by Matthew Hodgson | Mar 12, 2015 | General, In the News, Tech, Uncategorized |
Hi folks,
As of today you can install the basic reference Matrix client on iOS from the App Store. We’ve called the app “Matrix Console” to try to make it clear that it’s very much a developer/poweruser tool for experimenting with Matrix and showcasing the Matrix APIs and an example of how to use the iOS SDK – whilst it can be used as a great replacement to IRC, it’s by no means meant to be a glossy polished app like Hangouts or Slack.
Meanwhile you can also get the Android version of Console at the Google Play Store as we mentioned in the last post.
Needless to say, they’re both entirely open-source (Apache license) and you can grab the code from https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk and https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-android-sdk respectively if you want to play with your own copy.
The mobile apps currently act very similarly to the reference web app – providing group chat (text/images/video etc) in decentralised public and private rooms, with room history kept in sync across all your different Matrix-enabled apps. They don’t yet do VoIP, although we’re working on it. Please give the apps a go and file all your bugs and feedback into JIRA or #ios:matrix.org and #android:matrix.org so we can make them even better :)
The iOS app in particular showcases one of the coolest new features in Matrix: the ability for homeservers to support highly configurable push notifications, ensuring you never miss messages on Matrix ever again. The way this works is that when you install the Matrix Console app from iTunes and log in, the app tells your homeserver to send push notifications to a simple push server on Matrix.org running the sygnal codebase (you can also run your own sygnal for your own Matrix apps). You can then configure some excitingly comprehensive push settings in the settings page of the web client (we haven’t exposed the UI to configure these on the mobile apps yet) to configure what events in Matrix should trigger push notifications – and then you will automatically receive the desired pushes even when the app isn’t running.
We think this is incredibly powerful: there are no longer *any* client-side notification settings. Instead, all your notifications are stored server-side – per-room, per-user, per-word and as many other extensible rules as you desire (plus some helpful common special cases). This means that the rules that determine whether you see notifications on the desktop from the webclient are *identical* to the notifications you receive push notifications on your mobile devices. We hope this is a huge improvement over the inflexible notification rules that iMessage, Hangouts etc push onto you (so to speak).
To support the new push rules we’ve just released a new version of the web client – 0.6.5. This implements the new rule configuration UI – see below for example UI.
The full list of changes in matrix-angular-sdk 0.6.5 is as per below. We hope you enjoy the new clients and push settings – thanks for flying Matrix :)
Changes in Matrix Angular SDK 0.6.5 (2015-03-12)
================================================
Features:
- Push notifications can now be set up in the Settings page.
- Text entered into the input box for a room will be preserved across
room swaps.
Bug fixes:
- Fixed a bug where auto-scroll for images did not work correctly.
- Fixed a bug which resulted in a partially populated room when another
device joined a room.
- Fixed a bug which prevented files with the same name being uploaded
sequentially.
- Correctly remove redacted event text from the recent activity list.
- Firefox: Can now join rooms which have a double ## alias.
Improvements:
- Modified Settings page layout.
- Angular SDK now relies on the Javascript SDK for new API features.
- Transparent images will now be shown on a white background.
- GIFs are now marked as such on the thumbnail for the image.
- The web client version is now shown in Settings.
by Matthew Hodgson | Mar 10, 2015 | General, Tech |
Hi folks,
We released a new version (0.2.3) of the Android Matrix Console application today – this is a decent upgrade over 0.2.2. Changelog below.
If you’re an Android user, please install the app from the Play Store and give it a go and give us some feedback on #android:matrix.org or Google Play.
thanks!
Changes in Matrix Android SDK in 0.2.3 (2015-03-10)
===================================================
-----
SDK
-----
-----------------
Matrix Console
-----------------
Improvements:
* Avoid refreshing the home page when it is not displayed.
* Display a piechart while uploading a media.
* Refresh the display when some messages are automatically resent (after retrieving a data network connection for example).
* Update the user rename message to be compliant with the web client.
* Use the local media files instead of downloading them when they are acknowledged (messages sending).
* Create a medias management class.
* Display the offline status in the members list.
* Avoid creating new homeActivity instance when joining a room from member details sheet.
* The public rooms list are now saved in the bundle state : it should avoid having a spinner when rotated the device.
* The animated GIFs are now supported.
Features:
* Add the rate limits error management. The server could request to delay the messages sending because they were too many messages sent in a short time (to avoid spam).
* Can take a photo to send it.
* A chat room page is automatically paginated to fill. It used to get only the ten latest messages : it displayed half filled page on tablet.
* Add the sending failure reason in the message details (long tap on a message, “Message details”).
* The user is not anymore notified it the push rules are not fulfilled.
* Add some room settings (Display all events, hide unsupported events, sort members by last seen time, display left members, display public rooms in the home page).
* Add various accessibility tweaks.
Bug fixes:
* The media downloads/uploads were sometimes stuck.
* The private room creation was broken.
* SYAND-33 : number of unread messages disappears when entering another room.
* The RoomActivity creation used to crash when it was cancelled because the Room id param was not provided.
* The client used to crash when the home server was invalid but started with http.
* The account creation used to fail if the home server had a trailing slash.
* SYAND-44 In progress text entry could be saved across crashes.
* SYAND-38 Inline image viewer in Android app.
by Matthew Hodgson | Mar 9, 2015 | General, Tech, Tutorials |
Hi all,
What with the chaos of Mobile World Congress last week we seem to have been hoarding releases – so here’s what’s been happening!
Synapse 0.8.0 was released this afternoon. This is a major performance/stability release, with lots of good stuff going on – especially adding more customisable push notification support APIs for iOS/Android; support for registering accounts from mobile devices; extensions to the new Application Service API and lots of federation improvements and bug fixes. Please upgrade at your earliest convenience.
Meanwhile, we quietly released the Matrix Console Android example app to the Google Play last week, alongside v0.2.2 of the Android SDK – release notes below. There’ll be a new version of the Android Console app out tomorrow, but mentioning here for completeness and to share the release notes. Also, the iOS SDK is now on v0.3.1, with lots of performance and usability improvements.
Finally, we have a whole new official Matrix client SDK for JavaScript, all packaged up ready for use by Node developers and JS purists alike as an NPM with minimal dependencies. Meanwhile, the matrix-angular-sdk has been switched to use matrix-js-sdk from now on. You can use the plain JS API with a npm install matrix-js-sdk and then:
var sdk = require("matrix-js-sdk");
var client = sdk.createClient("https://matrix.org");
client.publicRooms(function(err, data) {
console.log("Public Rooms: %s", JSON.stringify(data));
});
Meanwhile, release notes for all & sundry lie below.
Changes in synapse v0.8.0 (2015-03-06)
======================================
General:
* Add support for registration fallback. This is a page hosted on the server
which allows a user to register for an account, regardless of what client
they are using (e.g. mobile devices).
* Added new default push rules and made them configurable by clients:
* Suppress all notice messages.
* Notify when invited to a new room.
* Notify for messages that don't match any rule.
* Notify on incoming call.
Federation:
* Added per host server side rate-limiting of incoming federation requests.
* Added a ``/get_missing_events/`` API to federation to reduce number of
``/events/`` requests.
Configuration:
* Added configuration option to disable registration:
``disable_registration``.
* Added configuration option to change soft limit of number of open file
descriptors: ``soft_file_limit``.
* Make ``tls_private_key_path`` optional when running with ``no_tls``.
Application services:
* Application services can now poll on the CS API ``/events`` for their events,
by providing their application service ``access_token``.
* Added exclusive namespace support to application services API.
Changes in Matrix Android SDK in 0.2.2 (2015-02-27)
===============================================
-----
SDK
-----
-----------------
Matrix Console
-----------------
Improvements:
* Exif management : the uploaded image is rotated according to the exif metadata
(if the device has enough free memory).
* Add a piechart while downloading an image
* Add JSON representation of a message (tap on its row, “Message details”
* The public rooms list is now sorted according to the number of members.
Features:
* Add configuration and skeleton classes for receiving GCM messages
* Add REST client for pushers API with add method for HTTP pushers.
* Add the account creation.
Bug fixes:
* Reset the image thumbnail when a row is reused.
* SYAND-30 Notification should be away when entering a room.
* Some images thumbnails were downloaded several times.
* Restore the foreground service
* The medias cache was not cleared after logging out.
* The client crashed when joining #anime:matrix.org.
* SYAND-29 Messages in delivery status are not seen
* Some user display names were their matrix IDs.
* The room name/ topic were invalid when inviting to a room.
Changes in Matrix iOS SDK in 0.3.1 (2015-03-03)
===============================================
-----
SDK
-----
Improvements:
* Improved push notifications documentation.
* MXSession: Slightly randomise reconnection times by up to 3s to prevent all
Matrix clients from retrying requests to the homeserver at the same time.
* Improved logs
Bug fixes:
* SYIOS-90 - iOS can receive & display messages multiple times when on bad connections
-----------------
Matrix Console
-----------------
Improvements:
* Fixed warnings with 64bits builds.
* Room history: Improve scrolling handling when keyboard appears.
* Contacts: Prompt user when local contacts tab is selected if constact sync is disabled.
Bug fixes:
* Fix crash when switching rooms while the event stream is resuming.
* SYIOS-69 - On Screen Keyboard can end up hiding the most recent messages in a room.
* SYIOS-98 - Crash when attempting to attach image on iPad
Changes in Matrix iOS SDK in 0.3.0 (2015-02-23)
===============================================
-----
SDK
-----
Breaks:
* [MXSession initWithMatrixRestClient: andStore: ] and the onStoreDataReady argument in
[MXSession start:] has been removed. The SDK client can now use the asynchronous
[MXSession setStore:] method to define a store and getting notified when the SDK can
read cached data from it. (SYIOS-62)
* MXStore implementations must now implement [MXStore openWithCredentials].
* All MXRestClient methods now return MXHTTPOperation objects.
Improvements:
* Created the MXSession.notificationCenter component: it indicates when an event must be
notified to the user according to user's push rules settings.
* MXFileStore: Improved loading performance by 8x.
* Added an option (MXSession.loadPresenceBeforeCompletingSessionStart) to refresh presence
data in background when starting a session.
* Created MXLogger to redirect NSLog to file and to log crashes or uncaught exception.
* MXRestClient: Added [MXRestClient registerFallback].
* Logs: Make all NSLog calls follows the same format.
Features:
* SYIOS-40 - Any HTTP request can fail due to rate-limiting on the server, and need to be retried.
* SYIOS-81 - Ability to send messages in the background.
Bug fixes:
* SYIOS-67 - We should synthesise identicons for users with no avatar.
* MXSession: Fixed crash when closing the MXSession before the end of initial Sync.
by Oddvar Lovaas | Feb 26, 2015 | General, In the News |
Last week, we mentioned that we released part of a first implementation of the long awaited Application Service (AS) API as part of the 0.7.1 release. The AS API makes it dead simple to connect your service into the Matrix ecosystem using an existing standard Matrix server.
And today we’re very excited that the first implementation using this API has gone live! OpenMarket just announced the OpenMarket Matrix Gateway which lets you chat with non-Matrix users via their phone number: as you send and receive instant messages from your Matrix chat room, they’ll receive and send SMSes back to you, which will appear in your Matrix room as IM, extending your reach to any non-Matrix user.
To use the new OpenMarket service just login to the matrix.org webclient and start a chat with your target mobile phone user by identifying him/her with a Matrix ID in the format @+<msisdn>:matrix.openmarket.com (msisdn being the internationally formatted phone number of your contact) – any messages to them will be sent via OpenMarket’s SMS service. The SMSes will be sent from dynamically assigned numbers so that the recipient is able to respond to your message(s) – and the user will first receive an “opt-in” message from the OpenMarket Matrix Gateway to invite them to the conversation (just as they would if you invited them to a conversation in Matrix). Note that there are a finite set of these dynamically assigned numbers: OpenMarket reserves the right to recycle contact numbers if they have not been used to send or receive traffic for more than 2 months.
Sending SMS through the OpenMarket Matrix Gateway will be free during the introductory beta testing period, and users will be warned when that changes – although usage is subject to a per-user fair-usage policy. Despite the free service today, you’ll have to associate a valid PayPal account to your account in order to send messages for security purposes. OpenMarket will not (and cannot) charge this account without your consent. You can associate your PayPal account via the settings page of any reference Matrix web client which has been configured to be aware of the OpenMarket Matrix Gateway – for example, the matrix.org webclient.
You’ll also have to accept the OpenMarket Matrix API End User License Agreement to use the service.
The OpenMarket Matrix Gateway is a great example of how the Application Service API can be used to extend Matrix, we’re really happy to see it live and hope it’s going to give our community lots of ideas! There are a lot of services that could mutually benefit from being integrated with Matrix, and the AS API makes this much easier to accomplish!
Thus, we strongly urge you to have a look at the AS API – and as always we are happy to answer any questions at #matrix:matrix.org!
by Matthew Hodgson | Feb 21, 2015 | Events, General |
Hi everyone,
Just a quick heads up that we’ll be attending Mobile World Congress (Mar 2-5) this year, chatting to the telco community about how they can benefit from Matrix; encouraging companies to build gateways, servers and clients and generally trying to grow the Matrix ecosystem. If you’re going to be there and are interested in finding out more, please mail us (matrix at matrix.org) to arrange a meeting – we’ll be hanging out at the OpenMarket (8.1D113) and the Amdocs (3G10) booths.
Thanks!
by Matthew Hodgson | Feb 12, 2015 | General, Tech |
We just pushed out a major new release of Synapse 0.7.0, the python reference server for Matrix, and a minor maintenance update for matrix-angular-sdk 0.6.2, the reference web client implementation.
The emphasis here has been on federation performance and stability – with all the recent interest from FOSDEM and LWN and HackerNews we’ve been getting a lot of traffic on matrix.org and new servers federating up, so we’ve been busy profiling and fixing performance on some of the hot paths by adding in-memory caches and similar.
This release is *highly* recommended if you are running a federated server, as it fixes many denial-of-service failure modes in the federation implementation, as well as many performance improvements
Behind the scenes, there’s also lots of work going on for v2 of the Client-Server API (which lets you filter the events your client subscribes to in a room, and combines the ‘initial sync’ and ‘eventstream’ APIs into a single simplified ‘/sync’ API) – the alpha of this has landed in 0.7.0, but we don’t recommend trying to use it yet. Meanwhile the Application Service API is effectively finished, but hasn’t landed on the master branch yet. Synapse also finally has initial support for push notifications for the iOS client now via the sygnal APNS gateway, although we need to actually document how to set this up to be usable in general.
Finally, we have switched to recommending that synapse is installed in a virtualenv rather than into ~/.local, due to various problems with how setup.py’s dependency management works. Instructions on setting up a virtualenv can be found in the README.
On the clientside: we’ve improved performance, enabled identicons for unknown users, and now fully support OpenWebRTC for VoIP calling from Safari, Bowser, and other OpenWebRTC-capable browsers!
Thanks to everyone running servers – please upgrade, tell your friends, and help us grow Matrix!
Changes in synapse v0.7.0 (2015-02-12)
======================================
* Add initial implementation of the query auth federation API, allowing
servers to agree on whether an event should be allowed or rejected.
* Persist events we have rejected from federation, fixing the bug where
servers would keep requesting the same events.
* Various federation performance improvements, including:
- Add in memory caches on queries such as:
* Computing the state of a room at a point in time, used for
authorization on federation requests.
* Fetching events from the database.
* User's room membership, used for authorizing presence updates.
- Upgraded JSON library to improve parsing and serialisation speeds.
* Add default avatars to new user accounts using pydenticon library.
* Correctly time out federation requests.
* Retry federation requests against different servers.
* Add support for push notifications and push rules.
* Add alpha versions of proposed new CSv2 APIs, including ``/sync`` API.
Changes in Matrix Angular SDK 0.6.2 (2015-02-12)
================================================
Bug fixes:
- Fixed a bug which caused OpenWebRTC to occasionally fail.
- Fixed a bug which caused multiple room initial syncs to occur in rapid
succession.
Features:
- Display a "Joining Room" dialog when joining rooms.
- Display identicons for users with no avatar.
- Display m.notice events with full formatting.
- Add push notification rules to settings.
Improvements:
- Modified the red/blue notification colours to be more noticeable on a wider
range of displays.
- Highlight room invitations in blue.
- Calculate room names for rooms of 3+ members.
- Improved page load performance.
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