simplified visit Cowboy’s blog, please.

Stay tuned for more news, we’ll try to keep you informed and give you more details as soon as possible. As always, we look forward to providing you a great IRC experience. Don’t hesitate to let us know if there is anything we can do for you.

Edit: Linkinus 2.0.1 is supported on Snow Leopard in Rosetta mode.

Let’s begin with the user interface. Linkinus 1.3 was already very similar to the iTunes interface and played along very nicely. The updated interface integrates even better with OS X Leopard and at the same time offers more functionality. Drag and drop items around to add e.g. friends to the (new!) buddy list and then attach them to your Address Book contacts. Drop channels, queries or connections out of the source list to remove then, or simply reorder them in the sidebar.

Other changes to the user interface are a reworked network list. Sorted by size and importance you can quickly get to the hot spots on IRC. If you are looking for something in particular simply use the search and let Linkinus filter the lists for you. With over 330 built-in networks, connecting to your favorite networks is as easy as it gets.
Pretty doesn’t mean stupid though. Linkinus will smartly cycle through all servers in a network until it finds the best one for you.

Didn’t find the network you are looking for or want to modify an existing one to e.g. use SSL? Now is your chance. New networks can be added easily using the network list or modified through the new inspector.

A thing before you connect, you need an identity. With Linkinus you can have any number of IRC identities each with separate name settings, even NickServ passwords attached to the enclosed nicknames. Identities enable you to separate network settings from one another and at the same time quickly duplicate setups for connections.

Linkinus supports automatic authentication to multiple nickname services, including NickServ, NickOP, Q, X, G, SrvAuth and AuthServ.

Linkinus is much more user friendly, allowing IRC newcomers to quickly find their way. A good example of this is the connection hint box. Upon successful connection to a network, new users will be presented with an optional box detailing the next steps.

Browsing, searching and joining channels in a given network is pretty straightforward, as you can see below:

So, now that you are connected to your favorite network and joined a couple of channels why don’t we assign these channels to some groups and enjoy the improved combined chats interface? Distinguishing between different channels and queries is now easier than ever and thanks to grouping you can save any selection for later use – you can even call them up by using shortcuts you assigned.

After a while you might feel the urge to check a few channel settings or even modify the connection settings. Just double click the according item and voilà the new inspectors will appear. They let you modify a great deal more than the previous settings view that 1.3 had to offer. Exclude items from sidebar counts? Disable logging? Tinker with channel modes or add channel bound automatically executed commands. You can even add specific highlights or mute growl and sound for any combination of channels, connections and queries you want to. It’s your choice!

If you like to log IRC conversations, you probably know how annoying ti can be to browse the Finder and look for log files to open— Not anymore! Linkinus now features a built-in log viewer. It’s a complete overview over everything, and it’s searchable.

Also a new feature, you can know quickly view all your the highlighted messages you’ve received. Say you’re coming back to your computer after a few hours of being away; the Highlight and Stars window will show you most of what you’ve been missing: it automatically gathers all your highlighted and starred messages Stars you say? What are those? Starring a message is what ow would call bookmarking a post. You know, keeping it around for future reference.

The “Highlights & Stars” window supports anchors. Just click ‘em and Linkinus will locate the relevant channel in the main window or the log viewer and will scroll to the destination on its own.
Speaking of highlights, you now have the option to use PCRE regular expressions to define what highlights you.

This update allows much more control over the way Linkinus displays IRC for you.
You want to ignore someone completely? Or maybe just don’t want them to be able to send you files or CTCP requests or highlights? Want to disable media embedding for this or that person? The new Filters window lets you do all this and much more.

You want to toggle emoticons if a style supports them? You want to group consecutive messages from the same people? You want to know when you left a conversation and easily find that time in a log? You want a more distinguished styling of consoles, queries and channels all within the same style? You want to quickly highlight everything a single person has said within a channel? You want to change the topic bar style? All this is yours to command now. Really.

Now back to business: Plugins. Linkinus now allows plugin developers to manipulate incoming or outgoing data and perhaps change it before Linkinus has a chance to handle it. On top of that, the included scripts have also been updated to the latest version.

The whole style engine has received a major overhaul. I will not list all the improvements and new features because the list is very long. By popular request, media embedding has been taken to next level and now supports Pastie.org Flickr, IMDB, Amazon, YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video, College Humor, Revision 3, Funny or Die, Hulu, Metacafe, Slideshare, Viddler,Qik and well as links to mp4, mp3, swf, avi, wav, m4a files and all images. URL expansion is also supported: hovering over tinyurl.com, is.gd, bit.ly and tr.im URLs to see the full link.

You get the picture: the user interface is great and allows for much more flexibility than it did in 1.3. But don’t think for one second that our main focus hasn’t been core IRC improvements.

One of these improvements is increased feedback about security. When connecting to secure (SSL/TLS) servers, Linkinus will let you know if the remote certificate is invalid, and give you a chance to connect anyway or give up. Chat encryption has also been improved. Linkinus implements full BlowFish support for channels and queries, including for topics. “+p” support has also been implemented to temporarily bypass encryption.

Linkinus still benefits from the rock-solid Agent architecture, which means that Linkinus allows you to quit the application and still remain connected. A problem you might have encountered along the way, you have no idea of knowing what is going on then. With the update, Growl is no longer attached to the GUI but to the Agent and hence you can get notifications about highlights or connection interrupts without needing the GUI. Speaking of Growl, Alerts & Growl Alerts can be toggled globally or on a per-channel basis.

Linkinus now supports UPnP for automatic port configuration when initiating or being invited to file transfers or DCC chats.

Support for channel modes, proxies, various text encodings, as well as support for receiving and displaying IRC colors, as well as underline and bold formatting in chats, have been greatly improved as well.

Pfew, I could go on for hours and 2000 more lines about new features and bug fixes. But I think I’ll stop for now. Keep checking us out and follow us on Twitter. We hope you’ll enjoy using Linkinus 2 as much as we enjoyed making it.

Edit: I guess I should have covered the pricing questions here in the first place. So let’s do this. Linkinus 2 licenses are available to new users for 21.99 € the introductory price of 19.99€ and contains free 2.x updates. A 15-day trial is available to all users.
Note to Linkinus 1.x license holders: if you placed your order on or after April 1st, 2009, then you qualify for a free upgrade to a 2.x license. Linkinus 1.x users who purchased their license before April 1st get a 50% discount. Click here to go to our store!

The next Linkinus update, delivering hundreds of improvements, new features and fixes, is due soon.

Make sure to keep checking this blog and follow Linkinus on Twitter so you don’t miss any of the sneak peeks and announcements!

As always, please let us know if you find any issues. You can report issues using our bug tracker.

This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for! This is a free upgrade to all 1.x users, enjoy! For those of you who would like to view the release notes, you can see them here. 

The update is available to our current users via the “Check for Updates…” menu item, or you can download it from our website.

Reminder:  Please check back soon for a more in-depth review of the new features brought to you in 1.3 in our Road to 1.3 series.

Linkinus gets a facelift. 

The first thing most of you will notice is our new user interface. Optimized with Leopard in mind, we have worked extremely hard to make your experience with Linkinus seamlessly integrate with the rest of Mac OS X. Drawing all the similar concepts you are used from applications like Apple Mail, iTunes, and Finder, we feel you will feel quite comfortable when using the new user interface. In the next article we will be discussing all the new UI elements in further, until then just know that you are in for a treat.

Performance enhancements

We know how important it is that your IRC client take the least possible amount of resources, so we have worked extensively on reducing resource footprint while increasing speed and reliability. You will be delighted at the response you get from this new version.

Multitasking to the max. 

I think most of us have experienced this scenario before, you are on multiple IRC networks in the same channel or in similar channels on the same network and you want to keep on top of what is happening in both. Right now, you are flipping back and forth when you see the new message badge; how clumsy is that? What if you could combine multiple chat windows and view the chats at the same time? With Linkinus 1.3′s Combined View this is possible. Simple select multiple channels or queries and they are automatically combined into a single interface. More on this in a later article as well.

All your logs are belong to us. 

New in 1.3 is a plain-text logging option for supreme compatibility and readability. To maximize the benefit of your logs, we’ve added Spotlight integration and indexing so you can search for any piece of text in your IRC logs via an interface you are already familiar with. Since Apple just got it right with Spotlight, we’ve removed our half-baked log viewer.

Autocompletion, the way you wanted it. 

One of the most user-requested features is the improved autocompletion feature. You can now use tab to cycle through nicknames, channels, and commands and use the spacebar to accept your choice. This is a little change, but makes a huge difference!

You won’t believe how much more we’ve packed into this thing! 

There are many more features in the upcoming version, in the next few days you will see more in this series of articles with in-depth looks at all the majors. We can’t wait to unleash this amazing revision of your favorite IRC client, stay tuned.