FeedDemon 2.0 Release Notes

Changes in FeedDemon 2.0.0.23

Added: Much better handling of connectivity problems, including server outages (more information...)
Added: "Preview Feed" added to subscription and import wizards
Added: "Feed View" added to view styles
Added: The number of items in a watch is now displayed when editing a watch
Added: Header icons added to news item list
Added: Delete folder dialog now includes the folder title in its caption
Added: "Outland" newspaper style now enables marking items as read (58171)
Added: "Test Connection" added to connection options
Added: "Scan for Errors" added to "Manage Cache" dialog
Added: FeedDemon's "Surfer" style now displays a "Play Media" icon next to items which include media:player
Added: "Text Size" added to browser menu (52678)
Added: SWF added to default list of safe enclosures
Added: "Check daily for a new version of FeedDemon" added to general options
Changed: Previous versions enabled turning off auto-purge in feeds and watches, which meant that items would be kept forever. This has been changed so that auto-purge is always enabled, and can never be set higher than 2500 items. However, FeedDemon will continue to support feeds and watches that had auto-purge disabled prior to this version. These feeds and watches will show with an auto-purge value of zero, and changing this value will automatically enable auto-purge.
Changed: "Auto-purge" has been renamed to "Archiving"
Changed: Clicking a thumbnail in a Media RSS feed now goes straight to the post's link (previous version displayed post's newspaper in FeedDemon)
Changed: The ability to import subscriptions from the previous version has been removed from the activation wizard and replaced with a separate import wizard that appears the first time that FeedDemon 2.0 is run
Changed: When navigating the news item list with the keyboard, the newspaper isn't displayed until you let go of the key - this way you can scroll through the items much more quickly
Changed: When a podcast is removed from within FeedStation, it's now sent to the recyle bin instead of being deleted
Changed: Default polling frequency changed from 10min to 30min
Fixed: Erroneous "synchronization service is not available" or "location does not exist" message when running FeedDemon after creating an account (55956)(55977)
Fixed: Can't type a value greater than 99 for the synchronization polling frequency (55717)
Fixed: FeedStation install doesn't honor "don't create start menu items" option from FeedDemon install (55446)
Fixed: "File in use" error when creating newspaper (55526)
Fixed: "Translator credit" overlapped on "About" dialog
Fixed: Import dialog fails to warn when NG login is missing before importing NG subscriptions
Fixed: "Incorrect language version" error when third-party language file selected and then deleted from disk)
Fixed: Resource leak in subscription tree (most noticeable on Win98/ME) (56219)
Fixed: Incorrect "tag:" hyperlinks for posts in synched feeds that don't have a <link> (56589)
Fixed: When FeedStation has been uninstalled, clicking an enclosure should default to loading it in the default application (57033)
Fixed: FeedDemon fails to treat rdf:about attribute in RSS 1.0 items as a unique identifier
Fixed: "Next" button disabled in activation wizard
Fixed: Spinning icon not removed from feed after update completed
Fixed: News item list shows empty titles for items whose titles are all HTML (seen with Doc Searls' RSS feed)
Fixed: Clicking "back" button after switching feeds results in blank page (57335)
Fixed: Folders context menu is mostly grayed out when a Watch or News Bin is selected (55985)
Fixed: Missing vertical scrollbar on specific web pages (first seen with Wikipedia)
Fixed: Inaccurate selection after deleting from news item list (57745)
Fixed: "Supress dialogs and error messages displayed by the browser" not applied until FeedDemon restarted (60343)
Fixed: FeedDemon doesn't update a feed's URL when it's changed in NewsGator Online (either manually or due to a permanent redirect)
Fixed: Outland style doesn't handle images in short posts correctly (58195)
Fixed: Synchronization message displays incorrectly at 120dpi
Fixed: When the IE7 beta is installed, selecting "Open in new tab" from the context menu in FeedDemon's browser opens the page in a new tab and a new window
Fixed: Watches with auto-purge disabled are reset to auto-purge at 200 items (2.0.0.23)
Fixed: Auto-discovery handles query strings incorrectly (2.0.0.23)

Changes in FeedDemon 2.0

Added: Advanced synchronization with NewsGator Online
Added: Subscriptions are now shown in single-level treeview rather than in a dropdown list
Added: Subscription overview, including which feeds you pay the most and least attention to
Added: All feeds update based on their schedule regardless of whether they're in the active folder
Added: "Surfer," "Outland" and "Prince" newspaper styles
Added: "Photo Strip" newspaper style - great for Flickr feeds (such as this one)
Added: "Unread folder view," "Unread feed view" and "Flagged feed view"
Added: Significant performance improvements when news item list (middle pane) is kept hidden
Added: Significant performance improvements when displaying filtered newspaper of feeds with a large number of posts
Added: FeedDemon now remembers the login for secure feeds between sessions, so you're no longer prompted every time you update a secure feed. Note that you can edit stored logins by clicking the "Passwords" button in FeedDemon's options.
Added: Desktop alert can now be configured for timed display so it "bundles" new item alerts and only displays after a certain number of minutes. In other words, if you're subscribed to a lot of feeds, you no longer have to be interrupted by an alert every few minutes :)
Added: Marking an item in a watch as read also marks the source item (ie: the item in the original feed) as read. Note that this will not work for items added to a watch prior to this release, since watches in previous versions didn't store source information.
Added: Subscription wizard redesigned - integrates previous "search channel" feature and includes ability to search for new feeds
Added: "Copy" item added to feed's context menu
Added: Option (disabled by default) to permit access to all non-executable enclosures, regardless of type
Added: Statistics page added to feed and folder properties
Added: "Copy News Item to Clipboard" added to "Send To" menu
Added: A feed's properties can now be edited immediately after it has been added (52317)
Added: Clicking the header above the news item list shows the newspaper for the active feed
Added: The cleanup wizard has been redesigned and now enables choosing a max # of items.
Added: Items removed by the cleanup wizard won't return if they still exist in the feed (provided that each item has a pubDate).
Added: Every 30 days the subscription overview includes a reminder to run the cleanup wizard.
Added: FeedDemon now supports drag-and-drop of multiple feeds to different folders
Added: Support for IE7's tabbed browsing shortcuts and context menu items
Added: Newspaper options moved to status bar
Added: "Import the Windows Common Feed List" added to Import wizard (requires IE7 or Vista)
Added: "Feed Properties" now includes a separate tab for notes about the feed
Added: Options|Sounds now includes the option to play a sound when the desktop alert is shown (disabled by default)
Added: Improved OPML export based on tests with the OPML Validator beta
Added: The first time FeedDemon is run after installation, before loading your subscriptions it makes a backup named Subscriptions.opml.prev
Added: News Bin popup menu now includes "Create News Bin" item
Added: FeedDemon now checks your feed cache for errors when it detects that it wasn't shutdown correctly (30509)
Added: Improved searching within subscriptions. Examples:
- Mozilla Firefox = items containing the words Mozilla and Firefox
- Mozilla -Firefox = items containing the word Mozilla but not Firefox
- "Mozilla Firefox" = items containing the exact phrase Mozilla Firefox
Added: Watches now support negative keywords, enabling the exclusion of items that contain a specific word
Added: Easter egg
Added: Quick toolbar customization by clicking the arrow at the far right of each toolbar (this replaces the "undocumented" toolbar customization from earlier versions)
Added: "Automatic unsubscribe" added to Advanced page in feed properties - enables automatically unsubscribing from feeds that haven't updated within a certain number of days (useful for comment feeds and other short-term subscriptions)
Added: "Exclude from watches" added to feed properties
Added: "Rerun watch" added to watch context menu
Added: Separate color for unread items
Added: "Remember tabs between sessions" added to browsing options (note: applies only to external URLs - newspapers won't be retained)
Added: "Post to del.icio.us" added to news item context menu
Added: Feed auto-discover of clicked hyperlinks is skipped when the Ctrl key is pressed
Added: Secure icon shown in bottom left of status bar when browsing HTTPS
Added: "Don't export secure feeds" option added to OPML export dialog
Added: "Show Link in External Browser" added to news item context menu (31772)
Added: Desktop alert options now available from system tray icon's context menu (31657)
Added: "Internet Options" added to options menu
Added: Welcome wizard now enables importing initial subscriptions from an OPML file (27622)
Added: Import dialog now enables adding from recommended feeds
Added: "Bypass proxy server for local addresses" checkbox added to connection settings
Added: "Print" added to Browse menu
Added: "Mark all watches or news bins as read" added to Options | Confirmations
Added: "Enable this feed" added to feed properties, which may be used to turn off updating of a feed or re-enable a feed that was disabled during a previous update
Added: Initial support for Atom 1.0
Added: "Folder Properties" dialog which enables changing settings for all feeds in a specific folder
Added: Redesigned "Expando" newspaper style
Added: Auto-discover list includes the feed title (if it exists in the page)
Added: "Reset feed URL on permanent redirect" checkbox added to connection settings
Added: "Minimize to system tray" added to FeedDemon's options
Added: "Mark all watches as read" and "Mark all news bins as read" added under Edit > Mark As Read
Added: Watches now have an "auto-purge" setting (the default is 300 items)
Added: Individual watches may be disabled
Added: "User interface style" added to Options | Appearance
Added: Drag-and-drop arrangement of browser tabs

Changed: Right-clicking no longer makes a feed or folder "active"
Changed: After downloading a new language file, FeedDemon asks whether to apply it (previous versions applied it automatically)
Changed: the "Edit blog publishing tool" dialog now includes a list of tokens
Changed: FeedDemon now automatically increases a feed's auto-purge setting when more items exist in the actual feed than are allowed by the auto-purge setting (28776)
Changed: FeedDemon shows the subscription wizard when a URL is drag-and-dropped from another application (previous versions would only show wizard when dropped onto the "Subscribe" toolbutton)
Changed: Auto-discovered feeds icon moved from status bar to browser toolbar, and now shows only feeds detected in the current web page
Changed: The "New Keyword Subscription" feature has been integrated into the main "New Subscription" dialog
Changed: FeedDemon's search definitions now have the extension FDSRCH2 and use the OpenSearch description format
Changed: "Maximize browser" has been renamed "Show News Items" (52966
Changed: Removed animation of system tray icon
Changed: Significantly simplified UI by re-organizing toolbars, menus and options
Changed: News item list is now hidden by default
Changed: "Validate Feed" now uses the W3C Feed Validation Service
Changed: Performance improvements in newspaper rendering
Changed: Performance improvements when searching in subscriptions
Changed: Feed title is now shortened so that unread count isn't scrolled (49649)
Changed: The "Feed Defaults" button has been removed from options now that feed defaults are defined at the folder level
Changed: Properties set at the folder level are now inherited by feeds that are later added to that folder. Note, however, the folder properties defined prior to this release will not be inherited, so you may need to redefine the folder properties. (38473)
Changed: When "Create News Bin" is selected from the "Copy to News Bin" menu item, the selected post (or URL) is automatically added to the new news bin
Changed: Simplified the news item context menu by moving several actions to a "Send To" submenu
Changed: Newspaper styles now use special "fdaction:" protocol for downloading enclosures - this won't impact end users, but it may impact third-party newspaper styles
Changed: After a folder is deleted, the next folder is made active
Changed: UFT8 byte-order-mark no longer added to exported OPML
Changed: All previous/next actions (previous feed, next feed, etc.) now skip to the next/previous folder (31776)
Changed: The dialog that appears when you try to subscribe to a feed you're already subscribed to now shows the name of the existing folder (32961)
Changed: Options | Confirmations now has separate checkboxes for "Unsubscribe from feed" and "Delete watch or news bin"
Changed: Long titles in browser tabs are now truncated
Changed: Watch keyword entry field now receives focus after clicking "Add" (31615)
Changed: The tutorial has been separated from the welcome wizard
Changed: In previous versions, enlarging the main window would widen the news item list and leave the browser size the same. This has been reversed so that the browser now resizes.
Changed: Keyboard shortcut for "Close Browser Tab" changed from Ctrl+F4 to Ctrl+W
Changed: Previous versions of FeedDemon enabled having multiple feeds with the same title in different folders (groups), but this is no longer permitted. My apologies if you're affected by this change - I know some FeedDemon customers liked this feature - but I'm afraid the change was necessary. I believe most (but not all) FeedDemon users who had the same feed in multiple groups did so due to previous versions being limited to updating only feeds in the active group, so hopefully this change won't have a huge impact now that all feeds in all folders are updated. Note that to support this change, FeedDemon will rename duplicate feeds the first time that beta 2 is run.
Changed: "Group By" changed from textbox to dropdown list
Changed: "Import Feeds" now always hides feeds that you're already subscribed to
Changed: HTML is now stripped from item titles in the newspaper
Changed: "Channels" have been renamed "Feeds" and "Channel Groups" have been renamed "Folders" for consistency with other RSS readers
Changed: The "Synchronized Channel Group" feature has been dropped due to the changes in NewsGator synchronization. Note that subscribing through Bloglines is still possible through the "Import Feeds" feature.
Changed: Unsafe (blocked) enclosures may now be downloaded by holding Ctrl while clicking the paper clip icon in the news item list
Changed: Auto-discovery no longer displays feeds that you're subscribed to in inactive folders
Changed: Previous versions displayed a large red "X" for feeds that could not be retrieved (ie: HTTP 404, etc.). This has been changed so that a small red "x" is overlaid on the normal icon.
Changed: When testing newspaper styles with 'NewspaperDebug' enabled, the debug XML output is now formatted for easier reading (note: this may incur a performance hit with newspapers containing a large number of items). Note that the registry key for this setting has been changed to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Bradbury\FeedDemon\1.0\EnableNewspaperDebug
Changed: "Default" newspaper style renamed to "Classic"

Fixed: FeedDemon uses its own "hand point" cursor instead of the one defined by Windows
Fixed: FeedDemon fails to clean up its temporary files when restarting after a crash (54139)
Fixed: Titles aren't escaped when grouping by title in the newspaper (54133)
Fixed: Performance problem when parsing feeds containing a large number of XML errors
Fixed: Invalid characters in cached feeds may prevent newspaper from showing correct items
Fixed: Exception when closing FeedDemon if desktop alert has been created but never displayed
Fixed: Newspaper doesn't always remove JavaScript that contains HTML in strings
Fixed: Titles containing entities continue to display incorrectly in the news item list (53045)
Fixed: FeedStation doesn't use shell dialog font
Fixed: Source element displays incorrectly when title contains HTML (53093)
Fixed: FeedDemon fails to reflect changes to items with GUIDs
Fixed: "Shift" is incorrectly read as "Alt" in keyboard shortcut dialog (51436)
Fixed: FeedStation's maximize window button is disabled (51558)
Fixed: Next/previous news item causes endless loop when news item list not displayed (51506)
Fixed: "Open in new window" leaves empty tab when used with fdaction: URL (51528)
Fixed: Statistics on feed properties clipped when using large fonts (51530)
Fixed: Wasted space to the right of the search address bar (51567)
Fixed: FeedDemon minimizes to tray instead of closing after cache folder is changed (51612)
Fixed: Clicking the envelope on an unread item in the news item list doesn't mark item as read when auto-read is enabled(51569)
Fixed: OPML import handles nested folders incorrectly
Fixed: Can't create keyword subscription when no folder is considered "active"
Fixed: Color changes made on Appearance tab in options aren't reflected in newspaper after hitting Apply button
Fixed: Next/previous item do nothing when no feed selected (51398)
Fixed: Disabled IE Add-ons are not disabled in FeedDemon (52302)
Fixed: Extra whitespace in feed is displayed incorrectly in news item list (52563)
Fixed: Unsubscribe confirmation dialog doesn't display Unicode characters correctly
Fixed: Updating a feed causes the first grouped item in the news item list to marked as read (51628)
Fixed: When grouping in the news item list is set to "(none)" and "Hide read items" is enabled, switching between feeds automatically marks the first item as read (51039)
Fixed: FeedStation fails to save its queue when Windows shuts down
Fixed: FeedStation's "Resync to media device" menu item operates only on first selected item (52778)
Fixed: Sort indicators missing from FeedStation's queue (51555)
Fixed: Deleting large number of items from the news item list is extremely slow
Fixed: FeedDemon fails to detect when MSXML is incorrectly installed, resulting in numerous errors at startup
Fixed: Can't check checkboxes in import feeds dialog when scrolled horizontally (49791)
Fixed: Newspaper doesn't expand relative URLs in feed image (49800)
Fixed: Problems creating folder names with Unicode characters (32698)
Fixed: Performance problems when displaying very large news items which contain hundreds of HTML tags
Fixed: FeedDemon fails to start when attempting to parse an invalid FDSRCH file
Fixed: Can't subscribe to feeds containing undefined XML namespaces
Fixed: Subscription wizard doesn't auto-populate URL when clipboard contains a feed: URL (39698)
Fixed: Feed titles wrap in feed bar hints
Fixed: Problems displaying Windows-1255 feeds
Fixed: Untranslated text on feed login dialog when first login attempt fails (37778)
Fixed: Sporadic exception when closing if desktop alert is still visible and is fading
Fixed: Ampersands show as accelerators in status bar text
Fixed: Tray icon reset to show no unread items when switching feeds/folders regardless if doing so marked anything as read
Fixed: Enclosure URLs are URLEncoded in newspaper output
Fixed: If number of flagged posts equals the number set in auto-purge, newer posts aren't displayed (41998)
Fixed: Problems adding multiple GMail feeds (42230)
Fixed: Tray icon doesn't reflect when unread count changes (27850)
Fixed: Small (28 byte) memory leak with each browser tab
Fixed: Long browser tab captions not always truncated
Fixed: Plus/minus icons missing from news item list when using "Office 11" UI style (34953)
Fixed: Auto-purge removes the number of items set instead of retaining (34719)
Fixed: Cache folder isn't recreated if renamed or deleted outside of FeedDemon (35822)
Fixed: Sort order isn't retained in the news item grid (33171)
Fixed: Corrupt news bin or watch prevents FeedDemon from starting normally (35937)
Fixed: Unclosed centered elements in news items affect subsequent items in most newspaper styles (32700)
Fixed: User profiles with apostrophe in the name cause FD to fail to render newspapers (36213)
Fixed: Feed containing unescaped adjacent > and < characters cause 100% CPU usage
Fixed: When a filter results in one item in the news item list, selecting it doesn't display it in the newspaper (35674)
Fixed: Unsupported embedded Mozilla displays "fdaction is not a registered protocol" message when clicking newspaper action links
Fixed: Browser address history doesn't include "[Clear this list]" (36395)
Fixed: External FDSRCH files fail to download
Fixed: Flagged posts are removed when auto-purging feeds (32002)
Fixed: "Hide Read News Items" function in toolbar marks the first unread item as read
Fixed: News item and browser panes don't retain their size (31787)
Fixed: Tray icon menu shows two cancel items
Fixed: Slow performance when descriptions are shown in the news item list
Fixed: Feed, news bin and watch titles don't accept Unicode characters
Fixed: FeedDemon isn't correctly handling Unicode feed titles when importing subscriptions from NewsGator Online (28858)
Fixed: News item filter doesn't have "[Clear stored items]" (28712)
Fixed: Clicking news bin icon in newspaper fails if feed not already loaded
Fixed: Items added to watches and news bins don't retain their <source>
Fixed: "This feed's news items have been hidden" message is overlapped by toolbar when toolbar wraps to multiple lines
Fixed: System tray icon disappears after returning from hibernation (28176)
Fixed: Install doesn't create associations (27829)(26289)
Fixed: Ampersands in folder names appear as underscores in feed bar (28498)
Fixed: Can't create a synched folder with an ampersand in its title (28500)(29001)
Fixed: Popup windows that resize themselves through scripting sometimes leave a blank browser tab
Fixed: Subscribe dialog doesn't translate URLs with "feed:" protocol (28904)
Fixed: Can't add a feed with the same name as an existing feed even after deleting the original feed (28924)
Fixed: System Tray icon indicates unread posts when all posts in all feeds are marked as read (27850)
Fixed: Context menu shows "Mark as read" after right-clicking an item that has automatically been marked as read (29468)
Fixed: Incorrect links shown for Atom feeds whose entries use a relative xml:base
Fixed: Failure to connect to SSL-enabled feeds (28950)
Fixed: Delay between the time the animation shown when downloading a feed stops and new items appear in that feed
Fixed: Feeds whose update frequency is less than 30 minutes are only updated every 30 minutes
Fixed: Untranslated text appears on watch dialog when called multiple times in rapid succession
Fixed: FeedDemon doesn't display content:encoded descriptions (26593)
Fixed: Author name not copied to news bin (26600)
Fixed: Ampersands in cache folder result in missing style images (26607)
Fixed: Duplication of items that have whitespace around their titles
Fixed: Firefox stays loaded after being called from FeedDemon, even when closed by the user (26672)
Fixed: Tabbed browser shows underscores for ampersands in tab caption
Fixed: Folder newspaper doesn't sort feeds by their titles
Fixed: "Import Feeds" gives no indication of success
Fixed: Crash when returning from hibernation (26827)
Fixed: Importing matches on feed title rather then URL (26841)
Fixed: Filter search box disappears if news item list is too narrow (26842)
Fixed: Feed bar doesn't redraw after returning from XP login or screensaver (27132)
Fixed: When called multiple times from an external application, FeedDemon's "Add Channel" wizard may not display correctly
Fixed: Enclosure URL attributes preceded by line feeds incorrectly parsed (seen with a Virgin Radio podcast feed)
Fixed: Hitting F8 in rapid succession causes "Options" dialog to appear twice, the second time with untranslated text
Fixed: Feeds that have no declared encoding but have a UTF16 BOM won't display
Fixed: Mishandling of single-quoted attributes when importing OPML
Fixed: OPML import skips feeds with encoded angle brackets
Fixed: Favorites menu doesn't reflect changes to the selected language
Fixed: Items deleted from a watch or news bin may re-appear if Windows crashes before FeedDemon is closed
Fixed: FeedDemon fails to resize the browser when it detects a switch between portrait and landscape mode on a Tablet PC

Changes in FeedStation 2.0

Added: FeedStation now supports authenticated downloads
Added: Support for filename parameter of Content-Disposition header
Added: "ReSync to media device" added to context menu, which enables re-copying a download to your iPod or other media device
Added: Delete key may be used to removed items from the queue (27639)
Added: FeedStation now retains a history of previously downloaded files (note: the number of items retained may be customized on the General page in Options)
Added: FeedStation now displays the date each item was added to the queue (note: items added in the previous release will be set to the current date)
Added: The FeedStation queue can now be sorted by clicking a column header
Added: A red "X" is displayed next to downloaded files that no longer exist
Added: FeedStation now shown in HTTP user agent
Added: FeedStation's error log now includes HTTP status when download fails
Added: Video podcasts (m4v/mp4/mov) added to FeedStation's default list of podcast file types
Added: Proxy settings added to FeedStation (38156)
Added: "Locate downloaded file" added to FeedStation's context menu (31468)

Changed: The default location of the download folder has been changed to My Documents\My FeedStation Podcasts
Changed: The name of the default playlist has been changed to "FeedStation Podcasts"
Changed: FeedStation now adds downloads to the top of the list rather than the bottom
Changed: FeedStation no longer closes iTunes after importing downloaded podcasts
Changed: FeedStation is now always installed in a separate folder (53050)

Fixed: FeedStation's scheduled download time doesn't handle 24-hour locales correctly
Fixed: FeedStation fails to rename downloaded enclosure when a redirect is encountered
Fixed: Content-disposition header not supported by FeedStation unless filename is quoted
Fixed: FeedStation sometimes starts queued downloads before the scheduled time
Fixed: FeedStation use the wrong download filename for podcasts hosted by libsyn (26788)
Fixed: FeedStation fails to sync download with mapped media device
Fixed: Incorrect caption on FeedStation's welcome dialog
Fixed: FeedStation beeps whenever a download completes
Fixed: FeedStation fails to add itself to 'App Paths' section of registry (38125)
Fixed: Error when changing FeedStation's download folder to an external/USB drive (42399)
Fixed: FeedStation unnecessarily creates download folder

Minimum System Requirements

300MHz PC running Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP or 2003
Internet Explorer 6 or later
128MB RAM or OS minimum (whichever is greater)