Flamingo Questions and Answers
We've had an incredible few days since Flamingo's launch on Tuesday. The response from users has been phenomenal, and we're more driven than ever to make this the best product it can be. This post addresses some questions and concerns that we've heard frequently from users.
• Does it support iMessage, AIM, Skype, Yahoo, IRC, etc.?
Flamingo currently only supports Google Hangouts, Facebook Chat, and other XMPP services. There are certain services that we can not support (iMessage, for example) due to the lack of developer APIs. We will be investigating the possibility of adding support for more services in the future, once the core product has been fleshed out.
• Why can't you use "Adium's library" to implement support for X?
Adium and Pidgin use an open source library called libpurple to provide support for many instant messaging services that are not supported by Flamingo. We have been asked by many users why we don't use this library to add support for more services. The main issue is that libpurple is licensed under the GPL license, which would prohibit us from making Flamingo a commercial product and also from distributing it in the App Store. For these reasons, it is not a viable option for us.
• Is conversation history synced between Google and Facebook's mobile and web clients?
Due to API limitations of both Google and Facebook, we are unable to sync conversation history, offline messages, or notifications between Flamingo and their official mobile/web clients.
• Why are group chats not supported?
For Flamingo to support group chats, the service itself must implement the XMPP MUC (Multi User Chat) extension. We can not provide group chat support for Google nor Facebook because neither of these services support this extension. We are considering adding support for XMPP MUC to use with other XMPP services, but it is not a top priority for us at this time because most major services do not support it.
• Is there a trial version?
We currently do not offer a trial or demo version of Flamingo. This has been requested by many users, but we are still undecided as to whether this is something we want to offer.
More answers to common questions can be found on our FAQ page.
We are aware of many bugs that have been reported over the last few days, but would like to address two significant ones in particular:
Since this is the first public release of Flamingo, we have found a lot of new crashes that didn't appear during beta testing. Crash report data is sent to us automatically, so rest assured that every time the app crashes, there's someone at the other end working on a fix. The vast majority of crashes that were discovered in the first few days of use have been fixed in our first maintenance update, which is due to be submitted to the App Store within the week.
• Slow performance with large buddy lists
We are aware of issues in which large buddy lists (typically from Facebook accounts with a lot of friends) may cause beachballing/freezing, crashes, and input lag. These issues have also been resolved for the upcoming maintenance update.
3. Common Feature Requests
These are the most common requests that we've received from users. We are actively working on implementing these (ordered from highest to lowest priority) for future updates.
• Toggle for notification sounds / play sounds in foreground
Due to heavy demand, we will be adding preferences to disable notification sounds entirely, or play them in both the background and the foreground instead of just in the background.
• Manual port/address entry for XMPP servers
Flamingo currently uses SRV record resolution to automatically determine the server port and address using the Jabber ID. While this is a convenient feature in most cases, we have been informed of several situations where it may be necessary to manually specify the server address and port. These configuration options will be added in an update.
• Better keyboard shortcuts
We've received some great suggestions from users for better keyboard shortcuts throughout the app, for common tasks like switching between conversations, toggling full screen mode, closing conversations, and more. We will be considering all of these suggestions and deciding on which ones to use.
Although we use SSL wherever possible when connecting to instant messaging servers, we have received many requests to add an additional layer of security in the form of OTR ("Off the Record") support. We are actively investigating support for this feature.
Our first App Store update (v1.0.7) will be a maintenance update focusing on fixing many of the critical issues noted earlier in this post. Afterwards, we will be focusing on fixing common user annoyances like sound toggles and shortcuts, and then moving on to larger features from there.
The update will be submitted to the App Store later tonight and should be approved by early next week.
Once again, thanks for supporting us and we hope you enjoy Flamingo more and more going forward.
