NewsGator v0.6

NewsGator 0.6 is now available. This fixes a few problems:

  • Fixed problem where if default mail format in Outlook 2002 was set to plain text, then bodies of posts would not be correctly displayed.
  • Fixed problem where if user chose to hide the NewsGator toolbar, it would incorrectly show up again the next time Outlook was started.
  • Corrected problem where Outlook 2000 would not shut down completely after NewsGator had retrieved posts.
  • Removed “Test Post” menu item, except when running in debug mode (registry switch).

Also, thanks to Bryce, there is now a XSL transform available to transform OCS files from NewzCrawler into OPML files that NewsGator can import.  I put the XSL file, along with a tool to run it against your OCS file, on the download site.

Keep the comments and suggestions coming!

20 thoughts on “NewsGator v0.6

  1. Daniel Nolan

    When a blog doesnt provide a title for an article the view in outlook looks a little iffy and its difficult to tell which articles are new. Perhaps add a “No Topic” title to the article, or maybe the date of when it was posted. All i have to go on at the moment is wether the date recieved field (on the far right of my window) is bold or not.

    Reply
  2. Greg Reinacker

    Dan, I totally agree on this one! This will be changed in the next version. I think what we’re going to do is have an excerpt from the article as the subject line, if the subject is blank.

    Reply
  3. Steve Makofsky

    Man, this thing ROCKS! :)

    Q: Is there a way to have the columns persistant? For example, I dont want to have the “From” column shown, but, whenever a new feed is added, NewsGator always puts it back in.

    Reply
  4. Greg Reinacker

    Thanks Steve, glad you like it. :-) On the view column thing, I’m guessing you upgraded from 0.4 or 0.5. Assuming you’re on Outlook 2002, do the following:

    1. Go to the View menu / Current View / Define Views
    2. Delete the “NewsGatorView” view
    3. Change your base news folder to a new folder.
    4. Restart Outlook

    When Outlook starts back up, it should correctly create the “NewsGatorView” view, and any new folders that NewsGator creates should correctly have the view applied. You can delete your old news folder after this.

    This is a hassle to go through, but it only happens to those who have used 0.4 or 0.5 before.

    Reply
  5. Greg Reinacker

    On the other questions, there will be a optional status icon in the task bar in the next version that will tell you when it’s downloading news.

    And the subscription file is stored by default at \Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\RAI\NewsGator.

    Reply
  6. Sean

    Greg,

    Nice job! One oddity I came across though is that there seems to be double posts. I installed NewsGator and it went it got the posts for your site. I imported my OPML and had it grab news again. Now in the folder for your blog, I have 2 copies of all the posts. The only other thing I noticed was the speed. It seems to take quite awhile to grab all the news feeds.

    Keep up the good work. 8)

    Reply
  7. Greg Reinacker

    Hi guys, glad you like it! Sam, I’m putting some thoughts together as I type this. Sean, on the double post thing, do you have the “Retrieve only unread items” option selected? If so, there are some particular (although very rare) cases when double posts can show up, which should be fixed in the next version. If the problem persists, let me know.

    On the speed thing, it retrieves one feed at a time right now. I’m considering whether to allow an option to use more resources, but retrieve feeds more quickly. Any comments?

    Reply
  8. Ziv Caspi

    Re. one feed at a time: If you’re using the Aggie sources, Joe has written a poor man’s downloader in Aggie (meant as a stopgap measure until .NET thread pool works right with web requests). You could build something on top of that — for people with slow connections (like me), this proved very useful.

    Reply
  9. Greg Reinacker

    Thanks for the pointer, Ziv, I’ll take a look. Rich, we currently do not plan to release the source for NewsGator. Future plans for NewsGator should be announced on this site within a week or so…stay tuned.

    Reply

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