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NetNewsWire Lite Change Notes

This page lists changes to NetNewsWire Lite from 1.0b1 to 1.0.2.

1.0.2: 14 November 2002

• Changed the version number from 1.0.2fc1 to 1.0.2.

1.0.2fc1: 13 November 2002

• Added a Validate this Feed command to the contextual menu for subscriptions. When you validate a feed, it opens Mark Pilgrim’s and Sam Ruby’s RSS Validator in your browser.

1.0.2b7: 12 November 2002

• Fixed a bug where some entities wouldn’t be decoded in Subscriptions and Headlines panes.
• Fixed a bug where you couldn’t rename a group from the Info panel. Now you can.
• Added more font face choices for the HTML view.
• Reversed the mouse-over feature because some people were pointing to it as a source of performance problems. It may be restored later if the performance problem can be worked around.
• Reversed the feature where, if a server returns an HTTP redirect response, the URL of the RSS feed would be changed. Some proxies return a redirect, but you don’t want the feed’s RSS URL to change, since you may not always be going through that proxy.

1.0.2b6: 7 November 2002

• A nasty performance bug introduced in the previous beta was fixed.
• Bug fix: when you click on a link in the Description HTML view, your prefs (open in background or not) are respected. (Jaguar only.)

1.0.2b5: 6 November 2002

• When you mouse-over a link in the Description HTML view, the URL is now displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the window.
• Fixed a display glitch when you first open the Bandwidth Stats window: it looked like the data was cut off. (Now it doesn’t look cut off.)
• Fixed a bug where old-but-still-current headlines would get marked as unread. Important note: this fix will take a few days to take effect once you start using this beta, since some stale data will have to work its way out of your database.

1.0.2b4: 4 November 2002

• When the Description view can be scrolled down, the Space bar scrolls it down instead of jumping to the next unread headline.
• New feature: Bandwidth Statistics. The window opens via the Show Bandwidth Stats command in the View menu. It shows you how much bandwidth NetNewsWire uses for each subscription.
• Fixed a bug with Last-Modified support that prevented it from working with some sites (TidBITS, most notably). This bug fix will further reduce bandwidth use.
• Images with relative URLs are now displayed in the Description HTML view.
• Fixed a bug that prevented a couple otherwise okay feeds from being read: Motivational Quotes of the Day and Racing News Online.
• Support for HTTP redirection: if a site returns a 301 for an RSS feed, the RSS URL for the subscription will be updated.
• Support for XML-level redirection: if an RSS feed is replaced with a redirection XML document (as specified on this page) then the RSS URL for the subscription will be updated.

1.0.2b3: 23 October 2002

• Fixed a bug introduced in the last beta that would cause an HTTP connection leak, which would make it so that NetNewsWire would stop being able to read news. Fixed.

1.0.2b2: 22 October 2002

• Reduces bandwidth consumption by supporting ETag and Last-Modified headers as detailed on this page.
• When you do a manual refresh all, the automatic refresh clock is now reset, which also helps reduce bandwidth consumption.
• Changed the default subscriptions to include only large sites—no weblogs—so as not to cause extra bandwidth charges to people paying for their sites out of their own pocket.
• Fixed a mysterious crash-in-background bug. (There may be more of these, or there may not be.)
• Added some feeds to the Sites Drawer.

1.0.1: 28 September 2002

• Fixed a bug where the Refresh command would appear twice in the contextual menu for the Subscriptions list.
• Added MacUpdate’s feeds to the Sites Drawer.

1.0.1fc1: 27 September 2002

• Smarter scrolling when using arrow keys to navigate through headlines: when you reach the last visible line and hit the down arrow key, it will scroll several lines instead of one line. (The similar is true when arrowing up through the headlines.)
• Added a few sites to the Sites Drawer.

1.0.1b3: 26 September 2002

• A crashing bug when parsing RSS feeds was fixed. (This was one of the two most common crashing bugs.)
• When the headlines pane has the focus, up and down arrows no longer wrap around.
• When the headlines pane has the focus, cmd-up-arrow takes you to the first headline; cmd-down-arrow takes you to the last headline.
• A handful of sites were added to the Sites Drawer.
• There is now a built-in limit of 75 items in a subscription. This is because there is at least one feed out there that sometimes goes crazy and returns hundreds of items.

1.0.1b2: 25 September 2002

• It now remembers the size and position of the two split views.
• New pref on the General prefs panel allows one to open URLs in your browser in the background. (Jaguar only, unfortunately.)

1.0.1b1: 24 September 2002

• Cleaned up and documented (with sample code) the RSS clipboard and drag-and-drop formats NetNewsWire exports.
• Fixed a crashing bug to do with converting HTML entities.
• Added some sites to the Sites Drawer.
• Changed the default subscriptions list. (Something that will be done periodically in order to spread flow around to the very many deserving sites.)

1.0: 19 September 2002

• Changed the version number to 1.0. (Otherwise it’s the same as 1.0fc2.)

1.0fc2: 18 September 2002

• Added a few sites to the Sites Drawer.
• Fixed a minor bug regarding sorting where sometimes the sort indicator in the Source column wouldn’t disappear when it should.

1.0fc1: 17 September 2002

• Fixed a couple memory leaks and crashing bugs.
• Added a ton of sites to the Sites Drawer.
• Fixed a sorting bug where it would forget that you wanted the headlines sorted.
• Made the source info window prettier.
• Added a couple font choices for the HTML pane (Verdana and Optima).
• Revised the Help book slightly. Updated the screen shots, mostly.
• Changed the set of default subscriptions for new users.
• Revised the Credits section of the About window.
• Revised the license: it’s shorter, and the agreement is with Ranchero Software.

1.0b23: 12 September 2002

• Fixed a memory leak.
• New headlines now appear in the order they appear in the RSS for a subscription. (The exception is groups and the new headlines subscription: in those, new items appear at the top.)
• Fixed an RSS auto-discovery bug introduced in the previous beta.
• When multiple subscriptions are selected, the headlines pane tells you you have multiple selections (rather than picking one and showing its news).
• Subscriptions with entities in their names should display properly.
• In the Subscriptions pane, globe icons are gold while the XML is being parsed and processed. (Globe icons are still light blue while the feed is being read.)

1.0b22: 8 September 2002

• Fixed a couple crashing bugs.
• Dragging multiple subscriptions in the Subscriptions pane now works.
• Fixed several other small interface glitches.
• Restored the old-style buttons at the top of the Preferences window.
• Added BBC sites and a couple weblogs to the Sites drawer.
• Revised the layout of the Info window—but it needs more work.

1.0b21: 30 August 2002

• You can now mark the current headline as unread via the contextual menu.
• Two new keyboard shortcuts: the U key marks the current headline as unread; the R key marks the current headline as read.
• Dock menu enhancements (Jaguar only): at the bottom of the menu for each subscription with unread items are two new commands. One command opens the home page in your browser, the other command marks all items for that subscription as read.
• New preference on the General preferences pane: when going to the home page of a subscription in your browser, you can have all its items marked as read automatically. (Default is to have this preference turned off.)
• When a subscription has an error, the error message had some garbage characters. Fixed.
• The sort triangles in the headlines pane were backwards. Fixed.
• The contextual menu in the Subscriptions pane now includes a Refresh command.

1.0b20: 29 August 2002

• You can set the size for the unread count in the dock icon via the Preferences window, General panel.
• A crashing bug when converting entities in RSS titles was fixed.
• The slider for setting main window transparency now provides immediate feedback.
• RSS items where the link element is a relative URL are now converted to absolute URLs.
• A bug with keyboard navigation—where the headlines pane wouldn’t scroll automatically—was fixed.

1.0b19: 28 August 2002

• You can set the font size for the HTML pane via the Preferences window, the General tab.
• There is now basic syntax coloring in the RSS source view. (Tags are in blue.)
• Added support for content:encoding in RSS feeds (thanks to Aaron Swartz).
• Dock menu enhancement (for Jaguar): if you hold down the option key and choose an item, you’ll go to the item in NetNewsWire rather than in your browser.
• The dock icon badge that shows the number of unread items is now larger.
• Fixed a bug where dragging a subscription would sometimes cause one to have duplicates of that subscription.
• Fixed a bug where “dead” RSS items would appear in group views. (This should also fix the bug where unread counts don’t match up.)

1.0b18: 27 August 2002

• The dock menu is now hierarchical, organized by subscription. (Jaguar only, unfortunately.)
• The dock menu contains two new commands: Refresh All News and Mark All News as Read.
• Two new toolbar items: New Group and Refresh All. (Choose Customize Toolbar to get them.) Known bug: the Refresh All icon is exactly the same as the Refresh icon. That will change.
• When a headline is selected and has focus, the Return and Enter keys will work to open it in the browser.
• A couple crashing bugs were fixed.

1.0b17: 26 August 2002

This release fixes Jaguar-specific bugs.

• The various outline and table views are lined up better.
• When switching to a different subscription, all headlines are de-selected automatically.
• A bug with reading some subscriptions (such as Boing Boing's) was fixed. (Oddly, these subscriptions worked fine with 10.1.x.)

1.0b16: 23 August 2002

• The random behavior of Go to Next Unread was fixed.
• A bug with the scrollbar in the HTML pane was fixed.
• A crashing bug that was reported when NetNewsWire was running in the background was fixed.
• There's better feedback when importing large subscription files or deleting lots of subscriptions.
• New keyboard shortcuts: the M key goes to next unread and marks the current item as unread; in the Subscriptions pane and in the Sites drawer, ; collapses all and ' expands all.
• A case-sensitivity bug with importing AmphetaDesk OPML subscription lists was fixed.
• Added a few sites to the Sites drawer.

1.0b15: 22 August 2002

• RSS discovery got smarter: it now consults the built-in list of sites (that appear in the Sites drawer) when trying to find a site’s RSS feed.
• You can now import Blogrolling.com OPML files and it does a pretty good job of finding RSS feeds for sites that have them.
• Added a bunch of weblogs to the Sites drawer.

1.0b14: 20 August 2002

• NetNewsWire now supports RSS discovery. This means that, when you manually subscribe to a site, sometimes it will work if you type the URL of the home page of the site. NetNewsWire will try to find the RSS feed for you.
• The Space bar is a new keyboard shortcut for going to the next unread headline. Other new keyboard shortcuts: the A key goes up one subscription; the Z key goes down one subscription.
• Added a couple weblogs to the Sites drawer.

1.0b13: 19 August 2002

• Fixed a few crashing bugs.
• The Sites drawer toolbar icon looks less like an inactive icon.

1.0b12: 16 August 2002

• Fixed a bug with arrow key navigation that was introduced in the last beta.
• Fixed an occasional crashing bug when adding a new subscription.
• When getting a title for an item that has no title, instead of grabbing the link text it uses the first several words of the description.

1.0b11: 15 August 2002

(Betas 1.0b8 through 1.0b10 were private, so all changes since 1.0b7 are listed here.)

• A new application icon by Bryan Bell.
• New feature: groups. (Screen shot.) You can create groups and organize your subscriptions in any order you want via drag-and-drop. Each group works like a mini-aggregate view, showing recent items from the subscriptions in that group.
• Multiple selections are allowed in the Subscriptions pane. For instance, you can select three sources, choose Unsubscribe from the Subscriptions menu, and unsubscribe from all three at once.
• The first item in the Headlines pane is now longer automatically selected (which had the side-effect of marking it as read).
• You can now close the main window. To re-open it, choose Open Main Window from the Window menu or click on the dock icon.
• Various performance enhancements. Especially: the number of calls to the back-end database has been cut to less than half what it was.

• It’s better about finding icons for subscriptions, especially with RDF-format feeds.
• New commands: Rename, Mark All as Unread, New Group. Also, new commands were added to the contextual menus.
• The View RSS Source command now opens the RSS source in a window in NetNewsWire instead of in your browser. (Except in the Sites drawer.)
• Nuked the proxy prefs since the library in use (CURLHandle) is supposed to get them from the system. Split the General prefs tab into two tabs: General and Downloading.
• A new preference allows you to specify whether the app should be well-behaved or fast when downloading news.
• If you click Reset to Defaults in the Prefs window it now prompts for confirmation.
• Keyboard shortcuts: . expands a group; , collapses a group. (Both in subscriptions pane and in the Sites drawer.)
• Some bugs with accented characters were fixed.
• Fixed a crashing bug when a feed is incomplete.
• Etc. (A few minor things to small to mention.)

1.0b7: 2 August 2002

• Fixed a serious performance problem introduced in the last beta.
• Removed horizontal scrollbars from subscriptions and headlines panes.
• New menu command: Open Home in Browser (shift-command-B) opens home page of current subscription in browser.
• Moved Find New Sites submenu to Subscriptions menu.
• Renamed Refresh commands to make them less ambiguous: now it's Refresh Current News and Refresh All News.

1.0b6: 1 August 2002

• Fixed the most likely cause of the crash-on-startup bug some OS X 10.2 users have reported.
• Fixed a slew of unexpected input and multi-threading-related crashing bugs.
• You can double-click on a subscription name to open its home page in the browser.
• Fixed a couple bugs regarding junk input when manually subscribing to a feed.
• Added a few weblogs to the Sites drawer.
• Performance enhancement: if you have multiple feeds with the same icon URL, the icon is read once, instead of once for each feed.
• Increased the connection timeout so reading news should work better on slow or unreliable connections.
• Exported subscriptions OPML file now contains the URL of the home page of each subscription. The key is htmlUrl (same as what Radio UserLand for instance generates.)
• Fixed a bug with importing subscriptions OPML files: ampersands encoded as entities weren't getting decoded. Now they are.

1.0b5: 30 July 2002

• Aggregate view—the new headlines view—now updates itself without needing to click on another subscription and click back.
• Prefs window now works like Mail.app prefs—multiple panels with icons at the top for switching between them.
• You can now set your proxy server prefs. (Note: use behind a proxy server definitely needs more testing.)
• + key goes to next unread headline. - key goes to previous unread headline. Tab key switches focus between Subscriptions and Headlines lists.
• Fixed several crashing bugs.
• Lots more sites in the sites drawer. There will be few, if any, additional sites added to the sites drawer before 1.0 ships.

1.0b4: 26 July 2002

• New aggregate feed shows latest items from all subscriptions. Turn it on via the Preferences panel.
• Dock menu shows up to 25 unread items.
• History remembers read items for three weeks instead of one week—so items don’t suddenly get marked as unread too soon.
• Added more sites to the sites drawer.
• Fixed a crashing bug to do with redrawing the subscriptions pane.
• Bugs with HTML entities not getting decoded properly in the headlines and HTML panes have been fixed.
• The Help menu has a new command for going to the mailing list at Yahoo Groups.
• Made the RSS parser more forgiving—some feeds that couldn’t be read before now can be read.
• Default color prefs are now colorful rather than plain black text.

1.0b3: 22 July 2002

• Automatic refresh feature: on the Preferences panel, choose how often news should refresh.
• Minor performance enhancement: RSS items are normalized when the RSS text is parsed, rather than on demand later on.
• Fixed some memory leaks.
• Help menu now has commands for viewing the current bugs list and reporting a bug.
• Better handle feeds (like dangerousmeta) with super-long titles but no descriptions. Ellipsize the title at 7 words and make the description the original title.
• Unsubscribing bug fix: if you unsubscribe from the current selection, the headlines pane is now updated.

1.0b2: 18 July 2002

• Some crashing bugs were fixed.
• Performance enhancements, especially when one has many subscriptions.
• One can now import AmphetaDesk OPML subscriptions files.
• Added more sites to the sites drawer.

1.0b1: 12 July 2002.

• First public beta