NewsGator 0.7

This is a huge milestone for NewsGator…it is getting fairly close to feature-complete for v1.

Here’s a rundown of what’s changed:

  • Posts without titles will now show an excerpt from the post instead of a blank title.
  • There is now a busy notification icon in the task bar when NewsGator is retrieving news.
  • New status dialog, which shows which feeds NewsGator has retrieved, which feeds had errors, and which ones are in process. Status dialog can be displayed from the NewsGator menu, or from the busy notification icon (double click or use context menu).
  • Retrieve news process can now be cancelled from the status dialog.
  • You can now select a folder name for each feed independently.
  • Added capability to import from OCS files, which allows importing NewzCrawler subscriptions.
  • Added capability to export a OPML subscription file.
  • New columns have been added in Outlook for feed name and publish date.  You can access them by looking at the list of user-defined fields in a folder containing news items.
  • Fixed problem that could occur when a feed was missing a title.
  • Cache directory has been moved to the intended location.
  • Fixed a problem when you added a feed while a news retrieval was in progress, and the new feed would disappear from the list.
  • Changed NewsGator menu shortcut so as not to conflict with “New” button on default toolbar.

Some of the new features, used together, enable some pretty cool things. Here’s an example of a single-folder view of news, but still separated by feed (click for larger version):

Version 0.7 is available for download here. Note that you must un-install previous versions before installing 0.7. You will not lose your subscriptions by doing this.

Also, I have gotten a LOT of questions about the future of NewsGator. Here’s the official word. NewsGator will become a commercial product as of version 1.0. Pricing has not yet been determined, and will be announced just prior to launch. Current builds will expire on Feb 28, 2003, and users will need to upgrade to a current version at that time.

As always, comments, suggestions, and bug reports are welcome!

7 Comments

7 thoughts on “NewsGator 0.7”

  3. Greg Reinacker

    Thanks Paul…I’m aware of a couple of things that probably don’t work on Outlook 11 in v0.7 (the NewsGatorView probably doesn’t get created, the text of the messages might not look correct, and online/offline won’t work) – these are corrected in v0.8. If you don’t mind, can you send me a note with details of the behavior you’re seeing? Thanks!

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  6. Joe Friend

    Greg,
    I’ve been playing with NewsGator since the earliest version and just got the time to leave a note. Great work. I’ve been thinking about the need for an Outlook based aggregator since most of my looseknit network of coworkers use Outlook and I figured it was the only way to get them reading newsfeeds.

    I did have a weird problem when I upgraded to the latest, it kept rescanning a bringing in the same items. Also, it had problems with some feeds and hung up on them. Once I deleted them all was well.

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