| Hey, new version is coming out soon, im working a lot more on it lately and I'll have an alpha version to test soon. I'll brief you a bit on what's changed etc, post your comments about it here maybe. - New UI. Well, sort of. Things moved around, some removed, some added, different buttons and functionality. Trying to make it advanced but simple to use, with the things you use the most at very easy ready, and the rest sorta hidden but easy accessible if you need them. Some more features in the list itself as well. Less popup windows. No Aero glass thingie or wasted space around. Themes wont work cause, it's just too much work to do something at the moment. I can't define some things to be themeable just to later remove them or add new ones, limiting UI changes to some predefined options because of themes like it is at the moment. So my idea for a new theme engine is a fully customizable one in the future. I am recoding the entire UI towards that, in a way like.. hm, you can sort of program the skin, decide whats on the screen and assign this or that to call x method and such, sort of like winamp and foobar do I think. Something like that will work well cause then I wont be limited in what changes I do in the future to the main UI. - Online/offline modes. well well, offline mode hmm.. that's a bit hard to decide how it will really work and I'm doing lots of changes everyday. MALU atm uses both the MAL API, and also some of the old ways how it worked before the API. That is, it logs in as if it was a browser, it picks a cookie, and then loads pages etc just as if it was a browser doing so. That way I have access to quite a few things far beyond what the limited API provides. Things like, being able to send a post about a certain series/episode straight from mal updater, checking if threads about a certain episode already exist and a link to it, some extra data about a series like last forum threads, members, last updates, recommendations, links, check for new messages, and other features I'd like to add. But then I'm thinking .. hmm, what is it most people actually use out of those things available only through the old ways? what others would they like? and out of those who use them, are they actually a meaningful number to keep it? If I remove those features, then I can make malu work straight with just the API. The problem with browser emulation login etc, it.. it's slow as fuck. Logging in, getting a cookie, checking it's still valid, make up for changes in login forms (some ppl had weird problems to login because of some ISPs doing some weird redirection post-login and other weird issues). Retrieving data from a series page is also really slow. That delay when you start a series in the player, and you see the window popup and "Loading..", 99.9% of that time is just retrieving all the html data, it's fucking slow really. The posterior parsing is lightning fast, but retrieving the data that is slow, and it's annoying. But it was the only way before, and still nowadays it provides with some things the API never covered. So, I don't know. I have no hopes in the API being extended or anything related to it fixed anymore from MAL side, so dunno what to do about it. The other "online" part is the pre-login process, where malu checks with -my- server if you are running the latest version of the client and if there any updates, also maintains an online-users number, and checks how many people are watching the same anime at the same time. That sounds mostly useless, but I have some ideas to add to malu in the near future that would make use of that, to have some kind of side community based solely on MALU and some features available through being online interacting with other users etc. So that might remain, or be gone for now, I'm not sure. The other part of the changes that are for sure into 3.x, is offline updates. Basically, you update any details like episode score etc and they are queued to be synced with MAL next time you go online. Nothing major there, other clients already do this, so malu will as well. - Sysinfo and music-playing-now plugins are gone. Useless stuff really, so begone ^^ - Importing/exporting settings. Self-explaining. - Easy take-screenshot-of-video-player-and-upload-with-a-single-click, kind of. Nothing major there, but I think will be nice to have. I will reuse already working and pretty efficient code from my screenshotter app for it (http://eden.fm/tinypic-uploader/). I was a bit stuck with this in the past, because tinypic kept changing their code and they provided no open api to developers, and to make it worse they finally added a captcha for uploads. Fuck them. Imageshack... well.. slow.. ultra slow. They now have an API, it's so-so. I recently added support for imgur, and it's lightning fast, I really like it, so I will go with that for the malu plugin. - Windows, more windows, more extra windows.. most gone. batch tags editor and season browser are now embedded into the main window. - Batch tool to assign folders to the series, it's a big mess, I doubt many are using it right now. I'm making a big change into that, something actually useful and very easy and straight-forward to use and understand, it should be intuituve and not have users wonder "how the fuck I use this?" - Scanning for new episodes on the hard disk. Right now you can only do this manually, and 2 ways. one way is faster than the other, and more accurate, but it can easily miss some valid matches. The other is a bit slower (still quite fast though imo), and finds more stuff, but also false matches. Also it doesnt detect if you have episodes 2,3,4,5 or x series, only the last one, so it be misleading in that you have more episodes than you actually do. I want to change that, mostly through an improved recognition engine. Also, the scanning for files and folders will be done in the background automatically. It will do an initial scan, and then keep monitoring from then on, all on its own and you wont have to click anything or wait for the scan to finish etc, will be quite on detect-as-you-go; but for that we need more accurate recognition first, so that you dont have to choose for a method or another. - Airing shows. I added some options to that, so you can filter out those series not in your list. Also it's kinda integrated in the main anime list, so you won't have to switch tabs to check how long it is until the next episode of your fav. shows. I need a little help there though. The airing data is all edited manually through an admin control panel in my website. Basically, me and some others who helped before log in as admin and review a list of airing shows, and theres options to edit/add/delete and such. I'd need some more dedicated people to keep that list updated. Ideally this would be provided by MAL itself, but I don't see that happening. Okay, I think that mostly covers it. There's of course a lot more behind but no need to explain a lot more. So anyway, leave your comments and such, I read everything in these forums etc even if I dont seem active the last few months or dont always reply. ps: oh yeah, I see the preview of the topic and thought to myself as well, "omg fucking boring long wall spam of text with barely any paragraphs , I wouldnt even read it myself", but anyway, there it is if you go through it ^^ ps2: ohh one more remark: no osx/linux ports in the near future, seriously, no. I dont have a mac. I know shit about linux programming. And I wont waste my time on something a couple people would use. it's not that I hate those platforms ^^ |
KotoriFeb 6, 2011 5:45 PM
| Thanks for the hard work! Maybe some teaser screenshots? ;) |
| Twitter: @devgum |
| forgot to add: - New plugin for custom lists, like what videogames you've played, tv series/movies. Not related to MAL but probably useful to most users :) |
| Looks awesome :) Cant wait for the test version ^^ |
| First of all.. Kotori said: far beyond what the limited API provides. BLA BLA BLA I have no hopes in the API being extended or anything related to it fixed anymore from MAL side, Is it really worth to keep MALu a Myanimelist exclusive tool? anidb API is a lot better than anything MAL has to offer... if you want to get animeInfo and stuff like that It'd be better to get it from there imho. Kotori said: The other part of the changes that are for sure into 3.x, is offline updates. bla bla bla YAY Kotori said: - Batch tool to assign folders to the series, it's a big mess, I doubt many are using it right now. I'm making a big change into that, something actually useful and very easy and straight-forward to use and understand, it should be intuituve and not have users wonder "how the fuck I use this?" I was just using it when I noticed the message to check the forum at the bottom of MALu :P Kotori said: - Airing shows. I added some options to that, so you can filter out those series not in your list. Also it's kinda integrated in the main anime list, so you won't have to switch tabs to check how long it is until the next episode of your fav. shows. I need a little help there though. The airing data is all edited manually through an admin control panel in my website. Basically, me and some others who helped before log in as admin and review a list of airing shows, and theres options to edit/add/delete and such. I'd need some more dedicated people to keep that list updated. Ideally this would be provided by MAL itself, but I don't see that happening. Again, I'm fairly sure AniDB has it. Both for the "anime of the next season" and "next episodes" kind. http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=calendar&do=schedule http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=calendar Kotori said: ps2: ohh one more remark: no osx/linux ports in the near future, seriously, no. I dont have a mac. I know shit about linux programming. And I wont waste my time on something a couple people would use. it's not that I hate those platforms ^^ Lies, you hate them :D |
| Needs to fix this sometime but I'm lazy - since 11/05/2009 |
Kotori said: forgot to add: - New plugin for custom lists, like what videogames you've played, tv series/movies. Not related to MAL but probably useful to most users :) HOLY SHIT Will this support Visual Novels? I've always wanted to do this. |
| Not sure if it was mentioned, but could the custom plugin support handle eventual plugins with which a user can auto-update his AniDB or Anime Planet status? |
Maguspk said: Unable to retrieve my list, it's popping up with an error in the taskbar telling me to 'Sync with the website'. How the hell do I do that, wish I didn't update now. That update was still for MALu 2.x it's totally and utterly not related with this thread :P You should post about it in the [Bug Reports / Help] thread, and if it keeps doing that you could do even a formal bugreport on the website: http://malupdater.com/support.php?go=bugs&report |
| Needs to fix this sometime but I'm lazy - since 11/05/2009 |
Bard said: Kotori said: ps2: ohh one more remark: no osx/linux ports in the near future, seriously, no. I dont have a mac. I know shit about linux programming. And I wont waste my time on something a couple people would use. it's not that I hate those platforms ^^ Lies, you hate them :D so true :3 |
| hi, i was sad to read the entire post and not see anything along the lines of "3rd party plugin support", but thats cool its a great app as is. Just when i read the part on programming an interface or something of that nature i though id put my idea in. so i was thinking you could design a standard interface library, then make a plugin witch will add the theming support and additionally using this method will allow 3rd party plugins. theme support plugin would be something thats reads a theme file and when activated will utilize the UI library to load picture1 at x, y for a basic example let me know if you want some examples, and on the cross-platform posts/comments you could, "could" implement some sort of WebUI? as an solution |
mxxirFeb 13, 2011 2:22 AM
| 3rd party plugins has been on my mind for a very long time, however, dont really see the point at this time with such small userbase (~15K), would be a lot of work just to have noone make anything for it. |
| How about different language packs too? Can offer my translation into german language ;) |
| initially thought about adding languages, but decided against it. waste of time and resources and overcomplicating things by having any language other than english, not really a suporter of localization in general. |
| when the expected version 3.0? |
 |
| when the expected version 3.x? |
|
| a couple months min. |
| Thanks for all the hard work! This is really a useful program, especially since you keep it updated and working~ |
 |
Takeru_Shou said: more flexibility in the class I would find dpi 96 dpi at 40 "is too small and if you still plan other language packages, I would translate with a few others into German, we can not program and our english is bad but our German fairly well Thanks for the offer to help with translation, I decided against localization though :) |
| looking forward to the next era in anime list tracking! I actually had a tiny little feature request for when you DO figure out themes. Can you pretty please make a 'resize' option? I'm so tired of themes taking up half my desktop. Not all of us work in those outrageous like 2xxx x 1xxx sized resolutions, heck i still use 1024x768. I would just loooooove to be able to shrink a few of my current themes so they dont eat 50-95% of my desktop space alone! |
| Since you are no longer planning to port to Linux, what should users of Linux do? If they just stick with MALU 2.x, will everything still work fine? I am not using MALU with Linux atm, so I don't know the extent of current Linux compatibility, but I was thinking of switching to Linux in the near future (building a HTPC based on Linux). |
KlarerwindMar 13, 2011 10:17 PM
| Thanks for the hard work! Ever since I found MALU a little over a month ago I have been watching a lot more Anime than usual. I like to keep track of the episodes I'm watching and hated having to log into sites and such just to simply update my list. Being able to play episodes and update a list from the same program makes things a million times simpler. I have to say, I don't use most of what MALU has to offer. For me, it's simply "Keep my list updated" and thats it. I actually only have one plugin running, not even the sound is enabled. I'm not sure how others feel, but I feel the simpler the program, the better. Having quick access to my list, being able to play my next episode without having to check, and updating with the push of a button is all I need. All the other stuff is kinda cool, but how much is it really needed? Again, I appreciate the hard work you put into MALU. If you decide to scrap some elements of MALU that is fine by me. To me, as long as the core reason for what MALU is about stays intact, a fast and easy to use list updater, then I am more than happy. |
Klarerwind said: Since you are no longer planning to port to Linux, what should users of Linux do? If they just stick with MALU 2.x, will everything still work fine? I am not using MALU with Linux atm, so I don't know the extent of current Linux compatibility, but I was thinking of switching to Linux in the near future (building a HTPC based on Linux). 2.x seems to work fine under wine libraries, malu actually detects it's being run on linux and tries to avoid some things that could make it crash. 3.x will have even more compatibility. |
OniSamurai said: Thanks for the hard work! Ever since I found MALU a little over a month ago I have been watching a lot more Anime than usual. I like to keep track of the episodes I'm watching and hated having to log into sites and such just to simply update my list. Being able to play episodes and update a list from the same program makes things a million times simpler. I have to say, I don't use most of what MALU has to offer. For me, it's simply "Keep my list updated" and thats it. I actually only have one plugin running, not even the sound is enabled. I'm not sure how others feel, but I feel the simpler the program, the better. Having quick access to my list, being able to play my next episode without having to check, and updating with the push of a button is all I need. All the other stuff is kinda cool, but how much is it really needed? Again, I appreciate the hard work you put into MALU. If you decide to scrap some elements of MALU that is fine by me. To me, as long as the core reason for what MALU is about stays intact, a fast and easy to use list updater, then I am more than happy. thanks for your input. actually 3.x should look a lot simpler. I've removed some useless things, added others, hoping some of the new extras will actually appeal to most users. |
IPRFenix said: A few suggestions, Could we get the ability to toggle different list columns on/off? Depending on what list we are looking at? Example: For the currently watching list, I don't want the "SC", "Type", or "Season" columns displayed. Since I'm currently watching those, I'm quite aware of the type/season, and have not yet scored it. For the Completed list, I don't want the "New" column, and may not want the "Episodes" column either, because that column is just going to be a bunch of bars, that are 100% filled. Just seeing the "Watched" column on the Completed list is enough for me, as that shows the numbers watched/total (25/25). Well, you get the idea. I also suggest this because turning off the irrelevant columns would allow you to decrease the minimum width of the list box. Which would allow you to fit MALU on smaller screens, or within theme pictures that are not very wide, while still looking decent. Another suggestion, could we get the ability to choose the size and color, of text within the list, as well as the list background color? I've wanted to increase the font size by ~2, change the font to red, and make the list background black. Is it also possible to get the ability to change the bar&bar highlight colors for the list? IE: for the watched/in disk/aired/total/new eps in disk/airing? Also, is it possible to make it so the list background opacity changes, while the rest of the list content does not? Like a separate slider? So I can make the list box & elements fully visible, while the lists background is at say 50% or less opacity? Or can we already do that? I was trying to create a theme, and I could only get the opacity to affect the entirety of the lists window/box. Couldn't get it to affect only the list background. I really appreciate all the work you've put into MALu. I love this program and I have high hopes for it's future. Thanks to all those involved in working on it! Colors/columns etc will be fully configurable in 3.x, just possibly not at the very beginning of first versions, due to the complexity of a new themes engine (there will be no themes at first). When themes are enabled, you will have several/custom display plugins, like.. completely different main window, maybe even without a list displayed if you wished so. For 2.x, the opacity issue.. hm, it's not possible at the moment. The way the themes work is quite tricky and goes around a windows api limitation; normally you cant shape a form with a per-pixel alpha blending while using controls on it from the windows common controls libraries, they don't display at all. Malu goes around this issue by generating separate "linked" forms: theme one contains the alpha blended background; another layer contains the controls and is stripped of all non-opaque pixels during the theme loading process; another layer contains a custom button control based on pngs (f.e the anime/manga/tools buttons etc). A way to define a list-only opacity setting would be adding an extra separate layer for it, but that's quite some work to do on 2.x which has a limited lifespan now as 3.x moves on. I have great plans for 3.x theme capabilities, so just hold on a lil longer :) |
KotoriApr 4, 2011 5:01 PM
| What about adding more players to the list? I'm using Splash PRO. but MALU doesn't recognize it. |
| How about adding more web streaming sites? The few sites that you have listed aren't that great. Might I suggest adding: Otakucenter.com Animecrazy.net Goodanime.net / anime44.com |
| Leader of Whiteout Scans Current project: ReLIFE |
| When will version 3.0? |
|
| Any news about 3.0? |
 |
OniSamurai said: Thanks for the hard work! Ever since I found MALU a little over a month ago I have been watching a lot more Anime than usual. I like to keep track of the episodes I'm watching and hated having to log into sites and such just to simply update my list. Being able to play episodes and update a list from the same program makes things a million times simpler. ME TOO, I don't know what it is about having this program but I am finishing and starting series like never before! Last.FM had a similar effect on me with new music, love that tracking site as well. I love MALU so much, really amazing work. |
Kotori said: forgot to add: - New plugin for custom lists, like what VISUAL NOVELS you've played, tv series/movies. Not related to MAL but probably useful to most users :) Epic. |
  |
| Nice so we're expecting to have an upgrade in Back-up processes & Offline mode that's good to hear, because right now I'm using a 3rd party software to back-up my MalU everything from settings, themes & updates it's still better to have it built it. How about the Favorites List or Bookmarks will it also have an upgrade? 'cause it's not always in alphabetical or chronological order. I'm looking forward for the next version. |
  |
| Whole settings/favorites etc will have a backup option. The current process of 3.x development is centering around preparing for cross-platform, all the code and pluggins are "dettached" from the UI in a way like.. malu could even run without a window or interface, so it'll be much easier for me to adapt it to OSX and iOS. |
| its good to hear that malu progressing to v3. it'll be more amazing than it is xD but dissapointed with no localizaton and themes :S no more themes from me :S |
  |
| So any news about v3? it's been over a year from you said "soon". I can offer easy/small help if you'll ever need. |
| I have no signature at the moment. Cute Ika-musume avatar should be more than enough~ |
| 2.9 will come first, it's not abandoned. |
| Been a long time since I updated plans for 3.x, at the moment it's a bit uncertain when (not if) I'll have this ready. I restarted work on this several times and finally decided it will be a semi cross-platform application for both Windows and OSX (no linux however, that's completely discarded). |
KotoriOct 16, 2012 1:17 AM
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