My ICQ Notes Xtra

September 17, 2008

So, this is about an Xtra for ICQ I wrote some time ago, when there wasn’t the openXtraz platform beta yet. Don’t ask, how I did that, I won’t answer, except maybe, if you work for ICQ, but then you probably know how, right?

So, I wrote this xtra, even though I never made any icons for it, just because I was lazy and I couldn’t share it with the world anyway. So last week, on Friday I took some time, to make an icon as prescribed in the ICQ Xtraz API Reference document. I packed up the icons and the other files using the openXtraz dev tool (which isn’t very useful by the way, I want resizable windows guys. Then I uploaded them to the ICQ Xtraz Gallery, well knowing they’re having their weekend there in Israel (which to my knowledge means empty offices).

So far the boring part, the funny one’s coming now.
On Monday, someone published my Xtra in the gallery, or at least I saw it by then. A really useful one, if you don’t have Notepad open by the way (damn, I should stop those lame jokes). BUT that someone forgot to upload the xtrazlist.xml file. Which meant all the (I’m not so sure how that counter works and whether if it works right) five people, including me, trying to download and install the xtra into their installation of the ICQ6.5 Beta (you can download the final version since November 26th 2008, now) would have no luck and be presented with an error message… that tells you nothing, but that an error occurred. Can we get an advanced users mode for error messages please?

A while later I had another look, and the image was gone sometimes in the gallery and won’t download. Sometimes it was there, which I found pretty weird. Still, the download not working. So I sent someone over there a message about the missing file, after it took me a while to figure that out. I never had a case with missing xtraz lists on my development server, cause I tend to cramp everything into one xtraz list file. That doesn’t junk my Packages folder too much then. It got fixed and my Xtra was working fine for everyone. It still does.

But a few hours later someone sent me a message, that he can’t find the Xtra in the gallery I invited him to. That was pretty strange, so I had a look into it. And, indeed, there is something missing. My Notes Xtra is not in the gallery! It shows me a message about “This xtra does not exist.”
That is not true. Either the xtraz gallery is broken or someone removed it (and guess what it wasn’t me) for some reason. I want it back there, so people stopping by can see it, too.

So far the story. if anyone still wants the xtra, the xtraz list seems to be still there, along with the rest of the package and icon files. If you have the ICQ6.5 beta version installed, you can click the following link to install the xtra right away. By doing so, you agree to the beta terms, but you already did by using the ICQ beta, so… no I’m not urging you to press an ‘Agree’ button three times (actually four including the installation). Once is really enough.

Download/Install Notes Xtra

Filed under: Fun Stuff, ICQ | Comments (2)