Upcoming Enhancements

This post I would like to mention upcoming items of interest.

• Popup control. Right now all New Window requests are blocked without notifying you (sorry). Expect to see a UI that displays a list blocked popup links for you. Selected links spawn a new Tab Page.
• Auto-add this blog to your Feed List.
• Get the correct character encoding set on the Browse View Feed Tab. This manifests itself as "strange" characters appearing where there should be whitespace. The character encoding should be UTF-8.
• Getting "off the desktop". For those that don't want the main window visible all the time, allow control through the Task Tray icon and Task Tray notifications.

Required Update 3.0.0.4

Yet another required update.

Changes

1. More work internally to increase performance and use less memory.
2. Enclosures View: status update timer is always active, every 30 seconds.
3. Feed List View: enhance drawing when resized.

Required Update 3.0.0.3

More enhancements. Check with ClickOnce for upgrade.

The Enclosures View saw lots of activity in this update.

Changes

1. Added menu opacity.
2. Left-hand View: changed button click to rotate through views, instead of collapsing.
3. Feed List View: added Next command. This marks the current feed as read, and advances to the next one in the list.
4. Feed List View: Category and Subject Filters use the selected Unread/Read/All setting.
5. Feed List View: Added graphics for "Downloaded" and "Published" text.
6. Enclosures View: enhance performance when switching between Unread/Read/All views.
7. Enclosures View: correct handling of delete enclosures request from Playlist View.
8. Enclosures View: implement the Add Downloaded Items to Playlist setting.
9. Enclosures View: add notify to taskbar setting for Add Downloaded Items to Playlist.
10. Enclosures View: added Read/Unread item status to list view.

Required Update 3.0.0.2

This is a required update. ClickOnce will update your deployment when you launch.

Changes

1. Added ability to switch layout between 1- and 2-column views.
2. Enclosures: Added background processing. Keeps UI unlocked more.
3. Enclosures: Reduced update frequency while downloading status is active.
4. Enclosures: Feeds are sorted by Status, Feed, Title.
5. Clear Temp Files: Added command to delete all temporary generated HTML files.
6. Feed List View: Added filter name to description on the toolstrip.

Welcome To Feed Farmer

And for the approximately 900 who downloaded the previous version, Welcome Back!

We are back to avenge a lame 2-star rating on download.com!

This time around, we are taking advantage of the Microsoft Common Feed List (CFL) and its download engine, forsaking hundreds of lines of code bent towards the same purpose.

If you are already using the "Feeds" feature of IE 7, you are golden! Your feed list will come right up. If not, OPML interchange is a snap with IE.

Another new feature this time around is the use of ClickOnce deployment:

ClickOnce Deployment Page

The 2009 edition of FF is slim-and-trim and just as high-performance as the previous edition. Gone is all the useless configuration and clutter; there isn't even a Main Menu this time!

The Task Tray is also put to use in this edition; you can annoy yourself as much or as little as desired by Feed-related events.

There are also more ways to view your feeds, with Category and Subject/Author views, color-coded according to item count.

Navigating Feed Item links now uses Tabbed Browsing, keeping you in one place and organized. Currently all popups are cruelly terminated, to minimize bother.

And now, the bad news! There are ads. The hope is to offer an ad-free version at a modest amount; we shall see what the interest is.