Feed'n Read / News: Recent posts

Hi there,

Today Feed'n Read has been released in version 0.6.0b.

Here is the changelog:
- Added translations for the following languages:
- Dutch by Robin Neyt
- Greek by Tsvetan Bankov
- Romanian by Stefan Savu
- Russian by Ivan Kovalenko
- Spanish by Miguel E. Hernández Cuervo
- Turkish by Muhammet Kara
Thanks to all translators for your commitment.
- Added watches. Watches let you keep track of your favorite newsfeeds.
You can define a watch for an arbitrary set of favorites which are then watched based on keywords.
Whenever a favorite is updated the watch synchronizes the news matching these user defined keywords.
There is an auxiliary support for powerful searches using wildcards, i.e. special characters that
can be embedded in a keyword:
? --> 0 or 1 arbitrary character.
Example: ?at matches all strings that end on at (rat, fat, at, ...)
* --> 0 through n arbitrary characters.
Example: *og matches all strings that end on og and have any characters in front of it
(fog, smog, blog, og, ...)
+ --> 1 through n arbitrary characters.
Example: +og matches all strings that end on og and have at least one character in front of it
(fog, smog, blog BUT NOT og, ...)
Creating watches is quite easy as a wizard guides you through the entire process.
Watches can be organized in so called watch folders. Select 'Add watch folder' resp. "Add watch'
from the 'New' menu to create a watch folder resp. watch.
Browse through the watches in the 'Watches' tree on the left of the user interface.
A sidebar now holds the favorites as well as the watches tree and lets you switch between these
two views.
- Added support for external browser. The link behaviour is now configurable in the 'Browser'
branch in preferences. Three different options are available:
a) Use internal browser which opens a link in a new tab inside the tab bar.
b) Use default external browser which opens a link in a new window outside of the application.
This setting is only selectable if the system's default browser could be detected.
c) Use an arbitrary external browser which opens a link in a new window outside of the
application.
(see request #1449762: IE is activated instead of Default Web Browser)
- Added contet menu item "Open news in external browser":
A potential external browser configuration is considered. If no userdefined setting is found the
action tries to launch the news in the default browser.
(see request # 1467844: Context menu entry: Open news in default browser)
- Added scheduled update support on category level: The refresh interval can now be configured
on category level too. Changing the refresh interval of a category updates the refresh interval
of all favorites inside. Set the check inside the properties dialog if a change to this
setting should recursively affect the favorites in the selected category and all of its sub
categories. A default value for this setting is now configurable under 'Favorites' in the
application preferences.
(see request # 1464774:Refresh interval configuration/unread category visualization)
- Categories now also display the number of unread news in brackets behind the category name
(see request # 1464774:Refresh interval configuration/unread category visualization)
- News can now be tagged using the "Tag news" action from the main menu or a newsfeed's context
menu. The "Untag news" action clears the news tag again. A red flag in the respective column in the
newsfeed tab indicates that a news is tagged. This feature can be used to tag news for special
interest which can recovered easily on first sight. Supplementally the filter
"show only tagged news" from the filter menu can be applied to newsfeeds to filter out all
news that do not have a tag.
- Added extended filter options: Show all news, show only unread news and show only tagged news.
The filters can be selected using the small arrow down on the right side of the tab bar.
Note that this is a global setting which affects all open newsfeed tabs
(see request id #1449803: Hide read messages).
- Added option to mark a newsfeed as read when the tab it is displayed in is closed. This can
be configured in the 'General' branch in the application preferences
(see request #1449891: Mark read when you leave feed).
- Added shortcuts for mark news as read (ctrl+r)/unread (ctrl+u)
(see request #1453747: Shortcut for Mark as Read).
- Added some new refresh intervals to the scheduler (1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes and 4 minutes).
- Favorite read status is restored on startup syncing all favorites with the last condition in
cache and archive. This means that the favorites status is the same as it was when the application
was closed the last time. Opening a favorite opens the newsfeed's previous status as found in cache
and archive. To reflect the synchronization status on startup a progress indicator for the favorite
loading process was added to the application splash screen.
- Added buttons to clear persistent cache and archive to the application preferences.
- Favorites tree now displays individual icons for favorites whose host supplies a website icon
(known as favicon). Tabs also display that icon if it is available for the favorite. Uses background
loading and caching techniques to improve gui performance. Supplementally added support for
overlay icons in case a favorite is scheduled for automatic update or its associated newsfeed is
flawed.
- Improved favorites tree filter strategy to prevent flickering. The favorites tree isn't
refreshed on each keytroke anymore.
- The toolbar items are now arranged in logical groups which can be reordered and wrapped.
The toolbar settings are stored in the configuration and restored on application start.
- The application view and divider settings are now stored in the configuration and restored on
application start.
- Screen cheese bug on windows xp systems fixed which caused the application not to show up with
xp skin if the respective manifest files were not found in the java runtime installation directory.
No manifest files are needed anymore. The xp skin is activated automatically if the application
is running on a windows xp system.
- Fixed bug that caused a scheduled favorite to get updated although it has been already removed.
- Fixed bug that caused idle or lingering newsfeed updates not to disappear from the notification
area.
- Fixed bug which caused HTML entities not to be decoded in news titles. All news titles are now
conditioned in such a manner that all HTML entities are now converted to their unicode
representations. Additionally all potential HTML tags are stripped off.
(see bug #1498015: HTML codes not decoded)
- Added missing browser toolbar tooltips
- Updated SWT library to 3.232... read more

A new Feed'n Read release will be available around beginning/middle of June. This will include a bunch of new features, improvements and fixes. Actually the release should have been out end of May but since some required translations have been delayed the release has been defered to beginning/middle of June. Until then stay patient.

Best regards
Sebastian Machhausen
(Feed'n Read Development Team)

- Added configuration (using a xml persistence layer)
- Added proxy server support
- Added OPML 1.0 import (as supported by http://www.bloglines.com for example)
- Fixed minor bug causing tray notification not to show up if the main window was sent to tray
by hitting close instead of minimize. The default behaviour was send to tray on close. This setting is now configurable.
- Fixed minor bug causing the DEL key to act as global accelerator for the removal of a tree element. Now DEL key removes tree element only if favorites tree is focussed.
- Filters are now case insensitive
- Added message tabs in case of severe errors
- Added about dialog
- Changed icon theme (using Crystal, CrystalClear and Nuvola icons)
- Added some shortcuts in the help menu to useful application specific web sites
- Added notification tray alert fade out animation ;-)

A native installer is now availabe for Win32 systems which guides through the complete Feed'n Read setup process. The installer automatically deploys the required java manifest files which activate the XP skin on Windows XP machines. As a matter of course an uninstaller is also included and installed.

The first Feed'n Read 0.4.1a Linux build is now available. Please make sure to have a look at the included readme.txt for further instructions on how to integrate your Mozilla/Firefox installation as internal browser to the application.
Currently this is the only solution available on the linux platform whereas the internal browser cannot be deactivated due to the missing configuration which is still in the works (will hopefully make it into the next major release).

FnR now offers three mailing lists on sourceforge:

fnr-announce@lists.sourceforge.net for announcements and news concerning FnR development and releases

fnr-users@lists.sourceforge.net for general users of Feed'n Read

fnr-development@lists.sourceforge.net for all issues concerning the FnR development

Josef Auer just joined the FnR project as second developer. He will among other things concentrate on the Linux version of the application. So his first task will be to release a Linux build as soon as possible.