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NewsFire 1.2 (Beta 1)

NewsFire 1.2

I’ve teased you all for long enough – NewsFire 1.2 (Beta 1) is now available for your enjoyment. All the changes are listed on the release notes page. The executive summary is this: it’s faster, it’s prettier, and it’s got a whole lot of little tweaks to elevate the experience.

This is, of course, a beta. Be prepared to run into bugs and please report those bugs! Please note that 1.2 raises the base requirements to Mac OS X 10.3.9, as it relies heavily on the Safari technologies that are in the 10.3.9 release. Of course, it works great with OS X 10.4.

  • August 26th, 2005 4:25 pm

16 comments...

Jon...

Hey, Beta is looking great, but is there any way to get the feed groups to be at the top of the feed list? It’s like this in 1.1 and I find that more useful than having them in among the feeds.


Marcus...

Beta seems to be working okay (I preferred the old look to be honest, but the new one is not objectionable!). The only exception so far seems to be that Hidden feeds are no longer hidden, and the option to hide them has disappeared. Is this intentional? If so, why?
Otherwise, very nice, as far as I can see! -:oD


Carlo...

Yeah, I agree with the previous comment that the feed groups were more useful when they were at the top. Also, I liked the look of the groups in the previous version better as well. Maybe if the color streched to fit the whole line instead of just the group’s name.


Simon...

A few things:

I can’t hide feeds anymore. Now I have a bunch of feeds that just clutter because I had it all organized into Smart Groups, filed under categories and all laid outh nicely. So that’s really not cool.

Also, in the item information, it says “(Default)” twice after the refresh and delete rates. That goes away after just changing the preferences, and then changing them back, though. But you have to repeat the process for every feed. I know it’s just a minor aesthetic thing, but you said to point out the bugs!

I would like to be able to just have a group not have a label. I thing taking Apple’s approach, with seven color options and a none option. The workaround for this is, of course, using white as the label color, but I thing the whole process needs to be streamlined. Perhaps you could also include a n option for the user to pick their own color as well?

One thing that has always been a tiny nag for me is that the groups have the number of new items on a green backing and so do regular feeds. I would have liked them to be a different color (maybe blue). Or maybe make it reflect the group’s label color. Just throwing that out there.

Other than that, good work, and I look foreward to the finished product!


Bryan...

Outstanding job! I’m really liking the progress being made. One thing it doesn’t seem to be able to handle yet are Atom 1.0 feeds. I have one at my site that works fine in other readers but errors out in NewsFire. Once it’s supported, I’m definitely switching!


Jon...

Great stuff! I can feel the speed! Being able to drag urls to the dock icon makes life so much easier in camino.

Just a few things:

* clicking a feed in a smart group makes it jump back to the top.
* another vote for having groups back at the top (or at a least a preference for that). I really liked having groups, smart feeds, and latest feeds all at the top, its what makes Newsfire really quick to use.
* I couldn’t find a NewdFire item under the services menu. Do I need to log out/log in again for this to show up?


Graham...

Looks and feels great, but the order of the feeds would be great if I could organize them myself, or at least default with groups at top & alphabetically after that.


elan...

A universal build would be awesome!!!!


Graham...

Also, got to say – it’s soooo much faster – the speed was bugging me before, but this is great!


Jon...

‘NewdFire’? A Naked stripped down version maybe? ;o)


Gerard...

First of all, this beta looks really great. I am a happy user of v1.1 and it looks that v1.2 will make me even happier ;-)

To extend on the comment about the groups, I really like to be able to color-code them. But what confuses me with this beta is that it has become harder to distinguish a group from a feed. Two reasons for this in my opinion. Having the entire line with the group name highlighted vs. only the background of the text now was better previously. The second aspect is that when a group is expanded, you now show the unread items counts twice (once in the feed and once in the group). The v1.1 approach of only having the count show next to the group name only if you are in collapsed mode for the group worked better in my mind.

Finally comment. Any chance you could get this feed to work with Newsfire: feed://www.letemps.ch/rss.asp (works fine with Safari RSS).


Lief...

The speed increase is phenominal. The interface is responsive again, with about 100 feeds loaded.

Good job, DW.


Nick...

Yay for the new contextual menu options! Thanks Dave! The speed is much better now and I’ve yet to experience any beta related problems.


Jason...

Very nice, love the interface.


worried...

Great! The spotlight support is awesome.

However, the same problem as gerard’s, could you please get this feed (http://homepage.mac.com/alancdonuts/blogwavestudio/rss.xml)work with NewsFire, too? It works fine with Safari RSS as well.


Paul...

WOW x 2!!!

Firstly Newsfire is looking increasingly amazing – keep up the good (brilliant) work!

Secondly – I can’t believe you, David Watanabe, greater of all things aqualishious, is using a theme designed by humble old me – wooo hooo! That’s really cool – thanks!

I’d be interested in hearing your views on how we can improve it though – especially in terms of adapting it to suit your own sites design (how easy was that to do – could it be made easier?). Is there anything you would change – any bugs etc.

Once again, keep up the good work!