Frogblast

What is Frogblast?

Frogblast is a clone of the Hotline client software. Frogblast is the result of more than a year of work (on and off...), and is written exclusively for Mac OS X, using Apple's Cocoa APIs. It supports practically the entire 1.2.3 and some of the 1.8 feature set, including threaded news, administrator functions (user booting/banning) and account creation and editing. Frogblast was written for Mac OS X from the ground up, and offers a far better user experience than any of the other available Hotline clients, including the official one.

Using Frogblast

There are some major differences between Frogblast and other Hotline clients that might confuse new users.

View Locations: Some users like to have all of the views condensed into one window, and others like to keep separate views in separate windows. Frogblast allows the user to make their own decisions about where views are displayed. You can move the Chat, Private Chat, Private Message, News, and File Transfer Status views in and out of the main window using commands in the View menu. You can set their default locations in the Interface Preferences.

Changing your Name and Icon: Frogblast allows you to set a default name and icon to use when you log in to any server. It also allows you to save a custom name and icon for each Favorite server. To change your name while connected, you can choose Change Name... in the Connections menu, the Change Name toolbar button, or type "/nick Your-New-Name" or "/icon Icon-Number" into the chat field.

Changing the Private Chat Subject: Changing the subject in a Private Chat can be done either through the Connections menu, the Change Subject toolbar button, or by typing "/subject New-Subject" into the chat field

User Icons: Frogblast does not include any user icons by default. You can either install icon packs manually (place them in ~/Library/Application Support/Frogblast/Icons) or convert them from other icon formats. To convert icons, go to the Icons preference tab, and click on the Open Icon Converter button. When the Icon Converter opens, select the file you want to convert from (it can be the Hotline application itself, or a Hotline or Zombie format icon pack), and then select the destination filename, and click the Convert button. Frogblast must be restarted to see the new icons. To decide what icon you want to use, Frogblast provides a browser. To open the browser, click on the Icon Browser button (in the Icons preference tab, or in the Change Name sheet). If you have multiple icon packs installed, you can select which ones Frogblast looks for icons in first by dragging the names of the icon packs up and down the list of installed packs.

Bookmarks or Favorites: For easier access to a server that you go to often, you can save a Favorite. Go to the Favorites tab in Preferences, and click on the Add button. Type in the address, login information, and your custom name and icon to use on this server, and click on the Save Changes button

Screenshots

Download

Version 1.2.4

Version 1.2.3 Version 1.2
Version 1.1.3
Version 1.1.2
Version 1.1.1
Version 1.1
Version 1.0

Version History

• Fixed a the Download Queue bug where files would stop early.
• Fixed a bug that would prevent files from downloading completely when on hxd 0.2.8 servers.
• Fixed a number of crashing bugs.
• Changed the sound format to aiff to try to avoid sound problems introduced with Jaguar.
• Fixed a bug (again) that could cause uploads to stop early when on Windows servers.
• Fixed some problems when uploading files with multi-byte characters in their names

• Some tweaking to shorten the 'finishing' phase of uploads, and make downloads more reliable.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented the program from quitting.
• Removed the connection keep-alive feature introduced in 1.1.1 that prevented many users of Linksys routers from connecting to any servers. Replaced it with a simple ping that should keep connections alive, but prevents users from becoming idle.
• Fixed a crash when canceling a connection to the server.
• Fixed a crash when disconnecting from a server with ongoing file transfers.
• A few other random fixes.

• Added Threaded News.
• Rewrote Download code so it uses much less CPU time.
• Added the ability to set the name and icon of your favorites to ‹default›, which tells Frogblast to use your default name/icon (as set in General Preferences tab).
• Bunch of small bugfixes.

• Fixed a bug where Frogblast would still believe it is waiting in the server queue, even when it has already started receiving data.
• Rewrote the socket code to reduce the number of dropped connections..
• More changes to try and make sure uploads are properly finished on Windows servers.

• Fixed a bug that prevented uploads from finishing on Windows 1.8.5 servers.
• Fixed redraw problems when running in Jaguar.
• Fixed queuing problems with 'can only transfer one file at a time' on some HXD servers. Fixed a crash caused by trying to upload an application bundle.
• A few more small bugs.

• Greatly improved the stability of file transfers.
• Fixed problems opening folders when using 2 byte fonts.
• Added broadcasts with the /broadcast command.
• A connection's windows are no longer automatically closed when a connection is lost.
• Added 1.8.5 user privileges to the Create and Edit User windows.
• The connection name is now shown in Broadcast and Error dialogs.
• Fixed problems opening "hotline:" URLs, such as those found on hlsearch.com.
• Other random bugs fixed.

• Tracker added.
• Resource forks are now supported for uploads and downloads.
• Fixed problems with resuming uploads to Windows servers.
• Added chat shortcuts: /clear, /msg [uid] [message] and /join [chatID].
• Favorites preference pane redesigned.
• Importing and Exporting of Hotline bookmark files added.
• Added 'Add Favorite' button to the New Connection window.
• Added ability to reverse the current file browsing preference (one window or multi-window) by holding down option.
• Added creating file aliases.
• Improved visual feedback given when refreshing a file list.
• Files are now listed alphabetically.
• Fixed severeral broken error dialogs.
• Added the ability to start uploads using drag&drop (Note: drag&drop downloads are not currently possible due to limitations in the 10.1.2 Finder)
• Improved input validation throught the whole application.
• Added Create Account and Edit Account toolbar buttons.
• Fixed a bug that causes server permissions errors when trying to create users.
• Added the ability to use different text encodings. (I suggest using UTF-8 instead of most 2 byte encodings, if at all possible)
• Fixed some bugs with the Cycle Servers menu command (and changed the keyboard shortcut, to comply with the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines).
• Fixed some bugs with the Private Chats toolbar menu.
• The userlist context menu can now be accessed by control-clicks instead of just right-clicks.
• Frogblast now shows a default window (tracker) or the first opened connection when brought forward.
• Large improvments in URL highlighting.
• Notifications (user joins/leaves/name changes/private messages) can now be printed in different colors.
• Frogblast now properly connects when a hotline://something URL is opened.

• Initial Release

Legal

Frogblast is distributed as Freeware, so it may be used at no cost.

Frogblast may be distributed through free online services, provided only the original unmodified archive is distributed. If you wish to distribute Frogblast through any other medium, please contact the author through email for permission.

Frogblast may NOT be distributed through any commercial or for-profit means, except with prior, written, consent from the author. You acknowledge and agree that the use of Frogblast is at your own risk. Frogblast, and all related files and documentation are provided as is and without any warranty of any kind. As a free product, the author of Frogblast cannot be held responsible for any damages or loss of any kind caused by attempting to use this software.

In short: Don't try to make any money from Frogblast, don't modify the archive, don't distribute on a CD/DVD/etc collection without consent from the author, and the author holds no responsibility for any damage that results from the use of this software, even if caused by defects in the software.

Have a nice day.

Contact Information

If you have any bugs to report, comments, feature suggestions, etc, please send them to Richard Schreyer