This page contains the change history for MacFIBS, in reverse chronological order. For each release it describes the new features and bug fixes.
Most of the information in this page is historical and is not necessary to use MacFIBS.
MacFIBS 4.5.3
Release Date: 15 June 2001
Bug Fixes
Fixed the gag/blind bug.
Fixed the "Hello" sound bug.
New Features
None so far.
MacFIBS 4.5.2
Release Date: 2 June 2001
Bug Fixes
Completed work on new auto gag/blind code, which was not working in the 4.5.1 beta releases.
The "Clear All" Contextual menu command now works properly in all windows (Public Chat, Game Chat, Private Chat, Terminal, Game History) that have scrolling text fields.
Fixed several bugs in the networking code, in particular a timing bug that caused MacFIBS to quit when an error occurred connecting to a port on the local Mac (thanks to CokeBear for reporting this). MacFIBS will now display an error dialog when a TCP connection fails and properly reset to a disconnected state.
MacFIBS will automatically clean up the server name, removing extraneous characters--such as spaces--which caused the network connection to fail (reported by Steven Hirsch). MacFIBS will only allow you to enter valid domain name characters (alpha, numeric, hyphen, and period) for the server name in the Network preferences.
Fixed an obscure bug that occurred if you gagged or blinded yourself (you'd be surprised...) after which your chat and shout messages wouldn't display properly. MacFIBS won't let you gag or blind yourself (for a chuckle, look at the messages in the Terminal window when you try to.)
Cleaned up parser code for handling the message of the day (think "whales") properly so that future messages about rain forests won't cause MacFIBS to keel over.
The "Use Defaults" button in the Network section of the Preferences window no longer clears the user name and password fields.
Fixed a bug that occurred if your opponent logged out during a match. In this case, MacFIBS wouldn't correctly recognize that your status had returned to "Ready". If the opponent dropped connection, MacFIBS did handle it correctly. Thanks to Tom Hauk (MuffinHead) for reporting this bug.
New Features
MacFIBS will now display an alert if the network connection fails, referring users to the MacFIBS Help documentation for additional information about troubleshooting connection problems.
The Connect window now contains a Status section, which will display the word "Connecting..." after you click Connect. The window remains open until the connection is established or until a connection error is reported.
The "Play sound when talked to" option in the Chat section of the Preferences now plays the chat sound whenever someone kibitzes, whispers, or privately chats with you.
Names and status information that is too long is now truncated, rather than overflowing into the following column.
You can have the Hosts column in the Players window display country names and abbreviated IP names, rather than full IP names, which are much easier to read. You can toggle between the two using the contextual menu in the Player window.
Simplified the Startup section of the Preferences window. Rather than specifying which windows should be opened at startup, MacFIBS will just remember which windows were open at time you last quit MacFIBS, and restore just those windows.
New Messages window displays messages waiting for you when you log in, and provides an improved interface to post messages for other players.
MacFIBS 4.5.1B4
Release Date: 5 April 2001 (no installer)
Bug Fixes
Fixed a low memory corruption bug caused by the sound code.
MacFIBS 4.5.1B3 (Emergency beta release)
Release Date: 4 April 2001 (no installer)
Bug Fixes
Fixed the bug where the higher dice wasn't shown on the left if you had the "Higher Dice First" preference option enabled.
Fixed the crash on exit bug caused by the "Connect Immediately" preference option.
Fixed the scroll bar bug in the Game History window.
Reworked the sound algorithm (again) to eliminate the disk activity some users experienced with MacFIBS game sounds.
Fixed the scrolling text field in the MacFIBS About... box.
Fixed the board weirdness if you dragged or double clicked your opponent's checker rather than your own (thanks to CokeBear for identifying this bug).
Fixed match score bug when players resumed a match in progress.
Fixed a bug where the version displayed in the About... box was the board file's version rather than the MacFIBS version.
New Features
A new "Tip of the Day" window that can be displayed automatically at startup, or whenever you get the urge for a frozen jello shooter of wisdom about using MacFIBS.
The Inspector window is now a regular window, rather than a floating window. This fixed a number of pernicious bugs that seem to be caused by the use of floating windows. You can bring the Inspector window to the front with Cmd-8.
The Kleinman information shown at the bottom of the board window has been changed. Rather than showing the raw Kleinman ratio, it shows a probability (that is, a number between 0.0 and 1.0) of winning in a racing situation based on the Kleinman ratio. The probability only appears under conditions where the information is valid, which means for much of a game the field will display only a single dash ("-") rather than a probability number; this is explained in detail in the MacFIBS user documentation.
Added support for the Mac OS Keychain, so that you can store your MacFIBS user name and password in the Keychain rather than your MacFIBS Preferences.
Restored the port number field to the Network section of the Preferences window for users who use an intermediary server to access FIBS.
When you start a match, the chat window now reverts to "Kibitz" to reduce problems of sending chat to the wrong user.
MacFIBS 4.5
Release Date: 15 October 2000
Bug Fixes
Fixed the bug with Cmd-W in the Invite Player window. If you invited someone, but changed your mind and closed the Invite window with Cmd-W, the Close command for the underlying window was not enabled.
Fixed a cosmetic bug that occured while you were watching a match. When one player doubled the other, the doubling cube was always placed on the top center of the board. It should be placed on the top if the bottom player issued the invitation, on the bottom if the top player did.
Reworked the sound algorithm to resolve the lag reported by some players, and to provide better sound synchronization with the dice.
Fixed the board weirdness if you dragged or double clicked your opponent's checker rather than your own (thanks to CokeBear for identifying this bug.)
Fixed match score bug when players resumed a match in progress.
Fixed a bug where the version displayed in the About... box was the board file's version rather than the MacFIBS version.
New Features
MacFIBS has a new board, the iBoard Graphite board with sage and ruby checkers. The board shows off a new MacFIBS feature in preparation for Mac OS X--translucency (the checkers and dice can be partially transparent.)
The Player Info window has been replaced by a more general purpose Inspector window. The Inspector's floating window shows information about the currently selected player or match. While it looks much like the Player Info window, I think you'll find this window works easier and more naturally.
Board windows now contain new contextual menus to swap colors, change the direction of play, and toggle numbers and sounds on/off. Previously you had to open the Preferences window to change these.
You can now incorporate the player's name in the default decline or initial kibitz message, which you set in the Chat section of the Preferences window. MacFIBS will replace the special word "&name" with the player's name, so you can create a message like this: "Hi &name! Greetings from California!" and MacFIBS will substitute your opponent's name in the string, resulting in "Hi joefibsplayer! Greetings from California!" (Geeks refer to this as a macro substitution.) The same "&name" substitution works with the decline message.
If you kibitz after you have completed a match, MacFIBS will silently convert the kibitz into a "Tell <player> ..." message to your former opponent. This allows you to easily send a "Thanks for the match" message to your opponent without having to explicitly set up a Tell window or change the popup menu. The kibitz behavior is reset when you start another match, or begin watching a match.
When you invite someone with whom you have a saved match, MacFIBS sets the default radio button to "Resume saved match". If you do not have a saved match with the player, the "Resume saved match" button is disabled.
The Windows menu contains two new menu commands, "Move to Back" (Cmd+`), and "Move Behind" (Cmd+\) to more easily manage the layer order of open windows (thanks to richardb for the suggestion.)
Chat windows now display the error messages "** There is no one called <player>" to gently hint that you're talking to yourself again.
MacFIBS now replaces underscore characters ("_") with space characters in client names. In a player info window you will now see "MacFIBS 4.5" rather than "MacFIBS_4.5" or "BBGT 4.0 beta" instead of "BBGT_4.0_beta" in Player Info windows. Computers (and geeks) like underscores, people don't.
Upgraded the text engine wrapper classes from CWASTEEdit to WText (if you don't know what this means, don't worry about it. If curiosity gnaws at you, type 'cwasteedit' into your favorite search engine.) By the way, did you know that if someone sends you a message with a URL in it, you can Command-click the URL in the Chat window and MacFIBS will automatically pass the URL to your browser?
MacFIBS 4.2
Release Date: 24 August 2000
Bug Fixes
Fixed a nasty crashing bug. If any player on FIBS is watching a match and logs out without first unwatching, it can crash MacFIBS. Fortunately, watching is not as popular as it once was, but this is still a bad one.
Fixed a parsing bug with handling FIBS messages with missing line endings, specifically the messages sent when you or your opponent accepts a double. This was causing the following line to be appended to the first message, MacFIBS would then miss that message. This is a server bug (thanks to Peter DeWolf for reporting this), but MacFIBS will specifically check for this and work around it.
Fixed a functional bug with the Game Preference setting for the line ending of saved games (thanks to Peter Nau for reporting this).
Fixed an audio bug, where the MacFIBS dice sounds would stop working if the Apple Video Player was operating (thanks to Steve Kalil for reporting this.)
Fixed a functional bug where if you clicked a player and then immediately control-clicked the player to pop up a contextual menu, MacFIBS would interpret that as a double-click, which would either open a player info or invite the player depending on your preference setting.
Fixed a crashing bug that happened when you dragged a player icon (
) from the board window to a player info window after the player had logged off (thanks to Howie Motenko for reporting this.)
Fixed two bugs in the Contextual Help menu. If the Apple Guide files were not in the same folder as the MacFIBS application, and you chose "Help" from a contextual menu, MacFIBS would quit. If the Guide files were present, MacFIBS would open the Guide file rather than the Apple Help viewer. (The current documentation is in Apple Help format, and is installed in the Help menu under Mac OS 8.5 or later.)
Fixed a cosmetic bug that eliminates flicker when you are dragging a checker and stop moving it (but still have the mouse button held down).
Fixed a functional bug where using Cmd-W to close an Invitation window (someone invited you to play a match) was not closing the Invitation window but was closing the window immediately under it.
New Features
Added new board highlighting. When you begin dragging a checker, MacFIBS will indicate the possible target pips, and as you drag the checker onto one, it will highlight the pip. This should make checker moving more accurate. The option to use highlighting is settable in the Board section of the Preferences window.
Added a new tab to the Players window titled "News" that contains a list of announcements including players logging in, logging out, starting and finishing matches. This is similar to the In/Out/News fields at the bottom of the page, but this section displays the complete history of these, with time stamping.
Added a new documentation section about the FIBS commands. For each command, it describes the command and how the command is (or is not) useful to MacFIBS users. Overall, the MacFIBS documentation in this release is about 77% larger than before, which means of course that it is 77% better...
Modified the behavior of the Connect dialog. If you change the user name or password in the Connect dialog, MacFIBS will use that change when connecting, but it will no longer update the Preferences. This should prevent problems where people accidently mistype their user name or password in the Connect dialog, and then later find themselves unable to log in.
Modified the sorting algorithm to always use player name as a "tie breaker" (for example if you are sorting by status within client.) This reduces the tendency of names on the list to jump around when the primary and secondary sort criteria don't result in a strictly monotonic ordering (e.g. status, client, color, buddy, and to a lesser degree, experience, host, rating).
If you turn on balloon help while the Preferences window is open (either by clicking the small icon at the lower left or choosing "Show Balloons" under the Help menu), MacFIBS will turn balloon help off when you close the window. Don't you wish all applications were this polite?
MacFIBS 4.1.8
Release Date: 27 May 2000
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug introduced in 4.1.7 while fixing the "You" bug. When you played a match, the lower player icon representing yourself was grayed out, and you couldn't double click it or drag it to the match calculator or a player info window. Note also that now your actual name appears on the board, instead of "You".
Fixed the Apple Help documentation, which was missing a few GIF files.
MacFIBS 4.1.7
Release Date: 2 May 2000
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug introduced by someone registering a user name of "You". In FIBS English, many messages use "You" in place of your own user name (e.g. "You roll 1 6" actually means "<your user name> rolls 1 6"). MacFIBS would treat "You" as a "you"phemism (hee hee...) for your user name, and this caused all sorts of problems when the actual user named "You" was logged in.
Added "** Don't know user <player>." to chat window, to indicate that a message could not be delivered (remember that the name you specify in a message is case sensitive.)
Made the order of player-related menu items (Invite <player>, Chat with <player>, etc.) the same everywhere these items appear in contextual menus.
New Features
Added preference to disable the confirmation dialog that appears when you click the doubling cube. After you become familiar with how the MacFIBS board works, you don't need to confirm that you really want to double every time, so the dialog now contains a checkbox that says "Don't show this dialog again."
Added preference to display the dice with the higher dice first, for example, it will switch 3-6 into 6-3. When this preference is off, the dice order is whatever is sent by the server.
MacFIBS 4.1.6
Release Date: 2 April 2000
Bug Fixes
Fixed a data corruption bug, where the gagged/blinded settings for players were deleted when you used the Refresh Players command.
Fixed a bug in the handling of the message of the day text.
Fixed a bug where the radio buttons in the Resign dialog weren't updating properly.
Fixed a bug where offscreen pixmaps were not marked as non-purgeable and were not locked before blitting. This was causing a crash when moving checkers for some players with video acceleration hardware drivers.
Added balloon help for the clock button in the Player Info window. Fixed incorrect balloon for the idle time info in the Player Info window.
Recognized message sent by server when attempting to raise the doubling cube above 1024.
Fixed a bug where the Player > Sort By menu wouldn't do anything.
Added the "score in ..." message to the Save To File output.
New Features
MacFIBS now uses Mindvisions excellent Installer VISE to create a full featured installer rather than just a StuffIt file. The installer can automatically put the MacFIBS Help files in the proper place in the System folder. You can also selectively install just the application, documentation, or additional boards.
Modified the sorting logic so that you can sort in just about any way imaginable.
Removed the "Sort By" preference in the Player section of the Preferences dialog. Now MacFIBS will keep track of your sorting criteria (both primary and secondary), and restore that order the next time you launch MacFIBS.
Added a new column button for sorting by client.
Added a new client icon 
for the Linux-based KFibs client.
Added a new feature where MacFIBS will detect when a game becomes "no contact", and automatically toggle greedy (the "lightning bolt" button at the bottom of the board window). You can enable or disable this feature in the Game section of the Preferences window.
Modified how the Chat window popup menu responds when players log off (this only applies if you have set Single Chat window preference.)
Added a new Game Messages window that stores the game moves (rolls, moves, doubles, etc.). This is not yet a complete solution to the issue of saving games for replay in Snowy or JellyFish, but it is a start. You can save the contents of this window using the standard File > Save and Save As… menu commands. This also allows you to save matches you watch, unlike the Save To File output.
Modified the Player menu, so that you can issue common commands (Invite, Watch, Look, Chat, and Info) even when the Player window is not frontmost. These commands are active whenever the Player window is open and a player selected (depending on the status of the player, not all commands may be active.)
MacFIBS will ignore invitations from any player you have marked as "Blind". This extends the behavior of blinding players beyond its original purpose, but is useful for handling abusive players. In my case, this was prompted by the behavior of a particularly obnoxious jerk who goes by the names of Brutus, eeetmeee, tryme, JJJ, uranus, wolf_blitzer (and probably many other names). I strongly urge you to avoid any player from hosts table.jps.net, diane.gsfc.nasa.gov, or 216.224.152.103, as these appear to be his common points of entry.
Added Wave Goodbye to the contextual menu for the Shout window. MacFIBS will issue two consecutive "wave" commands to log you off.
Modified menu command key shortcuts. Connect... now has a command key shortcut of Cmd-K. Player Info, which used to use Cmd-K, now uses Cmd-G.
When you roll and can't move, the dice return to the tray rather than remaining on the board, silently mocking you.
MacFIBS 4.1.5
Release Date: 23 February 2000
Fixed a bug that occurred if you deleted or moved the board file that MacFIBS last opened. The next time you launched MacFIBS, it presented an Open File dialog to prompt you to choose one, but the attempt to open it failed.
MacFIBS 4.1.4
Release Date: 22 February 2000
Bug Fixes
Fixed a crashing bug that occurred if you typed 'dicetest' in the Terminal window to view the dice statistics kept by the server.
Fixed several bugs (some crashers) that occurred if you deselected the Terminal or Game Room windows in the Preferences > Startup and didn't open those windows prior to connecting to FIBS.
Fixed a bug where a user who had left you a message would be listed in the Player window, even if they weren't logged in at the time you got the message.
The default setting for Resign game was incorrect (it defaulted to "Backgammon (3x)"). It now is correctly set to "Normal (1x)".
Fixed a problem with toggling board sounds. MacFIBS wasn't recognizing when you toggled them on, so if they were off, and you toggled them on, no sounds would play until you quit MacFIBS and restarted.
If the main chat window is not visible when someone sends you a chat message (kibitz, whisper, tell, say), the chat window is opened.
Changed the randomization of dice positions when the dice are in the tray. Before the dice position would be slightly randomized--three pixels in both the vertical and horizontal position. Now the horizontal position is fixed, the positions are still randomized by three pixels vertically.
When a match finishes, the statistics numbers at the bottom of the board window (score, pip count, etc.) are blanked out. Before, the scores were set to zero, but the other fields were left unchanged. The player names remain on the board, so you can double click the player icons to get player info for them (Tip: After you finish a game, if you want to invite the same player again, just drag the player's icon at the bottom of the board window onto the board.)
The "Invite" button now responds to the return key when you are inviting someone to play a match. (Note that the corresponding "Accept" button when someone invites you does not respond to the return key. If it did, you might accidentally accept an invitation while typing an ordinary chat message. The same is true when your opponent offers to resign or doubles you.)
Weak linked the Open Transport libraries so that people running MacTCP (System 7.5) can run MacFIBS.
Fixed problem with the icons at the bottom of the board window appearing as blank.
Balloon help for MacFIBS was accidentally disabled, it now works.
New Features
Modified the Player window to use new "Finder-style" beveled buttons instead of the old-fashioned, ugly, and oh so 1990's underlined text buttons.
Added an up/down toggle button above the scroll bar, to allow you to sort the selected column in ascending or descending order.
Added a dialog that is displayed when the login fails, telling you that you did not log in, and disconnecting the IP session.
Updated the small icons for hosts, switched to "Mac OS" happy face instead of MacFIBS icon, switched to improved Windows icon.
Added messages to the Board window's status line that gives feedback while you are moving your checkers, for example, "You have moved bar-5 5-10 17-22 (1 move left)". This is a very cool feature!
Modified the graphics of the board buttons, to make it more similar to MacFIBS 3. In their "off" states, the graphics are desaturated.
Modified the messages displayed in the main Chat window so that you can distinguish among kibitz, whisper, chat, etc.
You can now drag/drop a player onto the main chat window. Depending on your Preferences setting, MacFIBS will either add and select "Tell <player>" in the window's popup menu, or open a private chat window with <player>.
MacFIBS 4.1.3
Release Date: 6 February 2000
Fixed a bug where MacFIBS wouldn't create a new chat window when someone sent you a private chat message and your preference was set to "Separate Chat Windows."
Fixed a stupid bug I introduced in 4.1.1, where the sound to indicate it's your turn to roll broke (this time I mean it, I really fixed it this time!)
MacFIBS 4.1.2
Release Date: 5 February 2000
Fixed a bug where MacFIBS would not display the correct value of the doubling cube when playing a match with autodouble on and having one or more opening doubles.
Fixed a stupid bug I introduced in 4.1.1, where the sound to indicate it's your turn to roll broke.
MacFIBS 4.1.1
Release Date: 5 February 2000
FINALLY fixed (I hope) a major bug introduced in beta 4, where not all players would appear in the Players list. This bug nearly drove me to drink.
Fixed a bug (actually two unrelated bugs) with saving the moves from a game. It should work properly now.
Fixed a bug where user names with an extra period ('.') character at the end would appear in the player window.
Fixed color coding bugs in the Shout and Chat windows.
Fixed a bug where MacFIBS would beep when bringing a checker in from the bar if you double clicked it.
Fixed a bug in the player window with contextual menus. If a player is selected, and you control-click on another player, the menu used to list options for the selected player, not the player on which you clicked. This is working properly now, the control-clicked player will be the focus of the contextual menu, and that player will be selected when you release the mouse.
Adjusted the widths of several columns in the player window to provide a little more room.
Fixed several bugs with saving player buddy, blind, gag, color, and notes information.
Fixed a bug with player sounds. Now MacFIBS will only look in the Preferences file for player sounds, so that players with names that match system sounds (e.g. "Quack") won't pick up the corresponding system sound.
Fixed a bug that wouldn't allow MacFIBS to launch if Internet Config or Apple Guide system software was not installed.
The player notes text box is now white, and won't display funny gray/white banding when you entered notes.
Added new feature that makes gag and blind "permanent". If you set gag or blind for a player, MacFIBS will automatically generate the "gag playerX" and "blind playerY" messages. This was a frequent request.
Changed web address and email address to use my new @Home account. Over time, I expect to discontinue my Best account.
MacFIBS 4.1
Release Date: 29 January 2000
Fixed a major bug introduced in beta 4, where not all players would appear in the Players list. Worse, sometimes your own name would not appear.
Fixed a long standing bug where the dice and checkers wouldn't appear on the board when first launched. It's about time I fixed this stupid bug, so I did...
Fixed the "jumping dice" bug.
Fixed the "greyed out dice" bug.
Fixed yet another bug in the Thorp Count calculation (thanks, Peter, is it correct now?) The Thorp count numbers display with one decimal point (e.g. 14.5) if the counts are less than 100.
Fixed a crashing bug, which would happen if you quit MacFIBS while the Preferences dialog was open.
Fixed a bug with the ready button. If you are currently "not ready", and invite someone to play a match, your status is silently changed by FIBS to "ready", and the button didn't reflect this.
Added a simulated "You moved x-x y-y ." message. FIBS does not actually send a message like this (assuming you know what you just moved), but it is useful if you want to save the contents of the Terminal window with Verbose Messages on.
Added several new contextual menus to the board and player windows.
Created new artwork for the dice and doubling cube for Guy's boards. The new artwork is slightly larger, and is more proportional to the size of the boards.
Changed the format of messages that appear in the shout and chat windows (instead of "joe shouts: la la la", it now just says "joe: la la la")
Added code that should eliminate problems with clicking the dice too many times in a row. This should fix the problem some "trigger happy" players experienced accidentally generating multiple "move ..." commands.
When using a single chat window, MacFIBS now adds a "tell joe" menu item in response to a tell message from joe. The menu item is not automatically selected, as was done in an earlier version of MacFIBS (this was a common complaint from MacFIBS users, who found themselves sending messages to the wrong person), but you can select it by scrolling the menu using the mouse or using Cmd-UpArrow and Cmd-DownArrow.
Added new high quality sounds for game play (rolls, moves, pickups). These are brand new 16-bit 44 mHz samples recorded in Fergy Studios on an Anne Carleton leather backgammon board. The file size of MacFIBS has increased substantially (from 1.8 MB to 3.5 MB), as well as the memory partition (to 12 MB) to accomodate these sounds.
Added a new button to the right center of the board that displays when it's your turn to roll or double. This serves both as a visual indicator that FIBS is waiting for you, and provides a convenient shortcut to rolling (click the button). While you can still roll by clicking the dice, this button is a good shortcut because the button appears near where your mouse cursor last was when you clicked to commit your previous roll.
MacFIBS 4.0 Beta 4
Release Date: 3 December 1999 (the one year anniversary of this beta!)
Completely rewrote the message parser to fix several lingering bugs, including incorrect identification of messages. This is a major change, and may well introduce new bugs. Please look for differences or problems with how this version handles messages.
Added player color coding to the chat and shout windows.
Redesigned the Player Info window slightly, consolidating the status and settings information. Added player idle time info and control.
Added extensive new searchable, HTML-based user guide. For Mac OS 8.5 or later, this appears as new Apple Help and is available under the MacFIBS Help menu.
Fixed the "Accept Double" dialog to display the proper doubling cube graphic.
Removed traceback tables (if you don't know what these are, it won't help to explain them), reducing the MacFIBS application size by about 400K.
Fixed bug in Board Preferences that would not allow you to disable pip counts or board sounds.
Fixed bug in Chat Preferences that wouldn't save/restore the checkboxes for Initial Kibitz and Decline messages.
MacFIBS was not setting boardstyle 3 automatically for new users.
Fixed bug in calculation of ratings formula for players with <400 experience points.
MacFIBS 4.0 Beta 3
Release Date: 19 February 1999
Fixed a crashing bug that occurred when you opened the Invite dialog.
Fixed a crashing bug that occurred when you clicked the little heads on the board status area after refreshing the player list.
Added new "Game" section to Preferences (NOTE: These new preferences are not fully working yet.)
MacFIBS 4.0 Beta 2
Release Date: 12 February 1999
Fixed a bug that prevented MacFIBS from starting if Internet Config is not installed.
Added additional checks for help text that was misinterpreted as game messages.
Fixed bug with Norse connection preference not working.
Fixed crashing bug when "Show Watchers" command was executed.
Fixed bug in Players window that would highlight two or zero players, rather than one.
Fixed Guy's boards to use proper pip number graphics.
Fixed bug where you would still see Shout messages from players you had gagged.
Added more messages to the board message display.
Modified Terminal non-verbose behavior to work "more better".
Updated for PowerPlant 1.9.3 and CWASTEEdit 1.8.
Fixed duplicate posting of messages in Shout window.
You can now select text in any text history window.
Removed "set" and "toggle" commands from startup sequence.
The Preference setting "Connect immediately at startup" now works.
Balloon and Apple Guide help should nearly be helpful.
Everyone who uses this version of MacFIBS should be thinner, funnier, and more attractive.
MacFIBS 4.0 Beta 1
Release Date: 3 December 1998
This is the first release that uses the "CLIP" (CLient Interface Protocol) protocol. CLIP was developed and implemented in the FIBS server by Andreas Schneider. It provides more comprehensive and more up to date information to clients, and this is reflected in MacFIBS.
Note: MacFIBS 4.0 is not currently compatible with NOBS, an alternate backgammon server that is a clone of FIBS. At this time, NOBS does not support the CLIP protocol.
MacFIBS 4.0 contains several new features that derive from CLIP:
- Player status now displays additional information, e.g. "Playing fred" or "Watching wilma".
- Player status (especially ready/not ready) is updated accurately.
- You will see a small icon next to Host names for other players using MacFIBS 4.0 or later. (A small "?" icon appears next to players using some other non-Mac CLIP clients--these are very rare now).
Other Cool Changes and Features:
Version 4.0 represents a major release, and contains a wealth of new features. Refer to the MacFIBS website for details about the cool new features.
PowerPC Only This release of MacFIBS is PowerPC only. I have not decided whether I will try to build a 68K version of MacFIBS 4.0; new features such as Contextual menus, Navigation Services, and the Appearance Manager make it more difficult to support older machines without a great deal more work.
New Board Windows One of the most frequent requests was to provide different size windows similar to version 2.1. In MacFIBS 4, the board files have been separated from the core application, allowing you to easily switch among a variety of board files (alright, it's just two right now, but I expect more to come.)
Appearance Savvy. All windows and dialogs follow Apple's Appearance guidelines and have the new gray "3-D" look. The Preferences dialog shows these changes best.
Contextual Menus. (This feature is only available with Mac OS 8 and a PowerPC Mac.) All the primary windows (Terminal, Game Room, Board, and Chat/Chat With) contain contextual menus with specific commands for each window. For example, in the Game Room window you can Control-click a player name to display a popup menu to invite, chat, get info, gag, blind, etc. the player.
Ancient History
If you are interested, here is the version history for MacFIBS 3 and earlier.
