A modern client for F-list's F-Chat
On the issue tracker!
No one knows. What we do know is that the maintainer was absent from the Rising repository for over 6 months prior to it unexpectedly going offline. Additionally, the f-list profile of the maintainer’s bot was updated sometime around February 8, 2025, and was subsequently blocked from viewing due to a “shocking and harmful content violation”. As of April 3, the owner has not edited the profile to lift the block. Speculating on what’s going on with real people is rude and unprofessional, so we won’t go any further than the facts.
We have a full changelog available here! For a brief overview:
Sure, I have a lot of things I’d like to get done.
There are two ways to help out:
Both Frolic and Horizon are derivatives of the same defunct F-Chat Rising client, which itself is developed from the official F-Chat desktop client. Horizon was forked from an early version of Frolic, as we were the only up-to-date F-Chat Rising fork anyone could find at the time. Both projects are available under the Expat License (commonly called the “MIT License”).
The lead developer of Frolic regularly participates in discussion and code review on Horizon and submits code improvements where appropriate. Meanwhile, Frolic also pulls relevant improvements from Horizon to keep our client up-to-date.
There is no hostility between these projects; We’re happy Horizon exists, and we’re sure they’re thankful for our contributions.
It’s likely that Frolic and Horizon will maintain feature parity for an extended period of time.
In terms of end-user experience, there may never be much difference. Frolic seeks to establish sane, helpful, and unobtrusive defaults so you can run the application as-is. The intent of Frolic is to enhance the original client with features that stay out of the way and let the user control their own experience.
It’s yet to be seen how Horizon will implement feature additions, but Horizon’s lead developer has expressed interest in having more user-controllable options for a high amount of customization. In this way, we operate with different primary goals, even though both projects desire an enjoyable experience for our users.
If you want to work with developers to improve the client, there’s a few distinctions between the projects, but you shouldn’t let these differences sway your decision in which you use.
Frolic focuses on feature-based branches which test changes and implement minor improvements over long periods of time - then merges the completed feature into the main branch so everyone can it can go live in the next release. Frolic makes only minimal changes necessary to offer improvement, preserving parts of the code that don’t need to be tampered with.
When submitting code to Frolic, the only style test you’ll have to pass is, “Can the lead developer understand what my code is trying to do just by reading it?” All submissions undergo review and discussion; code is never accepted immediately. You may be asked to make formatting or layout changes for clarity. We rely on good communication to keep things moving, but don’t worry - the lead dev is a patient person and enjoys working with others to polish submissions to perfection. :) Frolic operates without enforcement of a particular coding standard, favoring pertinent in-line commentary and clarity of code so other contributors will be able to discern the intent far into the future.
Horizon uses a single development branch to merge multiple features together for a general testing period. For coding style, Horizon enforces a consistent code format using the self-proclaimed “opinionated” Prettier nodejs module.
Both projects accept issue reports, feature requests, and code contributions from the general public. It’s yet to be seen how either project address low-quality code submissions, as nothing of note has happened this early in these project’s lives.
Ultimately, both projects operate with different standards and move towards different goals from the same starting point. If you need a concise way to think about it, consider them sister projects - similar but distinct.