FeedDemon 2.5 RC2 Release Notes

Note: RC2 will reset any customizations made to your toolbars.

What's New in RC2

• Added: Support for slash:comments (86536)
• Added: "Reports" added to browser toolbar
• Added: A heaping helping of performance improvements throughout
• Added: "Properties" icon added to feed reports
• Added: History of Auto-Discovered feeds can now be disabled
• Changed: "History of Auto-Discovered Feeds" simplified to show only titles (previously showed titles and feed URLs)
• Changed: FeedDemon's "attention rank" algorithm now uses a higher weighting for items added to news bins that are shared as RSS feeds
• Fixed: Disappearing content in Outland newspaper style when using IE6
• Fixed: Read items are skipped by watches after updating a synched feed for the first time (88578)
• Fixed: Items deleted by cleanup wizard aren't synched with NewsGator Online
• Fixed: Incorrect date sorting of folder newspaper (Surfer style)
• Fixed: FeedDemon loses focus after upgrading subscriptions
• Fixed: Creating a synched news bin with a shared RSS feed doesn't always create the shared feed
• Fixed: "Popular Topics" report incorrect displays Unicode titles in "Popular in Everyone's Subscriptions"
• Fixed: Desktop alert doesn't support Unicode characters

• Top Five New Features in FeedDemon 2.5
• Other Additions
• Changes
• Fixes
• Known Issues

Top Five New Features in FeedDemon 2.5

1. Synchronized news bins with shared RSS feeds
2. Prefetch unread items for offline reading (File|Prefetch Unread Items)
3. Rewritten "Popular Topics" feature
4. Embedded videos now display in newspapers
5. "Who's linking here?" added to each post in a newspaper

Other Additions in FeedDemon 2.5

• Added: Completely rewritten "Popular Topics," including the ability to see what's popular in everyone's subscriptions (ie: everyone using NewsGator Online)
• Added: Ability to choose which feeds to show in the desktop alert (Options|Desktop Alert|Choose Feeds) (hat tip to Nick Harris)
• Added: Watches can now be included in the desktop alert (Options|Desktop Alert)
• Added: Synchronization of flagged items
• Added: Emailing posts as HTML is now supported when Microsoft Outlook is installed and is the default email client.
• Added: "Ignore new items older than" added to feed properties (useful for feeds that keep republishing old items). Related to this, new keyword search feeds default to ignoring items older than 7 days.
• Added: Date filter added to subscription search
• Added: Subscription search can now be limited to unread/flagged items (82780)
• Added: "Mark page read" added to top right of "Surfer" newspaper style
• Added: "Mark page read and goto next page" added to toolbar above browser
• Added: "Keyword View" added to view styles - shows all feeds containing a specific word in their title
• Added: "Show Toolbars" added to View menu (provides keyboard-centric users a way to hide all the toolbars)
• Added: Enclosure URL (if any) is now included when emailing a post
• Added: Significant performance boost when navigating subscriptions with keyboard shortcuts or toolbuttons
• Added: We had two reports of corrupted FeedDemon watches and news bins following a system crash. As a result, this version includes the ability to silently recover corrupt data files, as well as better detection of system failures during file writing to avoid corruption in the first place.
• Added: Feed properties icon added to top right of Surfer newspaper
• Added: When working offline, clicking a link to a page that's not available offline results in a system beep along with a message in the status bar informing that the page isn't available.
• Added: Newspaper links that aren't available while offline now show with a dotted red underline
• Added: When viewing a newspaper while working offline, links that aren't available offline are displayed in a different style
• Added: The dialog that asks whether to connect when working offline now includes a "Don't ask me again this session" checkbox.
• Added: Activation/startup wizard now includes a "Search Feed" page which automatically subscribes you to keyword search feeds
• Added: "What is RSS?" page added to tutorial
• Added: Opening a new tab shows a page containing tips for using tabbed browsing
• Added: Slightly improved performance when running over a Remote Desktop Connection
• Added: "Reports" submenu added to View menu
• Added: "Feed HTTP Error Report" - list of HTTP errors encountered during last update
• Added: "History of auto-discovered feeds" which displays a report of feeds auto-discovered during the past week that you're not already subscribed to. Note that this will be empty upon first use (it populates over time)
• Added: Desktop alert is now pinnable (82901)
• Added: "Appearance" tab in options enables choosing custom colors
• Added: Significant performance boost when changing views
• Added: Mousing over an item in the news item list now shows its URL in the status bar
• Added: Mousing over a feed now shows its folder name in the status bar when the current view doesn't include folders
• Added: If FeedDemon crashes while multiple browser tabs are opened, you'll be asked whether to reopen those tabs then next time it starts
• Added: Separate tray icon when working offline

Changes

• Changed: The address and search bars have been combined.
• Changed: Changes to read states when working offline are now synched immediately after returning from offline.
• Changed: "Browser Position" moved back to View menu
• Changed: "System Tray" page in options renamed to "Desktop Alert"
• Changed: Feeds whose attention data collection has been disabled are now excluded from popular topics
• Changed: In previous versions, attempting to browse an external URL while working offline would always result in being asked whether to connect. This has been changed so that FeedDemon first checks whether a copy of the URL exists in IE's cache, and if so it will display it rather than attempt to connect.
• Changed: Folders that are child folders online now display their full path in the subscription tree
• Changed: Feeds with the least attention now excludes feeds that were added within the past two days
• Changed: If a feed with unread items is selected and an external web page is showing, clicking "Mark page read and goto next page" will redisplay that feed's newspaper instead of moving to the next feed.
• Changed: When FeedDemon fails to connect to the Internet, you're now asked whether to test the connection or work offline
• Changed: Confirmation dialog which asks whether to make FeedDemon the default feed reader can be disabled from the dialog itself
• Changed: FeedDemon now uses its own user agent instead of IE's when requesting images for display in a FeedDemon newspaper.
• Changed: In previous versions, hitting Ctrl+Space would navigate the news item list even when it was hidden. This has been changed so that it navigates the newspaper instead.
• Changed: "Suppress dialogs and error messages displayed by browser" now defaults to False. This was True in previous versions to prevent script error dialogs from appearing, but this had the side effect of also preventing login dialogs. FeedDemon now always prevents script errors from appearing, regardless of this setting.
• Changed: Navigating items in the newspaper using 'J' or 'K' now marks the selected item as read
• Changed: Redesigned Options | Confirmations dialog
• Changed: The ability to search subscriptions from the search bar has been removed. This feature is still available by pressing F3 or selecting Tools|Search Subscriptions
• Changed: "Automatically collapse folders" has been moved to the General tab in FeedDemon's options
• Changed: The option to "mark selected item as read" now operates in both the news item list and the newspaper
• Changed: The options to (1) check if FeedDemon is the default aggregator and (2) show validation errors in new feeds have been moved to the confirmation setting
• Changed: When the news item list is grouped by date, only the time portion displays when an item's date is within the last few days
• Changed: Error log (FeedDemon.elf) is now saved to the cache folder instead of the application folder
• Changed: Pressing 'J' in the newspaper when the last item is selected now marks it as read
• Changed: Subscription tree uses "Vista" style

Fixes

• Fixed: Read states not synched before applying changes to synchronized folders (80345)
• Fixed: Redirected enclosures not synched with iTunes (80347)
• Fixed: HTML not always stripped from titles in popular topics
• Fixed: Import dialog should disable the option to import from the common feed list when RSS platform isn't installed (81810)
• Fixed: When a watch or news bin is selected, "Next unread feed shouldn't skip watches and news bins (77960)
• Fixed: Progress bar showing status of previous tab when switching browser tabs
• Fixed: Unicode quotes and dashes aren't converted before passing a news item to an external blog publishing tool
• Fixed: "Reverse sort" toolbutton isn't re-enabled after changing newspaper filter from one that results in zero news items
• Fixed: "Show in external browser" should not be enabled for newspapers
• Fixed: Titles for newspapers containing a single news item fail to strip HTML
• Fixed: Items with the same date are sorted differently in the news item list than they are in the newspaper.
• Fixed: When viewing Popular Topics, clicking "Hide this topic" doesn't always work
• Fixed: "Interface not supported" exception when viewing XPS document in FeedDemon
• Fixed: Feeds added online aren't updated in FeedDemon until the next update cycle after they've been added
• Fixed: When FeedStation has been uninstalled, feeds that are configured to auto-download enclosures generate an error message during updating
• Fixed: FeedStation fails to correctly rename podcasts with multiple redirects (seen with this Scientific American feed) (81270)
• Fixed: Can't sync a feed that uses cookie-based authentication if the cookie exists when you attempt to subscribe to the feed
• Fixed: Incorrect display of ' in Atom feeds with text summaries (86299)
• Fixed: Search terms and URLs entered into the address bar are automatically submitted when the focus changes, even if the Enter key hasn't been hit.
• Fixed: FeedDemon doesn't reset the newspaper and splitter colors after the Windows theme changes
• Fixed: "Popular Topics" doesn't correctly match URLs with spaces in their query strings
• Fixed: "Internet Options" doesn't work under Windows Vista
• Fixed: Favorites menu doesn't work under Windows Vista
• Fixed: On Windows Vista, hitting ALT sometimes hides all buttons on a dialog
• Fixed: Changing views on Windows Vista sometimes re-arranges order of watches and news bins
• Fixed: Login dialog for authenticated feeds appears when screen saver is active
• Fixed: Address bar is cleared when subscription home page reloads while a URL is being typed into the address bar
• Fixed: Surfer colors look wrong with many WindowsBlinds skins
• Fixed: Subscriptions scroll back to the top after right-clicking
• Fixed: Significant delay between clicking "Update all feeds" and the update being performed
• Fixed: NewsGator API call at startup even when no synched feeds exist
• Fixed: Scheduled updating doesn't occur when no synched feeds exist and sync polling frequency isn't the same as feed update frequency (87959)(78987)
• Fixed: "Scrubber" code fails to remove text between <script>..</script> (not a security risk - just looked bad)
• Fixed: Exception when importing from common feed list when it doesn't contain any subscriptions (88033)
• Fixed: Subscriptions scroll to the right after changing views if a feed with a long title is selected
• Fixed: Search phrase is cleared from address bar when it loses focus (88364)
• Fixed: Sanitizer cuts off all text after a <title> tag if encountered when building a newspaper
• Fixed: Further improved duplicate suppression in "Popular in Everyone's Subscriptions"
• Fixed: Hard-coded text and language in "about tabs" page (88684)
• Fixed: Incoming links cropped when using Chinese font (88636)
• Fixed: Right-clicking a feed and selecting "Update Feed" does nothing when a news bin or watch is selected
• Fixed: Image URLs which contain spaces fail to display in summary view (89507)
• Fixed: URLs in status bar don't disappear
• Fixed: Previous name of renamed feed/folder doesn't appear in subscription changes details
• Fixed: Double-clicking an item in a Market Watch feed opens the subscription wizard (89965)
• Fixed: Null characters in corrupt subscriptions file prevents successful restore of subscriptions backup file (89870)
• Fixed: Expando style doesn't have a "mark as read" icon next to each item (90073)
• Fixed: Embedded Silverlight crashes FeedDemon (89653)
• Fixed: Feed preview dialog requires clicking inside the browser before mouse wheel will scroll it
• Fixed: "Ignore new items older than" setting not enforced for modified items
• Fixed: Open italics not closed in newspaper excerpts (88931)
• Fixed: Feed or folder must be clicked twice to reload its newspaper after right-clicking another node
• Fixed: If during an update a feed receives more items than its archiving value permits, the archiving value is automatically increased. This is by design, but it should not happen if the archiving value has been changed from its default value of 200 items (28776)
• Fixed: Minimized browser splitter re-opens after alt-tabbing away from and then back to FeedDemon (79949)

Notes for newspaper developers

• Information about a post's comments is now stored in a <fd:comments> node which has htmlUrl, xmlUrl and NumComments attributes
• The hard-coded hack in the previous version which determined a newspaper style's capabilities by checking its name has been removed. Third-party newspaper authors will need to add a 'fd:capabilites' node to their style which describes its capabilites, ex: 'Surfer' style uses <fd:capabilities showExcerpts="true" toggleExcerpts="false" collapsePosts="false" itemGrouping="true" /> (77329)

Known Issues

• "Who's linking here" sometimes returns no external results, even when they do exist
• Turning off the RSS feed for one synched news bin may turn off all synched news bin feeds
• Read/flagged states aren't synchronized in synched news bins
• Items clipped to the root clippings folder online aren't synched with FeedDemon