Frequently Asked Questions
What is Horizon?
Horizon is a fork of the now defunct F-Chat Rising, which itself was a fork of the official 3.0 standalone client. A “fork” basically just means that we use the same base source code, but made changes to it to suit our needs. At this point Horizon has had enough changes from both Rising and 3.0 that it’s considerably different already. Our goal is for Horizon to be a community-driven project, rather than just a personal project that others can occasionally contribute to.
What’s a ‘third-party client’?
It’s an alternative client to the official 3.0 2.0 1.0 F-chat clients, developed by (and for) members of the F-List community. It’s not an alternative to the whole F-List ecosystem— you’ll still be talking to and dealing with the same people, but you’ll be using a different program for it.
Who is making Horizon?
You! And the rest of the community.
For a slightly less obtuse answer, we do have a list of people who contributed code to the project on our GitHub. But everyone who has made a suggestion, bug report or just spread the word is part of the project in a way.
What advantage/thing do I get as opposed to F-chat 3.0?
The full list of additional features and quality of life changes is probably way too big for a short FAQ item like this, but here are some of our favourite additions to Horizon:
- Friendlier resource usage
- Automatically saving your message drafts in case of disconnects or crashes. Which also means you can write a post for someone who’s offline and send it when they come back online!
- High quality or animated profile pics.
- Custom name colours
- Way more themes than both vanilla and Rising. You can even go way in depth with customizing them by using your own custom CSS.
- Way better Linux support.
- Every feature that came with Rising
I’m using Rising right now… Why should I switch?
Because we fixed the bug that made the text box on the bottom cut off occasionally. Also because you’d still be getting new features and fixes since the creator of Rising quit, but I think that text cut off bug might be the single biggest reason why anyone would want to switch.
I mean, I know it would convince me…
Also something about using around 400mb of RAM less per character tab and a bunch of other new features. [link to new features page]
How do I use it? Which platforms are supported?
Right now we have versions for Windows, macOS and Linux. These are standalone apps that you’d need to install on your computer.
We are planning on making a version for Android, and maaaaaybe an iOS version too, but we can’t give an ETA for when this mobile version will be released.
I’m using Rising or the official 3.0 standalone client. Can I keep my logs and settings?
Yes! Here’s how.
We’re working on a built-in tool that will automatically do this for you, expect this to come out soon.
I’m using 3.0 in my web browser. Can I keep my logs and settings?
Sadly no, we can’t import these because they’re stored with your browser’s cache data. You can still export them to both HTML or text files and read them after, but because of all the differences between individual web browsers and platforms, making a one-size-fits-all solution for importing these is sadly unfeasible for us.
Why do custom name colors only show up after moving my mouse over someone?
The short answer: because it's complicated™, but we’re working on it.
The slightly less short answer is that the existing system that’s being used for caching profile data (so that we don’t have to barrage F-List’s servers) was not built for loading all those profiles at once, so it’d make the app really chug on lower end computers. We’re actively looking into rewriting this cache system, both to get it to run smoother and to let it more comfortably automatically load names.
I have a really cool suggestion for a feature, or discovered an annoying bug!
You can submit these on our GitHub, Discord or directly reach out to us via email or F-List notes. You can find those here.
I want to contribute. How do I get started?
Firstly, thank you for wanting to lend a hand in directly developing Horizon. No matter if you’re just trying to fix a bug that has bothered you for ages, or you have a really cool feature that you want to share. All your contributions are very much appreciated. If you’re looking for help in getting the dev environment set up, check out this page on our wiki.
If you’re looking for things to do, our GitHub issue tracker is the most comprehensive list of features/ bugs that need some attention. We also have a specific tag for issues we think require very little knowledge of the codebase and should be pretty easy to do for anyone who’s mildly familiar with programming.
If you require direct help while trying to work on something, our Discord is the easiest way to directly reach out to maintainers and contributors.
How much RAM is required to run Horizon?
Around 1 GB if you’re using 3 characters at a time, but depending on your OS performance may vary. This number is something we’re working on and will get shaved down in the (hopefully nearby) future.