FeedDemon 2.6 Release Notes

Build 2.6.0.21 / January 14, 2008

Download FeedDemon 2.6 (3.78MB)

Note: If you have a previous 2.x version of FeedDemon installed, just install version 2.6 directly on top of it.

Changes in 2.6.0.21

Fixed: New instance of FeedDemon loads with misleading "application is hung" error message when attempting to subscribe from Firefox (123414)
Fixed: Cyrillic characters don't display correctly in FeedDemon's desktop alert
Fixed: Buttons cut off on keyboard shortcuts dialog when running at 120dpi
Fixed: Exception when importing invalid OPML (123539)
Fixed: Exception after synching on Windows 98
Fixed: Exception in prefetch options when setting "max items to prefetch" (124117)
Fixed: Wrong/ugly colors in newspaper header with some XP or WindowBlinds themes (124000)
Fixed: Thousands separators missing from large numbers displayed in panic button dialog and elsewhere (123986)

Changes in 2.6

Added: FeedDemon is now free!
Added: New startup wizard - enables easily creating a NewsGator account, then importing and synching subscriptions
Added: "Panic Button" - detects when you have a ton of unread items and offers to mark them (or a subset of them) as read. Select Tools|Hit the Panic Button to configure or run manually
Added: "Export Subscriptions" now enables exporting as APML (experimental)
Added: Significant performance improvements in feed updating, synchronization, newspaper rendering and reporting of "Popular Topics"
Added: Feed reports can now be grouped by folder
Added: Smarter popup killer in embedded browser
Added: "Prefetch Options" now enables changing prefetch settings on a per-feed basis, and also enables performing an automatic refresh after every update
Added: Prefetch now optionally includes clippings
Added: "Include when prefetching unread items" added to Advanced tab in folder properties
Added: "Max items to prefetch" added to prefetch settings (default is 500)
Added: "Prefetch complete" added to sound options
Added: Single-key newspaper shortcuts can now be customized (Tools|Keyboard Shortcuts)
Added: "Feed Attention" added to reports
Added: "Export Feeds" now enables selecting multiple folders
Added: Tooltips on browser tabs now show the full page title when it's too long to fit on the tab
Added: FeedDemon's newspaper now permits a subset of inline styles in feed content (previous versions stripped all style attributes)
Added: "Popular in Everyone's Subscriptions" section of popular topics report now includes excerpts (previous version showed headlines only)
Added: Clippings dialog now enables emailing shared feed URL
Added: When working offline, uncached links in newspapers now show "not available offline" in their tooltips
Added: When working offline, URLs in the Favorites menu are grayed out if they're not available offline
Added: "Show balloon tips in tray" added to FeedStation's options (110102)
Added: "Import Feeds" now shows a list of feeds that could not be imported due to connection errors, etc. (106379)
Added: Favicons added to reports
Added: FeedDemon's subscription wizard now detects when a feed requires cookie-based authentication
Added: NewsGator Online's root "My Clippings" folder is now synchronized with FeedDemon (note that sharing/unsharing the root "My Clippings" folder will affect all clippings folders)
Added: Import dialog now enables choosing whether to synchronize folders creating during import
Added: Page navigation controls added to status bar below browser (required moving some controls from the toolbar above browser)
Added: Inline search (similar to Firefox's) - to activate it, hit Ctrl+F or select Edit|Find in This Page
Added: Cleanup wizard reminder added to subscriptions home (includes link to skip cleanup and remind again in 30 days)
Added: When synchronized with NewsGator Enterprise, feed login dialog now includes the option to "Authenticate using my NGES login"
Added: "Update Clippings Folder" added to context menu of synched clippings folders
Added: Smarter detection and handling of file access errors due to low disk space, unavailable USB drives, etc. (111807)
Added: Expand/collapse icons added to popular topics
Added: Smarter outputting of summaries vs. full posts when summary is almost the same as the full post
Added: Significant performance improvements to NewsGator synchronization (including feed updating, "Resynchronize," etc.)
Added: "Find Feeds" added to File menu
Added: Error log now includes video card details, as well as the URL of the page last browsed in FeedDemon (useful for debugging browser-related problems)
Added: A clippings folder can now be set as the default. Items can be added to the default clippings folder by selecting "Add to Default Clippings Folder" from the context menu, or by pressing "D" when the newspaper has the focus.
Added: When the option to disable embedded objects in the newspaper has been chosen, embeds are now replaced with an image denoting that the object was removed. Clicking this image will reload the newspaper with embedded objects temporarily enabled.
Added: "Manage Cache" dialog (File|Manage Cache) now enables backing up FeedDemon's cache
Added: "News item font" added to Options|Appearance (changes the font in the news item list)
Added: Alert at startup when automatic updating of feeds has been disabled
Added: Newspaper submenu added to View menu
Added: When FeedDemon starts, it now checks whether a previous instance is already running and is hung, then prompts to kill the hung instance
Added: "Marquee" progress bar when synching

Changed: Shortcut for "Search Subscriptions" changed from F3 to Ctrl+F3
Changed: Options sidebar in Surfer style replaced with icons and links in the newspaper header
Changed: "[More]" links use a different color to make them stand out
Changed: "News Bins" have been renamed "Clippings" for consistency with other NewsGator applications
Changed: The "[More]" links in Surfer newspaper style and Popular Topics now expand the article inline
Changed: Prefetch progress/status now appears within the main form rather than in a separate dialog
Changed: Attention algorithm updated, and now includes "explicit" feed clicks (that is, direct clicks on a feed as opposed to actions such as "Next" which automatically navigate to a feed) and followed links (links clicked within a post's description which aren't links to the actual post)
Changed: "Max links to prefetch per item" prefetch setting now defaults to 3 instead of 5
Changed: Updating is now paused while the options or sync settings dialogs are displayed
Changed: In previous versions, the thumbnail image to the right of an article (shown in the newspaper when using "surfer" style, and also in popular topics) would link to the full image. This has been changed so that it links to the actual article instead.
Changed: FeedDemon now automatically cleans up its temporary files every two hours instead of only at shutdown (110897)
Changed: Simplified and cleaned-up "Subscription Home" report
Changed: Simplified the subscription wizard
Changed: "Find Feeds" step in the subscription wizard now sorts results by subscriber count, and weeds out most search engine feeds
Changed: Headline view in "surfer" newspaper now shows items on single line and enables expansion to see full post
Changed: The newspaper shortcut for clipping an item has been changed from 'B' to 'C'
Changed: Keyboard shortcuts dialog now warns when assigning a shortcut which uses the shift key plus an alphanumeric key (ex: Shift+V), since doing so may interfere with normal typing. (119236)
Changed: Ctrl+B (set focus to browser) now highlights the first item in a newspaper when no item is currently highlighted
Changed: FeedDemon's attention algorithm now includes items opened in a new tab or in an external browser
Changed: "Show news items" has been dropped from the default toolbuttons on the browser toolbar (but can easily be added back by clicking the dropdown to the far right of the browser toolbar)
Changed: Font in news item list now defaults to Arial Unicode MS when it exists (otherwise it uses the default shell font, as before)
Changed: "Update all feeds" no longer requires waiting for the "Synchronizing..." dialog
Changed: FeedDemon now checks for a new version every three days when "automatically check for new versions" is enabled (previously checked every day)
Changed: "Check for changes to my NewsGator subscriptions" dropped from synchronization options (no longer necessary)
Changed: "Notes" tab in feed properties removed
Changed: "Max items to prefetch" limit increased from 999 to 2500
Changed: When FeedDemon detects changes to your NewsGator subscriptions, it no longer show details of every change. Instead, it shows a list of deleted feeds (if any) and gives you a chance to add them back (hat tip to NetNewsWire)
Changed: Synchronization options no longer requires hitting "Apply" in order to save changes to synchronized folders

Fixed: When viewing a newspaper, unclosed HTML tags from one post "bleed" into subsequent posts (93571)
Fixed: Subscription wizard displays on primary monitor even when main form is on secondary monitor
Fixed: Group header on watches/clippings overview is too small
Fixed: Confirmation dialogs have non-localizable caption
Fixed: Page header overlaps titles when using keyboard to navigate newspaper
Fixed: Horizontal scrollbar missing from subscription changes dialog (115674)
Fixed: Can't focus newspaper item using mouse
Fixed: Inline search fails if first match hidden from view
Fixed: Hitting ENTER when an item is selected in the newspaper won't show that item when viewing full posts in surfer style
Fixed: Lockup when subscribing to certain Atom feeds
Fixed: Debug actions appear in keyboard shortcuts
Fixed: Can't collapse groups in auto-discovery report
Fixed: FeedStation loads multiple instances after installation when any updated feeds are configured to auto-download enclosures
Fixed: Watch and search keywords aren't highlighted after expanding/collapsing an excerpt
Fixed: Dinosaur report doesn't remove feed after unsubscribing
Fixed: Can't hide popular topics links which contain unescaped query strings
Fixed: When subscribed to two copies of the same synchronized feed, unsubscribing from one removes both of them (114027)
Fixed: Large images cut off in Surfer newspaper (114204)
Fixed: Images overlap in "Popular Topics"
Fixed: Expired NewsGator Online accounts aren't detected, and customer isn't provided a way to renew their expired account (112234)
Fixed: If FeedDemon crashes, unread/flagged state changes that weren't synched with NewsGator before the crash never get synched
Fixed: Line breaks removed from single item newspaper
Fixed: Enclosure icon missing from Expando style
Fixed: Can't subscribe to or update Atom feeds containing GeoRSS data (93578)
Fixed: SOAP error when external DTD unavailable (93546)
Fixed: Exception when clicking a link to an unknown document type (93782)
Fixed: EVariantTypeCastError when navigating invalid URLs (94005)
Fixed: Exception when saving a downloaded favicon immediately after returning from hibernation (93976)
Fixed: Incoming links failing to appear on some dual monitor systems (94392)
Fixed: Exception in dxBar when opening FeedDemon (93908)
Fixed: Nothing happens when clicking "Next" if Watches or Clippings header is selected
Fixed: Selecting "Mark all feeds read" from desktop alert doesn't repaint subscriptions
Fixed: News item list doesn't always update after marking newspaper page as read
Fixed: Subscription changes dialog doesn't decode entities in new feed titles
Fixed: "BodyFormat" exception when attempting to email a post using Outlook 2000 or earlier (94637)
Fixed: Exception when emailing a post from FeedDemon when Outlook is the default email client but no Outlook profile has been created yet (95387)
Fixed: Entities aren't converted in feed titles when displayed in subscription list
Fixed: Attention algorithm doesn't include clicks on "Popular Topics" report
Fixed: Deleted "Popular Topic" items re-appear when navigating backwards due to browser caching (94366)
Fixed: Group headers don't resize smoothly in newspaper (Surfer)
Fixed: Files associated with the "Play" command fail to open when double-clicked in FeedStation (10186)
Fixed: "Resynchronize" doesn't reset ng:token for synched clippings
Fixed: Invalid sync token prevents synched clippings from receiving new posts
Fixed: Error when attempting to add local content to a synched clippings
Fixed: FeedDemon's browser tabs don't correctly display Unicode characters (79346)
Fixed: Subscription search dialog loads slowly due with large number of feeds (100+) that have favicons
Fixed: Feed isn't removed from "unread feed/folder view" when posts were marked read outside of FeedDemon (92988)
Fixed: When "unread folder view" is selected, sometimes a recently updated feed with unread items fails to appear (74045)
Fixed: In FeedStation, hitting <Enter> doesn't open the selected download (107866)
Fixed: Progress bar on connection test fails to update on Windows Vista (108159)
Fixed: Subscriptions don't automatically scroll when drag operation is near top or bottom of tree
Fixed: Auto-discovery list doesn't convert HTML entities (108617)
Fixed: Atom feed entries that don't contain a title never appear in the newspaper
Fixed: "EVariantTypeCastError" when auto-discovering feed during browser navigation (109757)
Fixed: Unicode feeds containing a malformed trail byte display as ASCII (84850)
Fixed: Selection isn't remember when changing views
Fixed: Prefetch spikes the CPU at 100%
Fixed: Sporadic exceptions when selecting from favorites menu
Fixed: Performance decrease due to invalid favicons
Fixed: No default folder selected in subscription wizard
Fixed: First post not focused after switching newspaper pages
Fixed: Missing feed icon when importing OPML that has no folders
Fixed: Wrapped display of very long feed titles in Subscriptions Home
Fixed: Subscription home page doesn't refresh after FeedDemon detects posts were marked read in another location
Fixed: Ampersands don't display correctly on delete folder confirmation
Fixed: When FeedDemon is minimized, it fails to start FeedStation as minimized when auto-downloading new enclosures
Fixed: No warning when attempting to add to a synched clippings folder when working offline
Fixed: Sort in reverse toolbutton requires two clicks if FeedDemon was previously closed with sort in reverse enabled
Fixed: Unsynched feeds won't update any more frequently than the polling frequency set in FeedDemon's synchronization options
Fixed: Incorrect "next" behavior when viewing a folder newspaper for the only folder with unread items (114754)
Fixed: "File in use" error following initial sync after starting FeedDemon (most commonly seen on Windows Vista)
Fixed: Bad character data in "Popular in Everyone's Subscriptions" causes garbage character (usually a box) to appear
Fixed: Clipped titles in news item list (119707)
Fixed: Newspaper continues to display a feed that has just been unsubscribed from
Fixed: "Popular Topics" doesn't correctly strip <style>..</style> blocks from content
Fixed: News item list isn't updated to reflect read/unread changes synchronized from another location
Fixed: Automatic prefetch fails when only prefetching images
Fixed: Flagging an expanded or unread post doesn't change the color of the post's title to red in the newspaper
Fixed: Moving a feed to a folder that's not in the current view adds the folder sorted to the bottom of the subscriptions
Fixed: Synchronization options dialog hides behind main window after "Resynchronize" button is pressed
Fixed: Exception caused by null terminators in downloaded feeds
Fixed: Exception when using Ctrl+W to close a browser tab