An Ostrich in the Safari.

Ostrich is being discontinued

Last summer when I was coding on a toy project for learning and for myself, I ended up creating an unsustainable prototype which gained popularity in a short moment.

The truth is: Ostrich was never meant for a large public.

It’s completely my fault. Not seeing it for what it was. I was stoked by the interest it got and kept on developing it.

However, due to recent events such as starting to work more to pay the bill, I decided Ostrich was not a project I wanted to pursue. It doesn’t have much potential past the current usage it has. There are tons of Twitter clients out there, it’s a tough space to compete in. I’d rather create something with an edge. Something worth putting in the time.

All in all, Ostrich has been a great learning experience. Most of the interactions I’ve had with its users have been pleasant.

I’m sure you’ll find a good replacement for Ostrich.

Thanks.

Ostrich 0.3.0.1

Yes, it’s been months since the last update. Mostly due to the fact that Ostrich had been running sufficiently smoothly, but also because at some point you have to earn a living.

So here you have it. 0.3.0.1. Nothing major, just one bug fix.

Bug Fix: Constantly repeating mentions bug has been fixed.

I urge you to upgrade, go in you Safari Preferences, now!

Thanks for your patience as always, I’ll release juicier details of what’s coming and the current state of Ostrich soon. (ie: Chrome version)

Ostrich 0.3

I’m hoping this one works as well for you as it does for me and all the beta testers :)

Features:

• Direct Messages (Viewing and sending)
• User Profiles (Basic info and stats, last tweets and Follow/Unfollow)
• Image Upload

Bugs Fixed:

• Connection to the server should persist or reconnect automatically if it dies;
• When putting your laptop to sleep or losing the wireless connection, it should also reconnect on its own within 15-30 seconds;
• The styling of the app should be more consistent across websites. Though it’s not great yet;
• Ostrich’s window will now only open at boot if you’re not authenticated (should not happen often, if at all).

Pretty much all other bugs I could find on my own and with maybe 5 testers have been squashed.

The reason for such a slow release is the ridiculously huge rewrite of how the app works (again.) Now using cutting-edge technologies to deliver tweets with less resources and more reliably.

Sadly, I can’t guarantee it’ll be 99-100% reliable yet. I’ve been working on this version for weeks now and to me, it’s the best yet. I will be working hard on the next version as soon as I can and I will update you on the details on the next release.

Freak problem on the server. Solution underway.

Well it seems like I can be very unlucky with servers. This time, it’s something even the gurus at ubuntuforums.org can’t fix. I’ve called iWeb, my hosting company to have them take a look, however I’m doubtful they will come up with a solution.

Luckily I have access to the DNS server, therefore I can point ostrichapp.com to the old server. It should begin working for everyone within 24 hours. Depending on your DNS provider, it could take as few as 2-3 hours (like for me, I use Google’s and that’s what I get.)

Sorry again about this. The server component is really frustrating me. I’m learning about making this component history with everything done in JS. Not quite there yet though.

Thanks for sticking by.

What’s next? More of the roadmap.

With the server fixed (so it seems for now), I’m now able to work on new features. I could finally open up my project management software and check it out. So in the interest of transparency, here’s what it looks like:

Bear in mind this is not final. This is merely what I will try to work on in the next week. If I fall on issues, I might choose to develop other features. I’m especially reticent concerning the Direct Messages.

Your Guide To Occasional Fail Ostriches

*Imagine an hilarious illustration of a “fail whale” but with an Ostrich that I haven’t had time to do yet because of you know what!*

For general and personal help, you may post on Ostrich’s UserVoice or ask me directly on Twitter @ostrichapp.

Ostrich is greyed out, disabled, unavailable

Happens when: 

• You’re on an empty tab, top sites or an rss feed;
• There was an error while authenticating you;
• Tweets couldn’t be retrieved and you were logged in.

Fixing it: 

• Disable and renable the extension in your preferences;
• Restart safari;
• Wait a while and try those again.

Ostrich is enabled, black or loaded, but it doesn’t open when I click on it

Happens when:

• You’re on a tab that was opened before Ostrich was activated;
• Some edge case where the extension bugged.

Fixing it:

• Open a new tab with a webpage in it;
• Refresh your tab(s);
• Notify me if it still happens.

The “Success!” page says its loading tweets, but it’s been hours and nothing happened!

Happens when:

• There was an error while loading your timeline;
• If the Ostrich is black, then they might be loaded but the firing mechanism failed;
• The server is being hammered.

Fixing it:

• Try again;
• Try again later.

Ostrich opens but there are no tweets loaded, I only see “Load more tweets”.

Happens when:

• Ostrich wasn’t finished loading tweets and the window opened by mistake;
• Ostrich wasn’t finished loading tweets and you opened the window;
• Twitter threw and error and I returned a blank stream for you.

Fixing it:

• Close and reopen Ostrich;
• Try it in a new tab with content;
• Deactivate and reactivate Ostrich from your Safari’s preferences.

New tweets have stopped coming in.

Happens when:

• Websocket server crashed.

Fixing it:

• Tell me on Twitter, but I’m usually quick on restarting it as I monitor it.

When I installed Ostrich, Safari crashed instantly and won’t open up again.

Wow, that’s bad. I’ve only heard that about 2-3 times. My best advice is to delete Ostrich.safariextz from ~/Library/Safari/Extensions (“~” means your home directly) and then restarting Safari. If you want to give it a try again, you may reinstall it and see if it still crashes.

False alert. Ostrich still needs fixing.

First let me reiterate on why Ostrich needs a server at all. Connecting to Twitter with OAuth requires something else than Javascript. It needs a backend where the connection dance to OAuth can happen. It’s possible in Javascript, but I would have to supply the extension with secure information in an unsecure manner.

In the last two days, I modified Ostrich to fetch tweets (it’s longest lasting requests, which killed the server) in the background. However, it fell short again. Little did I know, I used a technique that wasn’t scalable. The thinking is fine and should’ve worked, but I used one method somewhere that ruined it for the whole application. I need to replace those few lines with something more scalable. That’s the plan for the next few days.

At the moment, the ones being able to use it for a few minutes is the results of me manually restarting the process that serves the data. I’m that dedicated. But that’s enough, I’m putting back the message saying it’s unavailable.

Thanks for understanding.

Ostrich Fixed + 0.2.2.1

Hey!

It’s been the hardest few days. After being featured on Safari’s Extension Gallery the traffic surged again. I thought I was ready, but my coding skills are way too amateur for this kind of deployment.

I seeked help to fix this. Big thanks to @jimiray, @wmoxam and @j_dan_williams for the big help they’ve been into fixing my server and making me a better developer overnight!

Changelog:

• It works. (this joke is getting old, but it’s true)

Why the 0.2.2.1? Just some clumsiness, happens with almost all releases and takes about 2 minutes for me to realize I forgot to change a setting. Maybe because of the countless hours it took to fix this big problem in the last 2 days.

Thanks for sticking by!

(For the technically curious, ping me on twitter or email me jerome@ostrichapp.com and I’ll tell you how the server works now.)

New ultra-powerful server + Ostrich 0.2.2 is out.

Since the fireballing and the blogging/retweeting that followed, Ostrich’s server was on its knees (or small cringing wheels). As I pulled my hair out with one hand and tweeted with my feet, I also happened to call my sales rep at iWeb to get a brand spanking new server.

While I had the excuse of the server being down for all those errors, I think there’s a big part where it was actually my fault. The extension has its bugs. I put on the time required to make it work and now I think it’s much more reliable/stable. I’m also quick on fixes so if you find a problem with this one, don’t hesitate to tell me.

You may not see this update just yet. I have updated the DNS entries for Ostrich to point to the new server, but it might take up to 24 hours depending on your ISP/dns provider. I recommend using Google’s DNS Servers.

When the DNS are propagated to your ISP, you’ll see the Ostrich dialog advising you to update your extension. I hope this all goes well. Another way to figure out if the DNS are propagated is by visiting Ostrichapp.com and checking if it’s snappy!

Changelog:

• Overall stability and performance upgrades;
• Ostrich should not be greyed out anymore if it’s available. If it’s greyed out then there’s a problem, something didn’t load yet or you’re on a blank tab;
• Disabled showing more favorites until I figure it out.

Upcoming:

• Server improvements in terms of caching. “Performance” as they say;
• Getting back on track with the development of 0.3.

Thanks for sticking by these rough times.