FeedDemon 3.0 RC2 (Build 3.0.0.23)

June 4, 2009 (known issues)

Note: This is pre-release software, which means that you will run into bugs while using it. If you're not comfortable using unfinished software, please wait until the final release before downloading it.

If you encounter a bug or have feedback about the beta, let us know by posting a message in the FeedDemon 3.0 Beta Forum, and please include 3.0RC2 in the subject line of your message. When reporting a bug, be sure to state:

The exact steps to reproduce the problem
The URL of the feed you're seeing the problem with (if applicable)
The versions of Windows and IE you're using

This beta release should be installed directly on top your existing version - there's no need to uninstall the previous version first. Before installing v3 for the first time, it's recommended that you backup your existing v2 feed data. To do this, open the previous version of FeedDemon, select File > Manage Cache > Backup, then choose your desired backup location.

Download FeedDemon 3.0 RC2

Changes in FeedDemon 3.0 RC2 (3.0.0.23)

Added: Bing search definition
Fixed: Older tagged/starred posts aren't retrieved when synching with Google Reader
Fixed: "Find Feeds" inoperable when synching with Google Reader
Fixed: Outlook used when emailing posts even when Windows Mail set as the default email client
Fixed: "New items received" message appears offscreen when newspaper is scrolled
Fixed: "SQLite Error 5 - database is locked" error at startup or after running cleanup wizard
Fixed: "Update all" icon remains as hourglass following connection failure
Fixed: Newspaper shortcut for "Next item (automatically move to next feed)" doesn't correctly navigate folders
Fixed: Misaligned highlight in "Photo Strip" newspaper style
Fixed: "Access denied" error downloading FDXSL/FDLANG/FDSRCH files from within FeedDemon when not logged into Windows as an admin
Fixed: "Error saving file" dialog blocks FeedDemon until dialog is dismissed
Fixed: Slow performance using J/K to navigate newspaper

Changes in FeedDemon 3.0 RC1 (3.0.0.22)

Added: "Express Setup" added to install - quickly installs FeedDemon using default location and program group
Added: Performance improvements to subscription search, cleanup wizard and panic button
Added: "E" single-key newspaper shortcut to email active item
Added: Option to automatically start FeedDemon when Windows starts
Changed: "Filters & Watches" renamed to simply "Watches"
Changed: FeedStation no longer prompts for "MyPodcasts" login at startup
Changed: "Open in external browser" single-key newspaper shortcut changed from "E" to "X"
Changed: "Popular in My Subscriptions" fills in the blanks using the most recent posts across all your feeds
Fixed: Prefetch has been rewritten to resolve sporadic exceptions that occured in previous versions (esp. when IE8 installed)
Fixed: Posts starred in Google Reader don't get flagged in FeedDemon
Fixed: New posts tagged in Google Reader don't get tagged in FeedDemon
Fixed: "Mark all read" missing from Google Reader Shared Items context menu
Fixed: Can't login to Google Reader if password contains non-alphanumeric characters
Fixed: Incorrect date grouping in news item list
Fixed: "Browser Home" icon on new tab page fails when IE8 is installed
Fixed: Clicking close button on browser tab changes the active tab
Fixed: Disabled feeds still updated when synched with Google Reader
Fixed: Resizing columns in FeedStations sometimes leaves blank area on left

Changes in FeedDemon 3.0 Beta 5/5a

Added: Tags added in Google Reader are now synched with FeedDemon on startup
Added: Performance improvements throughout FeedDemon (basically wherever the feed database is accessed) (beta 5a)
Added: Author names, retweets and hyperlinks in Twitter status posts are now included in FeedDemon's prefetch (beta 5a)
Fixed: FeedDemon misses some unread items when synched with Google Reader
Fixed: Deleted feeds reappear if FeedDemon closed immediately after deleting them
Fixed: Keyword continues to appear next to subscriptions after switching from keyword view (161560)
Fixed: "Find Feeds" should be disabled when synched with Google Reader (161672)
Fixed: Tools | Open FeedStation doesn't work
Fixed: Missing program group icon for FeedStation
Fixed: Numerous browser-related exceptions (esp. with pages containing embedded video)
Fixed: "Resync Now" marks items read in Google Reader (beta 5a)
Fixed: Check for new version fails when not synching with NewsGator (beta 5a)
Fixed: Invalid thumbnail images in synched Yahoo News feeds (beta 5a)
Fixed: Hitting J/K in quick succession focuses the wrong item in the newspaper (beta 5a)
Fixed: Unsynched feeds are included in the update after hitting "Resync Now" (beta 5a)
Fixed: Wrong # of steps show in startup wizard (beta 5a)
Fixed: Date algorithms follow the ISO 8601 standard and always treat Monday as the first day of the week regardless of the Windows locale (beta 5a)
Fixed: Short URL preview isn't disabled when working offline
Fixed: Feeds marked read in Google Reader continue to display in "Unread feed/folder view" after synching
Fixed: Poor vertical spacing of text inside <pre> tags

Changes in FeedDemon 3.0 Beta 4/4a

Added: Synchronization with Google Reader. If you're already synching with NewsGator, you can convert to Google Reader by selecting Tools | Synchronization Options | Advanced | Convert Now. If you're new to FeedDemon, you'll be give a choice of synchronization platforms at startup. If you've been using FeedDemon without synchronization, the subscriptions report will include an "Enable synchronization" link.
Added: "Reset feed title and homepage" button added to feed properties

Changed: Watches and filers now appear beneath "Filters & Watches"
Changed: ALT key no longer toggles the main menu (but you can still click any toolbar to hide it)
Changed: Redesigned per-feed/per-folder prefetch options
Changed: No longer creating separate program group for FeedStation icons
Changed: FeedDemon's install is almost 30% smaller than before
Changed: The default # of items per newspaper page is now 25 instead of 10
Changed: Automatic backup now happens every 48 hours instead of every 24 hours
Changed: Search results now use "surfer" style
Changed: User name no longer shown in caption when synched with Google Reader (beta 4a)

Fixed: Exceptions during prefetch
Fixed: Deleting a folder containing a large number of feeds takes far too long
Fixed: Unread count of selected feed is hard to read in unthemed subscription tree
Fixed: Changes to a feed's home page URL are reset when the feed is updated
Fixed: Subscriptions drawn using incorrect shell font size
Fixed: Manual prefetch incorrectly says there are no items to prefetch
Fixed: Vista's automatic horizontal scroll in the subscription tree scrolls too far
Fixed: In rare cases, read items in synched feeds come back as unread if NewsGator detects them as being modified
Fixed: Flickering in the subscription tree
Fixed: Feed properties doesn't save changes to the feed's prefetch options
Fixed: Custom newspaper style not reset when viewing filter
Fixed: Ctrl+Arrow allowed as keyboard shortcut even though already handled by newspaper
Fixed: Inaccurate progress bar during prefetch
Fixed: Synched feeds in the root folder fail to convert to Google Reader (beta 4a)
Fixed: Flags added when synched with NewsGator are lost after converting to Google Reader (beta 4a)
Fixed: Shared items not set as default after converting to Google Reader (beta 4a)
Fixed: Wrong context menu appears for Google Reader shared items (beta 4a)

Changes in FeedDemon 3.0 Beta 3a (3.0.0.16)

Fixed: Inaccurate unread counts sometimes displayed
Fixed: Read/unread changes resulting from "Resync Now" aren't shown in subscriptions right away
Fixed: Favorites menu uses incorrect font color
Fixed: Can't click full width of selection in subscription tree

Changes in FeedDemon 3.0 Beta 3 (3.0.0.15)

Added: Significant performance improvements, especially when subscribed to a large number of feeds (several hundred or more)
Added: Faster drawing, loading and updating in subscription tree
Added: Visual enhancements in subscription tree when using Windows Vista

Changed: Setup now defaults to installing under the local appdata folder when run by non-admin user (since "Program Files" requires admin rights on Vista)
Changed: Feed updating is now paused while performing an action that may modify your feeds (unsubscribing, changing options, performing cleanup, etc.)
Changed: Error reporting now includes an "exit application" checkbox

Fixed: Continued duplication of posts in unsynched feeds, including posts which contain a UTF8 BOM in the title or description
Fixed: Temporary freeze when updating starts
Fixed: Temporary freeze as new items received if those items are picked up by a watch
Fixed: Freeze when unsubscribing while feeds are updating
Fixed: Excerpts hidden in "Blue Vista" newspaper style
Fixed: Update indicator not shown when updating single feed/folder
Fixed: FeedDemon's automatic database backup doesn't verify integrity of database prior to backup (automatic backup occurs at startup when backup hasn't been made for 24 hours)
Fixed: FeedStation setup requires admin rights
Fixed: Favicons deleted on first run after installing
Fixed: Empty hyperlinks cause extra whitescape in newspaper when showing excerpts
Fixed: Automatic prefetch consumes too much memory if a large number of new items are received in a single update

Changes in FeedDemon 3.0 Beta 2a (3.0.0.14)

Added: Numerous performance, memory and CPU usage improvements
Added: Improved handling of database-related problems
Added: "Manage Cache" now reports amount of database fragmentation (useful for those who want to know when it's time to compact)

Changed: Subscription report reduced to two columns
Changed: "Delete" icon now always appears in clippings newspaper
Changed: Freeze detection removed (caused more harm than good)
Changed: Maximum connections in connection settings now enforces a max of eight connections (more connections than that often resulted in timeouts and other problems)

Fixed: Synched Twitter feeds don't show profile picture
Fixed: Automatic feed update still attempted when working offline
Fixed: Middle-click opens item in new tab but fails to mark it as read in the newspaper
Fixed: "Mark all watches as read" takes far too long
Fixed: Read states aren't synched after returning from offline mode
Fixed: Dinosaurs report doesn't always show the year of the last post
Fixed: Excerpts of item descriptions which end with </a> are incorrectly clipped
Fixed: Duplicate titles in "Popular in My Subscriptions" section of subscription report
Fixed: Thumbnails don't collapse in "Blue Vista" style
Fixed: "Search Subscriptions" fragments FeedDemon's database

Changes in FeedDemon 3.0 Beta 2 (3.0.0.13)

Added: Much faster import from previous version
Added: "Compact" button added to "Manage Cache" dialog (frees up empty space in the feed database, can boost performance if run every few weeks)
Added: FeedDemon now detects when it's frozen and prompts to restart itself (currently set to detect when it stops responding for at least 60sec)
Added: Faster synching of read/flag state changes

Changed: Reduced the size of the icon on the desktop alert to provide more space for actual alerts
Changed: Better handling of ALT key to toggle main menu
Changed: Clipping a flagged item no longer copies the flag to the clipped item

Fixed: Subscription report jumbled together when browser sized very small
Fixed: Default browser icon not always correct under Vista/Win7
Fixed: Attention report missing green bar (indicator)
Fixed: "Who's linking here" icon non-functional
Fixed: Incorrect highlighting of RT in Twitter feeds
Fixed: Exception opening feed/tag database when length of filename exceeds 255 characters
Fixed: Embedded video overlaps header when embed tag not within object tag
Fixed: "New items available" message sometimes appears even when newspaper wouldn't contain those new items
Fixed: Tabbed browser background color doesn't match main menu depending on Windows version/theme
Fixed: Marking a watch as read doesn't mark the original items read
Fixed: "Update All" missing from Tools menu
Fixed: Folder newspaper doesn't display after clicking folder that was just collapsed (158941)
Fixed: If FeedDemon crashes before read states are synched, the next time it starts the "Synchronizing" dialog may block the application
Fixed: Close tab "x" icon shows even when tab is cut off (159366)

Changes in FeedDemon 3.0 Beta 1

Added: Redesigned "Subscriptions Home" page with popular videos and articles extracted from your feeds
Added: Items can now be tagged

Tags are synchronized with NewsGator
"Subscriptions Home" includes a tag cloud
Tags can be dragged from the tree and dropped onto a post in a FeedDemon newspaper
Tagged items can be excluded by the Cleanup Wizard
Tagging is now included in the attention algorithm
"G" single-key newspaper shortcut displays tag editor for current item

Added: "Share" icon added to newspaper which adds the item to your shared clippings. Note: If you have multiple shared clippings folders, you can change which one this feature uses by right-clicking on "Clippings" and selecting "Choose default clippings folder."
Added: Ability to view all unread or flagged items at once
Added: Hovering over a short URL (TinyURL.com, etc.) now shows the full URL in a balloon tip so you know where the URL redirects (great when browsing Twitter). For a list of supported URL shortening services, see the file ShortUrl.xml in FeedDemon's \Data subfolder.
Added: Automatic hyperlinking of URLs, @replies, #hashtags and author names in Twitter feeds. Profile pictures will also be displayed when subscribing to the Atom version of a Twitter feed if the feed is in a folder that isn't synchronized.
Added: "Reply" link in newspaper when viewing a post from a Twitter feed
Added: Redesigned toolbutton icons
Added: "Icons" button added to Options|Reading which enables choosing which icons should appear beneath each item in the newspaper (due to this addition, several of the default icons from previous versions are now hidden by default)
Added: Startup and Import wizards now enable importing your Google Reader subscriptions
Added: Close button added to individual browser tabs
Added: Significant performance improvements in "Popular Topics," "Search Subscriptions," newspaper display and many other areas
Added: Significantly reduced memory consumption
Added: "Export Newspaper" added to File menu - exports all posts from all pages in the active newspaper to an external HTML document
Added: "Surfer" newspaper style now remembers whether thumbnails have been collapsed
Added: "Enable page transitions" has been added to Options|Appearance, which defaults to being enabled unless IE8 is installed (a bug in IE8 Beta 2 causes the transitions to fail)
Added: FeedDemon attempts to detect when script debugging is enabled in Internet Explorer and asks whether to turn it off (script debugging causes error dialogs to popup while browsing inside any application that embeds IE)
Added: Fixed header in reports/newspapers (requires IE7 or later)
Added: "Browser Home" added to tabbed browser context menu
Added: Hourglass icon now appears on browser tabs that are still loading
Added: Main menu can be toggled by right-clicking any toolbar and selecting "Show main menu"
Added: Theme selection added to Appearance page in Options (this replaces the "UI Style" option from previous versions)
Added: Newspaper now displays "new items received" message when new items are downloaded in the feed or folder showing in the newspaper
Added: "Export Top Feeds" added to File menu
Added: "Panic Button" now enables marking everything more than 12 hours old as read
Added: "Attention Report" now enables exporting top feeds as OPML
Added: Embedded ads via The Deck
Added: Support for NGES ratings and group clippings (NewsGator Enterprise Server only)
Added: Cleanup Wizard and Panic Button can now be limited to specific folders
Added: Feed and folder properties now enable specifying how many days to keep items
Added: When you switch to a language file other than the default, FeedDemon validates it to make sure it doesn't have any missing entries or arguments. If any problems are found, a dialog will alert that the language file contains errors and recommend that it not be used. Details on the errors are also shown in this dialog, which should help translators debug their work.
Added: Support for GIF, PNG, JPEG, BMP and truecolor ICO favicons (149843)
Added: "Ignore new items older than" added to folder properties
Added: Enclosure icon added to feed preview (138822)

Changed: Feed content is now stored in a SQLite database instead of in individual XML files
Changed: System requirements now include IE7 rather than IE6
Changed: Browser toolbar simplified by hiding several toolbuttons (note: if there's a button you want back, just click the "Customize" arrow at the far right of the toolbar)
Changed: "Favorites" is now on the main menu instead of the toolbar above the browser
Changed: Auto-discovered feed icon is now part of the address bar
Changed: Items are now added to synchronized clippings in a background thread
Changed: Check for new version and "what's new" are now integrated into the subscription home report
Changed: Panic Button results now shown in "timed" dialog which automatically disappears after 60 seconds
Changed: The default clippings folder is selected from the clippings context menu rather than through a checkbox on the clippings properties
Changed: "My Clippings" can no longer be hidden
Changed: Sounds for "Desktop alert" and "Add to clippings" are now enabled by default
Changed: Surfer newspaper now shows friendlier message when no items match the current filter
Changed: Simplified Options dialog by removing outdated settings
Changed: New browser tabs are now opened adjacent to the active tab instead of after the last tab (similar to IE7 and Chrome)
Changed: Language files ("FDLANGs") are now installed under the user's local application data folder (previous versions stored FDLANGs in a subfolder of \Program Files\FeedDemon, which caused Vista's folder virtualization to kick in when a non-admin user attempted to download an FDLANG)
Changed: Inline search bar flashes briefly when displayed to draw attention to it (some customers expected Ctrl+F to show IE's "Find" dialog and didn't notice inline search bar)
Changed: Email icon now shown in newspaper by default
Changed: Simplified Cleanup Wizard (now a simple dialog instead of a wizard)
Changed: "Feed History" report has been removed - my impression is that this feature was rarely (if ever) used, so let me know if you relied upon it
Changed: "Automatically collapse folders" setting has returned (Options|General)
Changed: Synchronization dialog no longer randomly appears before navigating to an external site
Changed: "This web page has a feed" message text reworded
Changed: "Optimize for low bandwidth" has returned (renamed as "Optimize for slow connections"), and now also affects the subscription and popular topics reports
Changed: FeedDemon now exclusively locks its database files to prevent third-party software (AntiVirus, etc.) from locking it and causing file access errors
Changed: The ALT key now toggles the main menu

Fixed: FeedStation creates incorrect folder names if enclosure URL contains spaces
Fixed: Disabled watches fail to be grayed out when they contains unread items
Fixed: Embedded HTML Tidy locks up when item description contains unclosed XML instruction
Fixed: Unsubscribing from multiple feeds is slow
Fixed: Left/right arrow keys don't work in the inline search box
Fixed: Bad comments in feed prevent some items from being shown in FeedDemon newspaper (discovered with this French Gizmodo feed)
Fixed: Excessive flicker when selecting "Close Other Tabs"
Fixed: EOutOfResources error when running FeedDemon in a remote session
Fixed: FeedDemon comes to the front of other applications when the desktop alert's close button is clicked
Fixed: FeedDemon warns that you're subscribing to a feed you're already subscribed to even when it's a secure feed that you've supplied a different login to
Fixed: Items deleted from non-synched feeds reappear during a later update
Fixed: J/K newspaper shortcuts scroll too far (149242)
Fixed: Can't delete "My Clippings" when NewsGator login isn't known
Fixed: Login dialog displayed when "My Clippings" updated and NewsGator login isn't known
Fixed: "Unable to clip this post" error when clipping old posts
Fixed: URLs in address bar dropdown can be wider than address bar itself
Fixed: Cancelling "Panic Button" still causes "No items marked read" to appear in the status bar
Fixed: FeedDemon blocks enclosure URLs that end in whitespace
Fixed: Subscription tree indentation incorrect on Windows Vista after hitting "Reset to Defaults" on Options|Appearance
Fixed: Google AdSense image ads aren't skipped by FeedDemon's prefetch, and they appear even when showing excerpts (137930)
Fixed: FeedDemon can't subscribe to feeds containing numerous encoding errors (138759)
Fixed: When IE's popup blocker is disabled, multiple IE windows are spawned when "Open external links in default browser" is enabled and feed contains Brightcove video player
Fixed: "Subscription Home" report not updated when FeedDemon isn't the active application
Fixed: FeedDemon doesn't highlight in the taskbar when it displays a dialog and it's not the active application
Fixed: Progress bar fails to update when backing up cache folder on Windows Vista
Fixed: Many missing menu mnemonics (say that five times fast)
Fixed: Ctrl+Alt+Home opens feed's home page in new browser tab instead of current one
Fixed: Clicking "Next Page" does nothing when root watches or clippings node is selected
Fixed: "Import Feeds" slow to show list of feeds
Fixed: Choosing "Show in External Browser" sometimes fails when Google Chrome is the default browser
Fixed: Icon for "Show in default browser" not always correct after installing IE8 (158851)
Fixed: EOleException or EInvalidPointer exception when closing a browser tab (automatic error reporting showed this as the #1 bug)
Fixed: ESQLite3 exception when feed auto-discovered
Fixed: EIntOverflow exception caused by converting invalid dates
Fixed: EListError exception when importing feeds
Fixed: EStringListError exception with duplicate language resources
Fixed: EListError exception when accessing favorites offline
Fixed: EOleSysError exception when emailing post with Microsoft Outlook
Fixed: EnbFeedXmlParser exception parsing feed that has no <channel> node
Fixed: EWriteError exception saving invalid favicon
Fixed: EAccessViolation exception after hitting "Panic Button"
Fixed: EAccessViolation exception after moving feed
Fixed: Keyboard shortcut to mark feed read doesn't refresh newspaper or news item list
Fixed: "Beta assertion error" importing specific feeds
Fixed: Duplication of items in un-synched feeds which don't contain pubDates or have invalid pubDates
Fixed: Thumbnail images not scaled properly in specific feeds
Fixed: Exception during import causes entire import to fail
Fixed: "Julian cannot be represented as a DateTime" error during import
Fixed: Duplication of posts in un-synched feeds
Fixed: Column headings in subscription report overflow beyond column headers
Fixed: Tags added in FeedDemon aren't always synched
Fixed: No status/error code included in dialog that appears when FeedDemon fails to import from Google Reader
Fixed: FeedDemon installer won't run for non-admin users
Fixed: "Mark feed read when feed changes" doesn't work on the last unread feed
Fixed: Exception during automatic prefetch
Fixed: Subscriptions always show zero tag count when only one tag exists

Known Issues

After converting to Google Reader synchronization, flags added to items that were retrieved when synched with NewsGator aren't flagged (starred) in Google Reader
When synching with NewsGator, FeedDemon may not reflect tags added through another application/service
FeedDemon tutorial and online help have not been updated for this version
Ratings applied in NewsGator Enterprise Server aren't reflected in FeedDemon