Ensisoft releases Newsflash Plus 3.3.1

- - - Julia♥

New member
MAJOR BUG! - automatic deletion of paused or "incomplete" downloads

I hope this 'deletion bug' only applies to par files, which happened to be my case. I think the only situation in which software should ever be allowed to automatically delete downloaded files might be *optionally* upon successful par-repair and unrar of the finished files. (even if a download is properly judged as being "unrepairable" just means I need to download the missing parts from another source) I had just paused the download and I did not even complete the download and Newsflash deleted all the files that had already downloaded. (I will turn this thing off in the scripts page and do my own par checking and unraring - and suggest that other users consider also disabling those functions for now)

Are these logs written to a file? I couldn't find any log files, so I had to post a screenshot instead. I had several other suggestions to make, but for now I think this problem is of the highest priority.

Hi,

yep deleting any par/rar files should only be done after a successful repair.

Can you provide me steps to replicate the problem and I'll fix asap. Btw you can report this through the built-in feedback system. Thanks for reporting and sorry for the inconvenience.

-ensi
 
Hello,

Newsflash Plus 3.3.0b5 has been released with some major improvements. Please do note that it is a beta version so there are some rough edges. Any feedback is appreciated.

Also note that this is a completely free release for both platforms Windows and Linux.

http://www.ensisoft.com

I hope you enjoy using Newsflash Plus as much as I enjoy developing it. :naughty:
 
No need to apologise, that's part of being a beta-tester or early adopter. :) Believe me, I've had much worse things happen in the past, like having critical system files irreversibly overwritten by an application's installation sequence. (That's why I greatly prefer to try out software offered as a zip file instead of an installation package.)

I also think there would be a lot more user response if there was a public discussion forum for talking about Newsflash and reporting bugs. I always try to see if other people have already discussed an issue before starting a new topic. With sending a email or PM directly to the developer, there's no way to know if the same problem has already been reported a hundred times before.

But back on topic...........

As for the deletion bug: I had paused the downloading files, but because I did not see the PAR2 files (since they were out of sight below the edge of the window in the download pane) I did not pause the pars and they continued to download. Only the pars were downloaded, not any other files (which were all paused). Once the pars downloaded, Newsflash performed a parity check (on the non-existent files), reported a failure, and then deleted all the par files. :(


That brings up another point: pausing and resuming a download

If I need to suddenly pause all downloads and close all connections, Newsflash requires a series of mouse-clicks and scroll actions to accomplish this. In recent years it seems it's become a kind of universal standard on various P2P and NZB clients to have a "kill switch" on the upper left corner of the GUI - where Newsflash's existing "pause" button sits. But Newsflash's "pause" button only pauses the previously highlighted file/rar being downloaded --not the entire set- so then the next file in the queue will automatically start downloading when the current one is paused. It's a very convenient feature to have a button to open and close all connections to the server in one click - and many other applications do this.

So I'd like to suggest a one-click "kill-all-connections" -switch/"resume-all connections" -switch. Similar to Emule and Altbinz.


A tiny issue:
Newsflash's default port setting for "Secure Server (SSL)" is 443, rather than the standard SSL port 563.
 
Great news. It's always nice to get communication from a developer. There's nothing like releasing free software to stand out from the pack and to build up a userbase. :)

As I said in another post, Newsflash's lack of fill-server support is what keeps me from using it, as just about all other modern clients support fill-servers (and it's bailed me out plenty of times). A lot of people just use a single provider (and complain about incompletes), but I preach the gospel of blockaccount fillservers. Hopefully it's on the list as a future feature.
 
I'm going to send the logs (next time that is).

I still need the program to retry/reconnect on disconnects whatever the reason for the disconnects is (external, internal, whatever) though so I'll be happy if you add such an option ;)

One thing that I just remembered.. do you have that silly "Keep connections alive" option checked in the settings?
 
One thing that I just remembered.. do you have that silly "Keep connections alive" option checked in the settings?

I HAD but I unchecked that box after I wrote the post yesterday and so far there haven't been any disconnects yet.

The connections are still there after download is finished so that option doesn't do what I thought :P
 
It seems that it doesn't disconnect anymore so I guess the problem is solved :)

I'm kinda starting to like that newznab thingy too.
 
Hello Sami ,have been testing it for couple days now and


1.Amazing what a man with a coding skill can do

2.Sami,you got the only good free program that handles headers,very good indeed!
even altbinz can not do that because he dont have the skills.

3.change name to sami the headerbinzer,name newsflash plus is not my cup of tea
was name newsflash taken(irony) flash is fast but with a plus does it go faster than speed of light
yes, im ranting but you got a great program so,why not a better name.

couple points i want to make, its was first very confusing how to manage headers.
and also to limit the header downloading is in %,but now when i got hang of it i like it.

using words like flush,expunge,boost,prefer secure,yield,clone is also little bit confusing.

use of search/newsnab,open nbz tabs must be better explained.
(search shows only old files)

here is faster par: http://paulhoule.com/phpar2/index.php or
http://www.chuchusoft.com/par2_tbb/download.html


reqs:

a start button before pause

a button go to downloads folder

when adding a server: enable disable server and max conn per server

RSS-feed import,(if this is done there is no other programs that is better out there!)

adding search by https://www.nzbindex.com/ and https://www.binsearch.info/


bugs: it doesent del dl rars and pars?

help - protocol c not supported
 
Loving it so far. Tried a few others but always went back to Alt.Binz mostly because they had issues when downloading large collections.

ETA on files are nice but I would want to see ETA on the total., or at least on each release/"NZB".
Is it possible to get it to show all the files under the NZB name in the downloads window so you can show/hide the list of file names (like Alt.Binz)? It's a bit hard to see what release is finished etc.
ETA/speed on taskbar would be nice.

"Yield", "Clone", "Delete Connection" and "Flush" does what?

It doesn't seem to automatically sort after date or whatever when you refresh RSS, you have to click on date to get it to sort it (yeah I'm lazy).

A really dark theme would be nice (good old terminal green on black maybe:P) ;)
 
Can you explain this please? I thought newznab is supposed to be a web based service not in a newsreader?

Newznab is a server side service. It is a a set of automated scripts to build a NZB index using headers. But it also it comes with a web frontend so you can easily run it as a web site similar to nzbs.org. But on top of that it specifies an external API for for applications doing searches against the index over HTTP. In other words Newsflash can run searches against Newznab indexing sites. The search performs on the server, search response comes back to the application which displays it. When an item is being downloaded the NZB content is also fetched from the server.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys. Most people just don't bother to provide any feedback and as a single developer without the resources to do usability studies etc. so developing end user friendly software is difficult.

@zot - Yes server priorization is on the list potentially, just got few things to sort out. I.e. it's easy to get it working for NZB based downloading (RSS feed/Search/NZB files) but for headers it is trickier. Anyway it won't make the coming 3.3.0 release.

@stillwaiting - Thanks for the phpar2 link.



Can you clarify what RSS feed are you referring to and what does importing mean in this context?

it doesent del dl rars and pars?

Yep, although this is more like an unimplemented feature though. Easy enough to do with the embedded python.

help - protocol c not supported

Sorry, can you clarify what does this mean?


Thanks guys!

br,
ensi
 
Those who know me personally know how much I rant about crappy software. IMHO there's no excuse for it. But software is a difficult undertaking and bugs happen. :(

I also think there would be a lot more user response if there was a public discussion forum for talking about Newsflash and reporting bugs. I always try to see if other people have already discussed an issue before starting a new topic. With sending a email or PM directly to the developer, there's no way to know if the same problem has already been reported a hundred times before.

That's a very nice approach. :) However I think that for a lot of people posting and issue on a forum that requires registration etc. requires too many steps. I know I'm quilty of this. So therefore using an email or the built-in feedback system is ok with me.

But yeah.. I started a forum which you can find here http://www.ensisoft.com/forum It will probably always remain empty cause getting some discussion would require some actual users hahaha :) Let me know if you want to move the discussion over there.

But back on topic...........

As for the deletion bug: I had paused the downloading files, but because I did not see the PAR2 files (since they were out of sight below the edge of the window in the download pane) I did not pause the pars and they continued to download. Only the pars were downloaded, not any other files (which were all paused). Once the pars downloaded, Newsflash performed a parity check (on the non-existent files), reported a failure, and then deleted all the par files. :(

FIXED in the next release! Thanks for reporting that was nasty.

That brings up another point: pausing and resuming a download

If I need to suddenly pause all downloads and close all connections, Newsflash requires a series of mouse-clicks and scroll actions to accomplish this. In recent years it seems it's become a kind of universal standard on various P2P and NZB clients to have a "kill switch" on the upper left corner of the GUI - where Newsflash's existing "pause" button sits. But Newsflash's "pause" button only pauses the previously highlighted file/rar being downloaded --not the entire set- so then the next file in the queue will automatically start downloading when the current one is paused. It's a very convenient feature to have a button to open and close all connections to the server in one click - and many other applications do this.

So I'd like to suggest a one-click "kill-all-connections" -switch/"resume-all connections" -switch. Similar to Emule and Altbinz.

A tiny issue:
Newsflash's default port setting for "Secure Server (SSL)" is 443, rather than the standard SSL port 563.

Hmm.. I guess that makes sense in some volatile circumstances like leeching at work :) As for pausing... Ctrl+A to select all and then click Pause (or hit Ctrl+P)

Anyway.. new version coming this weekend. Stay tuned.

Thanks for the input as always.

-ensi
 
It seems that it doesn't disconnect anymore so I guess the problem is solved :)

I'm kinda starting to like that newznab thingy too.

If you don't mind.. please replicate the problem and send me a complete connection log so I can give a shot at figuring out what's the problem. :)
 
Back
Top