Fixed a memory leak affecting some users, particularly new users.

Fixed a bug downloading new enclosures.

Made loading clippings at startup ever-so-slightly (probably imperceptibly) faster.

Thrill-seekers bookmarklet support

For thrill-seekers — not a full UI treatment.

Bookmarklets are files that end with .js. They live in the same place AppleScript scripts live — choose Open Scripts Folder from the scripts menu to open the folder.

To run a bookmarklet, just choose it from the scripts menu.

If a bookmarklet doesn’t work — please let me know what happened. The source of the bookmarklet would be useful too, of course.

Downloading feeds at startup

Fixed a bug where all feeds were being downloaded at startup. It now downloads only feeds with changes. (When using NewsGator syncing.) Way more efficient.

More efficient read state syncing

Now using a new read-state-syncing method (UpdatePostMetadatav3!!!1!) which should be more efficient. Less traffic over the web and less work for both NetNewsWire and the server. (NewsGator syncing.)

Updated error page

Brian Warren updated the browser error page — it’s more liquid and handles long URLs.

(NGES stands for NewsGator Enterprise Server. The below NGES fixes affect only people who sync with NGES — they don’t affect people syncing with NewsGator Online.)

NGES: no shutdown read-status sync

The shutdown read-status sync never worked — it just hung — when using NGES. The hang appears to be unfixable, so I’ve just had it stop trying to do the shutdown read-status sync (when using NGES).

NGES: Feedback/forums/etc. links removed if NGES

If you’re syncing with an NGES server, then feedback and forums links are removed.

NGES: check if sync server changed

If the sync server changed, then delete all sync data and prompt to do an initial sync. (Yes, this is the same as a previous change, only it’s MUCH BETTER NOW.)

NGES: synthesize URLs

The URLs for downloading feeds are synthesized based on the URL given in the config file. (This works around the issue where the server thinks it’s at an in-house URL but you’re using a public URL to get to it.)

Is now FREEWARE.

Bug fixes.

Release notes available here

• Combined View
  • You can now set the title font via Preferences > Appearance > Combined View titles.
  • You can turn on and off the one-line summaries for collapsed items: see View > Layout > Show Summaries for Collapsed Items.
  • There is now more contrast between the selected item and other items. Only the selected item has a rounded-rect outline. The look is cleaner. More white background, less lines and gray areas.
• Leopard crash fix
  • Fixed a crash that could happen when looking for a crash log. (Oh the irony.)
  • The crash could happen when there was no crash log. So the bug was sort of self-repairing — once it crashed, then there was a crash log, so on next launch it worked fine.
• Sites Drawer
  • Simplified look by removing default feed icons. The only icons now are for feeds with favicons. (And folders.)
  • Folder icons in the Sites Drawer are now Leopard-ish on Leopard.
  • The Open in Browser and Subscribe buttons work again.
• App icon
  • It now includes 256 and 512 representations, since Leopard can use big damn icons.
• New styles
  • Default (3.1) is a revision of the default style. nnw and nnw - gray both use a big grayscale version of the NetNewsWire icon. FactoryLegible, by Chris Messina, has the very cool feature that it resizes graphics to fit (when needed) if you have JavaScript for news items enabled.
• First run
  • Fixed a bug where you might get two question windows on first run — sync-invitation and default-aggregator. Now you just get one (sync-invitation).
• Web-page preferences
  • If you use a custom style sheet for web pages, the preferences window now displays the name of that style sheet. (I myself use one, which just says “a {text-decoration:none}”.)
• Enclosures
  • Fixed a bug downloading enclosures in this feed http://public-xml.feedroom.com/public_rss/nytd_podcast_rss.xml?channel_id=a70bf18ea508268510db33cb15a2b03750645b3d.
• Post-to-weblog and renamed apps
  • Fixed a bug where post-to-weblog wouldn’t work if you renamed your weblog editor so that the name no longer matched the actual executable name. For instance, if you renamed “MarsEdit” on disk to “MarsEdit 2.0,” post-to-weblog would fail, but now it works.
• Headlines table drawing
  • Fixed a drawing bug where the wrong background color could appear, in special circumstances, between the rows of the headlines table.
• Filtering descriptions
  • Descriptions now have any HTML tags <link> and <meta> filtered out. The main purpose is to deal with feeds that stupidly include a <link> to a stylesheet, which usually works terribly in newsreaders.
  • This is not hardcore filtering — it’s pretty easy to circumvent. But it gets most cases, which is fine. (Any more hardcore filtering isn’t worth doing.)

Combined View: Design

The new design is meant to be easy-to-read and easy-to-skim.

When using arrow key, space bar, or go to next unread, the Combined View keeps the selected item at the top of the view. This way you just look at the same place (the top of the view) for the title. (It can’t do this with the last few items on a page, of course, depending on the size of the items.)

Combined View: Grouping

Items are grouped by source, date, etc. — it depends on your sort column.

The look of the groupings is designed to be unlike the look of the titles, so that’s it’s easy for the eye to pick out one or the other.

(The groupings also give your eyes hand-holds as they climb down the page.)

Combined View: Pagination

In order to perform well, it now displays items in pages, with 20 items per page.

There’s a page control at the bottom right of the window, and there are commands and keystrokes for navigating pages. Things like Go To Next Unread, the space bar, and arrow keys act as you expect them to — pages are navigated-to as needed. You can still go through the news with just the space bar.

Commands like Mark All as Read apply to the items on the page. They don’t apply to the entire feed (unless everything appears on the current page). (Note: you can still mark all read in a feed via the contextual menus in the subscriptions list.)

You can set the number of items per page in the preferences window (General pane). The more items per page, the slower it loads.

Combined View: One-line summaries

When an item is collapsed, the first line of the description (or summary, if in the feed) appears below the title. This gives you way more context than titles alone, and makes collapsing items actually somewhat useful.

Combined View: Footer

In addition to the page control and acting as a progress indicator…

The footer at the bottom contains the name of the item selected in the subscriptions list. It includes the unread count of the selected subscription (if > 0).

Combined View: Progress Indicators

Each title background works as a Safari-like progress indicator for the web view below it. You don’t always see it, but you can see it with items that have (for instance) a big graphic. (If you need an example, try Savage Chickens http://www.savagechickens.com/blog/atom.xml).

The control at the bottom of the Combined View is a Safari-like progress indicator for the entire view.

Combined View: Tons o’ bug fixes

Bug fixes are too numerous to mention — I didn’t even keep track. (The images-cut-off-at-the-bottom bug appears to be gone, for example.)

Combined View: Menu commands

Commands for previous and next page appear in the Go menu.

Mark All as Read and Go To Next Page appears in the News menu.

(These commands have keyboard shortcuts, of course.)

Startup performance

For folks with lots of unread items, startup performance should get better over time. This is due to a small change in how news items are stored on disk. It won’t improve performance the first time you launch NetNewsWire, but on subsequent launches it should get better and better.

Leopard: Dock badge

Now using standard dock badge — like Apple’s apps — for the unread count in the dock. This means you can’t change the size or colors on Leopard.

Apple has provided an API for doing a standard dock badge. Before Leopard, this didn’t exist — but, now that it does, I prefer going with the standard.

Also, the code I’d been using on 10.1 through 10.4 crashes on 10.5. (I don’t know why.) It would have to be rewritten to some unknown degree to work on 10.5.

Leopard: Subscriptions List

On Leopard, uses standard blue (active) and gray (inactive) colors.

On Leopard, uses Leopard folder icon.

Cmd-rightArrow now works to expand a folder on Leopard.

Leopard: Crash logs

Crash logs are now sent to me on Leopard too. (On Leopard, crash reports are apparently stored one per file. Sounds like a good idea.)

Syncing and errors

Stopped reporting location-exists errors in the Errors window — since they’re not really errors and are, in fact, expected.

Scroll to top on changing feeds

Fixed a long-time bug where the scroll bar in the traditional/widescreen views wouldn’t go back to the top when you changed the selected feed.

Changed Sparkle update URLs

Changed the Sparkle update URLs, since a bunch of people had gotten on the private track but didn’t want to be.

Send to Twitterrific 3.x

Fixed a bug where the Send to Twitterrific command didn’t appear with Twitterrific 3.x and greater.

Contextual menu bug fix

Fixed a bug where using the contextual menu command in the subscriptions list to refresh a folder that contains only sub-folders wouldn’t work.

Menus

The keyboard shortcut for Send to Twitterrific is now ctrl-T. (The old version, ctrl-1, conflicted with Spaces.)

Previous Page and Next Page now have cmd-9 and cmd-0 shortcuts. (These were alternate shortcuts for the tabs, but I had to steal them. You can still use plain old 9 and 0 for the tabs.)

Add to Clippings now uses cmd-option-S instead of cmd-shift-G — because cmd-shift-G is the standard for Find Previous. Find Previous now uses cmd-shift-G. (Does it seem like I’m running out of keyboard shortcuts? It’s because it’s true.)

RSS parser

The links in http://news.sbs.com.au/syndicate/feeds/worldnews.xml weren’t being parsed correctly, now they are.

Sort news items by title skips re:

When sorting news items by title, any re: at the beginning of a title is ignored. (This keeps forum posts on the same subject together, and it makes grouping by title on the Combined View more useful.)

1. New! Synchronized reading with browser, mobile, and other NewsGator RSS products
2. New! Many performance improvements – saving to disk, subscription list changes, and more
3. New! Sort subscriptions by attention – NetNewsWire can tell which feeds are more important to you
4. New! Emailing, printing, and posting options