NetNewsWire 2.0b45 Change Notes
28 April 2005
This page lists changes to NetNewsWire since 2.0b41.
(You can download the current beta from the NetNewsWire beta page.)
Note
We’re in the final stages of finishing NetNewsWire 2.0—all the features of 2.0 are in place. The point of this release is to fix a bunch of bugs.
Backups
You should make backups of your NetNewsWire data. (Even once 2.0 has shipped, making backups is a good idea. It’s always a good idea—for other data too, not just for NetNewsWire.)
The two things to back up are your preferences and data folder:
- Preferences:
~/Library/Preferences/com.ranchero.NetNewsWire.plist - Data folder:
~/Library/Application Support/NetNewsWire/
Changes since 2.0b41
RSS parser
Scoble linkblog fix
The RSS parser wouldn’t handle Scoble’s linkblog feed <http://scobleizer.com/linkblog/feed/> because of some unexpected markup (Specifically, a <body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> in the middle of a <content:encoded> element.) Now it works.
RSS and dates with two digits
Fixed a bug handling dates where the year is just two digits (as in 05 instead of 2005). Example feed: http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/technology/rss.xml
This change won’t take affect for already-parsed items: it works for new items. (This fix will keep the BBC feeds out of the Dinosaurs window, once they’ve updated.)
Feed processing
If a feed updates and it used to have news items but now it has none, the previous news items are retained. (Err on the side of keeping data, in other words.)
Bloglines and authentication
When refreshing a Bloglines subscription and NetNewsWire needs your username and password, it asks for it and specifies that it’s for Bloglines rather than for that particular feed.
Fixed a bug where authenticating one Bloglines feed didn’t authenticate all of them. (Which it should do, since it’s just one username/password pair for all of them.)
Podcasts and enclosures
Atom enclosures supported
Atom enclosures (as specified in the 0.8 draft) are now supported. (I think this part of the spec is unlikely to change at this point.) (I don’t have any example feeds to point you to.)
Enclosures/podcasts and errors
Fixed a bug where sometimes a failed download would still be recorded as a completed download.
Subscriptions outline
Subs gear menu
When nothing is selected in the subscriptions list, the gear menu now has items for creating new tags and new Bloglines subscriptions.
Left arrow
Restored the behavior where the left arrow key takes you from subscriptions outline to the description view.
If a subscription that is not a group is selected, cmd-leftArrow now does a collapse-to-parent.
Subscriptions outline refresh contextual menu command
The refresh contextual menu command for the subscriptions outline was not respecting the per-feed/per-group settings for don’t-refresh and skip-during-manual-refresh. Fixed.
Feed autodiscovery
Fixed a bug that prevented feed auto-discovery from working when you dragged a URL into the subscriptions list.
Browser
Gear menu
Fixed a bug where the gear menu would give cmd-option-b as a shortcut for the open-all-tabs-in-default-browser command when the current tab is empty. (This keystroke is just for opening the current tab in the default browser, not for opening all tabs.)
Option-click download to disk
Option-click downloads the target of a link to disk (in description pane and in web pages). (This is the same behavior as Safari.)
Feed button
Replaced the feed button with one that is reminiscent of Apple’s RSS button. It says +FEED instead of RSS. (Since it might be an Atom feed, for instance. The + is there because you’re subscribing to a feed rather than just viewing the feed version of a page.)
(The feed button is the button that appears in the bottom-right corner of the main window when viewing a web page that links to a feed in its <head> section.)
Styles
Included updated Curlypaws style. Added NSTiger by Nicholas Shanks.
Refreshing
Fixed a bug where feeds might get refreshed every four hours even when the global setting is for more than four hours.
Fixed a bug where the Info window reports that the global setting is for four hours even when it’s longer.
Dock menu and icon
Dock menu and dock badge unread count fix
If you mark headlines as read for a feed inside a group via the Dock menu, the Dock icon badge wasn’t getting updated properly. Fixed.
Dock icon crash
Possibly fixed a rare but weird crashing bug that could happen when drawing the dock icon unread count.
Post to weblog command
If a news item is selected and text is selected in the description pane, that text is used when you click the post-to-weblog toolbar item or choose Post to Weblog from the News menu. (It already worked this way for external pages and when using the contextual menu command in the description pane—this change makes it consistent.)
Info window
Multiple subscriptions
If multiple subscriptions are selected, then the Info windows says that multiple subscriptions are selected. This way you’re not fooled into thinking that you’re editing settings for multiple subscriptions.
Crash fix
Fixed a crashing bug that could happen when the Info window tries to update on other than the main thread.
Syncing
Refresh-at-startup
Fixed a bug where refresh-at-startup would be delayed for a while after syncing at startup. Now it happens right after syncing.
Syncing at shutdown
If you’re logging out or shutting down the machine, and you have NetNewsWire set to sync at shutdown—it asks you whether you want to sync or not. If you do, then it cancels logout. (It has to, because it has to keep running in order to sync.) This prompt at logout/shutdown happens no matter what your preferences are for having NetNewsWire prompt you about syncing, since logout/shutdown is a special case.
The cancel button now says Cancel and Quit or Cancel and Logout depending on what’s going on, so it’s more clear what will happen.
‘Feed’ URLs
Feed URLs confirmation dialog
When NetNewsWire is sent a ‘feed’ URL, it presents a confirmation dialog before subscribing. (This prevents sites from finding tricky ways to subscribe you to a feed you didn’t ask to subscribe to.)
Open URL Apple event handler
This handler gets ‘open location’ AppleScript commands. It’s also used to handle the ‘feed’ protocol. If the URL starts with ‘http’ then NetNewsWire will open it according to your prefs (in NetNewsWire or in external browser).
Sites Drawer
More new feeds—now over 2190 feeds you can subscribe to with a single click.
Misc.
About window
Fixed a typo. (Accidentally nuked the ‘t Loftesness’ in ‘Scott Loftesness.’ Sorry about that!)
Headlines table and ™
The ™ entity is now displayed in the headlines table as a ™ character.
Combined View and relative URLs
Fixed a bug introduced in a recent beta where clicking on relative URLs in the Combined View wouldn’t open the page (instead you’d get a weird netnewswire-smashview URL).
Help book
Updated some of the screen shots that were out-of-date.
Added a note about the feed button to the browsing page.
Terminology
Cleaned up a couple places where Collapse Read Headlines needed to be Collapse Read Items.
AppleScript export subscriptions command
If you specify a folder, it will create a file named Subscriptions.opml in that folder.
Automator Support
This is buried here and not elaborated on because Tiger hasn’t been released and we’re under nda.
Tiger compatibility
Worked around a bug in Tiger that would result in messages in the Console like the following:
2005-04-27 16:12:03.846 NetNewsWire[1473] Inconsistent set of values to create NSBitmapImageRep
Apr 27 16:12:03 RSBook15 /Applications/NetNewsWire.app/Contents/MacOS/NetNewsWire: CGImageSourceCreateWithData data parameter is nil
