FeedDemon 3.0 Release Notes

Build 3.0.0.41 / September 24, 2009

Changes in FeedDemon 3.0

Added: Google Reader synchronization
Added: Redesigned "Subscriptions Home" page with popular videos and articles extracted from your feeds
Added: Items can now be tagged
Added: "Quick Tag" menu added next to tag icon in newspaper - enables quickly adding/removing a tag
Added: "Share" icon added to newspaper which adds the item to your Google Reader shared items
Added: Ability to view all unread or flagged items at once
Added: Hovering over a short URL (TinyURL.com, etc.) now shows the full URL in a balloon tip so you know where the URL redirects (great when browsing Twitter). For a list of supported URL shortening services, see the file ShortUrl.xml in FeedDemon's \Data subfolder.
Added: Automatic hyperlinking of URLs, @replies, #hashtags and author names in Twitter feeds. Profile pictures will also be displayed when subscribing to the Atom version of a Twitter feed if the feed is in a folder that isn't synchronized.
Added: "Reply" link in newspaper when viewing a post from a Twitter feed
Added: Redesigned toolbutton icons
Added: "Icons" button added to Options|Reading which enables choosing which icons should appear beneath each item in the newspaper (due to this addition, several of the default icons from previous versions are now hidden by default)
Added: Close button added to individual browser tabs
Added: Significant performance improvements in "Popular Topics," "Search Subscriptions," newspaper display and many other areas
Added: Significantly reduced memory consumption
Added: "Export Newspaper" added to File menu - exports all posts from all pages in the active newspaper to an external HTML document
Added: "Surfer" newspaper style now remembers whether thumbnails have been collapsed
Added: "Enable page transitions" has been added to Options|Appearance, which defaults to being enabled
Added: FeedDemon attempts to detect when script debugging is enabled in Internet Explorer and asks whether to turn it off (script debugging causes error dialogs to popup while browsing inside any application that embeds IE)
Added: Fixed header in reports/newspapers
Added: "Browser Home" added to tabbed browser context menu
Added: Hourglass icon now appears on browser tabs that are still loading
Added: Main menu can be toggled by right-clicking any toolbar and selecting "Show main menu"
Added: Theme selection added to Appearance page in Options (this replaces the "UI Style" option from previous versions)
Added: Newspaper now displays "new items received" message when new items are downloaded in the feed or folder showing in the newspaper
Added: "Export Top Feeds" added to File menu
Added: "Panic Button" now enables marking everything more than 12 hours old as read
Added: "Attention Report" now enables exporting top feeds as OPML
Added: Cleanup Wizard and Panic Button can now be limited to specific folders
Added: Feed and folder properties now enable specifying how many days to keep items
Added: When you switch to a language file other than the default, FeedDemon validates it to make sure it doesn't have any missing entries or arguments. If any problems are found, a dialog will alert that the language file contains errors and recommend that it not be used. Details on the errors are also shown in this dialog, which should help translators debug their work.
Added: Support for GIF, PNG, JPEG, BMP and truecolor ICO favicons
Added: Attention report now enables resetting attention rank for all feeds
Added: Progress bar added while synching/updating
Added: "Ignore new items older than" added to folder properties
Added: Bing search definition
Added: Visual enhancements in subscription tree when using Windows Vista or Windows 7
Added: "Express Setup" added to install - quickly installs FeedDemon using default location and program group
Added: "E" single-key newspaper shortcut to email active item
Added: Option to automatically start FeedDemon when Windows starts
Added: Enclosure icon added to feed preview
Added: Author names, re tweets and hyperlinks in Twitter status posts are now included in FeedDemon's prefetch

Removed: NewsGator synchronization is no longer available (here's why)
Removed: "Feed History" report has been removed

Changed: Feed content is now stored in a SQLite database instead of in individual XML files
Changed: System requirements now state that IE7 rather than IE6 is required
Changed: "Always switch to new tabs" setting replaced with "Open new browser tabs" setting which enables choosing between always opening new tabs in the foreground, always opening new tabs in the background, and open new tabs in the background when CTRL is down
Changed: "Flags" have been renamed "Stars" for consistency with Google Reader
Changed: Browser toolbar simplified by hiding several toolbuttons (note: if there's a button you want back, just click the "Customize" arrow at the far right of the toolbar)
Changed: "Favorites" is now on the main menu instead of the toolbar above the browser
Changed: Auto-discovered feed icon is now part of the address bar
Changed: Check for new version and "what's new" are now integrated into the subscription home report
Changed: Panic Button results now shown in "timed" dialog which automatically disappears after 60 seconds
Changed: Surfer newspaper now shows friendlier message when no items match the current filter
Changed: Simplified Options dialog by removing outdated settings
Changed: New browser tabs are now opened adjacent to the active tab instead of after the last tab (similar to IE7 and Chrome)
Changed: Language files ("FDLANGs") are now installed under the user's local application data folder (previous versions stored FDLANGs in a subfolder of \Program Files\FeedDemon, which caused Vista's folder virtualization to kick in when a non-admin user attempted to download an FDLANG)
Changed: Inline search bar flashes briefly when displayed to draw attention to it (some customers expected Ctrl+F to show IE's "Find" dialog and didn't notice inline search bar)
Changed: Email icon now shown in newspaper by default
Changed: Simplified Cleanup Wizard (now a simple dialog instead of a wizard)
Changed: "Feeds with HTTP Errors" report renamed "Feeds with Errors"
Changed: FeedDemon's install is almost 30% smaller than before
Changed: The default # of items per newspaper page is now 25 instead of 10
Changed: Search results now use "surfer" style
Changed: Setup now defaults to installing under the local appdata folder when run by non-admin user (since "Program Files" requires admin rights on Vista/Win7).
Changed: Feed updating is now paused while performing an action that may modify your feeds (unsubscribing, changing options, performing cleanup, etc.)
Changed: Error reporting now includes an "exit application" checkbox

Fixed: Import dialog appears frozen while loading very large OPML files
Fixed: Setup doesn't handle the situation where FeedDemon was previously installed to Program Files by an admin user, but is now being installed by a non-admin user
Fixed: Prefetch has been rewritten to resolve sporadic exceptions that occurred in previous versions (esp. when IE8 installed)
Fixed: Incorrect date grouping in news item list
Fixed: "Browser Home" icon on new tab page fails when IE8 is installed
Fixed: Clicking close button on browser tab changes the active tab
Fixed: Resizing columns in FeedStation sometimes leaves blank area on left
Fixed: FeedStation setup requires admin rights
Fixed: Empty hyperlinks cause extra whitespace in newspaper when showing excerpts
Fixed: Prefetch consumes too much memory if a large number of new items are received in a single update
Fixed: FeedStation creates incorrect folder names if enclosure URL contains spaces
Fixed: Disabled watches fail to be grayed out when they contains unread items
Fixed: Embedded HTML Tidy locks up when item description contains unclosed XML instruction
Fixed: Unsubscribing from multiple feeds is slow
Fixed: Left/right arrow keys don't work in the inline search box
Fixed: Bad comments in feed prevent some items from being shown in FeedDemon newspaper
Fixed: Excessive flicker when selecting "Close Other Tabs"
Fixed: EOutOfResources error when running FeedDemon in a remote session
Fixed: FeedDemon comes to the front of other applications when the desktop alert's close button is clicked
Fixed: FeedDemon warns that you're subscribing to a feed you're already subscribed to even when it's a secure feed that you've supplied a different login to
Fixed: Items deleted from non-synched feeds reappear during a later update
Fixed: J/K newspaper shortcuts scroll too far
Fixed: URLs in address bar dropdown can be wider than address bar itself
Fixed: Cancelling "Panic Button" still causes "No items marked read" to appear in the status bar
Fixed: FeedDemon blocks enclosure URLs that end in whitespace
Fixed: Google AdSense image ads aren't skipped by FeedDemon's prefetch, and they appear even when showing excerpts
Fixed: FeedDemon can't subscribe to feeds containing numerous encoding errors
Fixed: When IE's popup blocker is disabled, multiple IE windows are spawned when "Open external links in default browser" is enabled and feed contains Brightcove video player
Fixed: "Subscription Home" report not updated when FeedDemon isn't the active application
Fixed: FeedDemon doesn't highlight in the taskbar when it displays a dialog and it's not the active application
Fixed: Progress bar fails to update when backing up cache folder on Windows Vista
Fixed: Many missing menu mnemonics (say that five times fast)
Fixed: Ctrl+Alt+Home opens feed's home page in new browser tab instead of current one
Fixed: Clicking "Next Page" does nothing when root watches or shared items node is selected
Fixed: "Import Feeds" slow to show list of feeds
Fixed: Choosing "Show in External Browser" sometimes fails when Google Chrome is the default browser
Fixed: Icon for "Show in default browser" not always correct after installing IE8
Fixed: EOleException or EInvalidPointer exception when closing a browser tab (automatic error reporting showed this as the #1 bug)
Fixed: ESQLite3 exception when feed auto-discovered
Fixed: EIntOverflow exception caused by converting invalid dates
Fixed: EListError exception when importing feeds
Fixed: EStringListError exception with duplicate language resources
Fixed: EListError exception when accessing favorites offline
Fixed: EOleSysError exception when emailing post with Microsoft Outlook
Fixed: EnbFeedXmlParser exception parsing feed that has no <channel> node
Fixed: EWriteError exception saving invalid favicon
Fixed: EAccessViolation exception after hitting "Panic Button"
Fixed: EAccessViolation exception after moving feed
Fixed: Crash when customizing toolbuttons (3.0.0.41)
Fixed: Feed context menu disappears when feed title extends beyond width of feedbar (3.0.0.41)