FeedGhost News

Introducing EasyAs123Web.com

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:32:30 +0100

You may have noticed that things have been pretty quiet on the FeedGhost front recently, and this is because we've been working on a second project, EasyAs123Web.com.

The aim of this website is to allow non-technical people to create a complete online presence without needing to involve comparatively expensive web designers. For around $100-$200 per year (price to be decided), we will provide hosting, domain name purchase, webmail, plus an easy website builder and editor based on templates.

As the name suggests, we really want this to be a three step process, without any barriers to experimentation. To that end, users will be able to create and edit a website without providing any up-front information or payment - no username, no email address, and certainly no credit card number.

Step One: Themes

The user chooses a theme from the gallery. The theme provides the overall look of the website.

Step Two: Domain Names & Email

Next, the user chooses a domain name (or links the site to a previously purchased domain name). As well as a domain name, the user may choose up to five email addresses that sit within the domain name.

Step Three: Ready to Go

Before we drop the user into the full-blown site editor, we present a quick page of help. Of course, we expect most users won't read it, so the editor is hopefully sufficiently intuitive.

Site Editing

Once the initial theme and domain have been chosen, the website is displayed in "edit mode": a toolbar provides access to purchasing the site, deleting and starting again, and toggling in and out of edit mode.

Those blue squares you can see are buttons to edit, insert, or delete items. Clicking on one brings up the appropriate dialog:

As well as editing and inserting blocks of text, users can also insert images, maps, and contact forms. For example, when a user creates a website, it comes with a pre-built "location" page with a map embedded. All the user needs to do is edit the address and the map will be updated.

On the technical side, we have the ability to merge images into the theme, server side, so for example if I edit the header of the example website and drop in an image I had lying around...

(It's hard to see from the screenshot, but my image has been resized, reshaped, and now has rounded edges).

Get Involved

We're hoping to release a beta of EasyAs123Web.com by the end of July, and when we do, we hope you'll give it a whirl and let us know what you think. If you'd like to get involved further, there's a couple of options:

Web Designers: We need professionally-designed themes for this project, and lots of them. If you supply a template to us, we'll pay you an amount per user who pays for a site using your template.
Affiliates: In a similar manner, we need people to help spread the word. We will be setting up an affiliates scheme where we provide you with a coupon code that offers users a percentage off when they pay, and earns you a percentage too.

If you're interested, please contact us.

Important Bug Fix Release Available

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:17:27 +0000

We've released a new bug-fix version of FeedGhost. You should be notified automatically of the update next time you launch FeedGhost.

Issues fixed:

Changed tree sorting so that folders are grouped together.
Updated add-on for compatibility with Firefox 3.
Fixed HTTP 404 errors being reported incorrectly in update system.
Fixed locator not always running on start-up.
Fixed tab selection order when closing tabs.
Fixed display issues on 64-bit machines.
Fixed slow-downs when many tabs are open.
Fixed default buttons on edit subscription dialog.
Fixed issues with redirected authenticated feeds.
Fixed occasional crash in browser tab.
Fixed incorrect registration and deregistration of IE and Firefox hooks.

New Version Available

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:14:02 +0000

Based on customer feedback, we've decided to simplify the various versions of FeedGhost. The number one comment we've been receiving recently is that FeedGhost isn't free, or doesn't allow enough subscriptions in the "lite" version. We've therefore decided to eliminate both the "lite" moniker, and also the restriction to the number of subscriptions allowed in the free version.

As well as this change, we've also fixed plenty of bugs:

Fixed occasional crash on shutdown.
Improved list responsiveness.
Fixed crashes when attempting certain operations in "Add Subscription" tab.
Fixed occasional crash in toolbar rendering.
Huge crash reports truncated to save user bandwidth.
Better information in new article alerts in system tray.
Fixed "Sharing" button and dialog.
Fixed refresh key action in problem subscriptions tab.
Fixed occasional hang when requesting user information.
Fixed flickering when deleting multiple articles.

Important Bug Fix Release Available

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 13:12:38 +0100

We've released an important new bug-fix release of FeedGhost. This version has been marked as a release, so you should be notified of it automatically. As you'll see from the list below, we've fixed a number of intermittent crashes and hangs in the application, so we recommend that everyone updates to this latest version.

Issues fixed:

Many improvements and fixes in the list view.
Protect against cross-thread operations on internal data trees.
Removed article actions from "Add Subscription" tab.
Fixed cross-thread calls in synchronization system.
Fixed river view from getting out of sync when sorting.
Fixed deadlocks in event queuing system.
Fixed "not responding" problems during synchronization.
Automated reports of failed XHTML conversions.
Stopped FeedGhost fighting for control when full-screen applications are launched.
Fixed version checking when running behind certain proxies.
Changed browser tab modification key to "Alt", plus fixes.
Speed-ups when refreshing feeds.

On a more up-beat note, we're making progress on the flow-layout display, web API, and feed downloader system for the online version of FeedGhost.

Bug Fix Release Available

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:53:19 +0100

Based on user feedback and crash reports, we've released a new hotfix. If you've been experiencing any problems, please download this latest version. (Use the "Check for Updates" button on the toolbar).

Main issues fixed:

Fixed odd display of code blocks in article viewer.
Fixed display of "magnifier" icon on collapsed folders in the tree.
Fixed handle leaks in river view.
Fixed odd list behavior under rare conditions.
Changed web requests to be synchronous to work around framework bugs.
Fixed crash when checking for updates if no browser is available.
Fixed occasional crash while synchronizing.
Per-subscription list customizations now include "Preview Style" and "Show Read Articles" settings.
Added better error reporting in "Add Subscription" tab.
Fixed crash when changing list settings with "Add Subscription" tab open.
Fixed conversion of certain badly-formed HTML.

We've also added two tiny features that users have requested:

Added support for authenticated feeds to "Add Subscription" tab and "Edit Subscription" dialog.
Added option to filter subscriptions tree by unread.

Bug Fix Release Available

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:00:32 +0100

We've released a new version of FeedGhost today to fix a few significant bugs that crept in during the last release cycle:

Fixed articles not appearing after zoom change in river-view mode.
Fixed article heights occasionally not being calculated correctly.
Fixed conversion of feed titles containing HTML.
Fixed incorrect parsing of article publication dates.
Fixed occasional crashes in river-view.
Fixed crash when hiding read articles in the list.
Double-click now works when choosing a folder when subscribing.
Unregistered users can choose to send an email address with their crash reports.

Apologies to any of our users who have experienced crashes in the past couple of weeks. We do look at every crash report that is sent to us, and we aim to reply to any contact message on the next working day, so if you experience problems, please do let us know.

On a lighter note, we now have plenty of special offers available. If you're not sure about paying $20 for FeedGhost, take a look, and you may be able to get FeedGhost cheaper, or even for free!

New FeedGhost Release Available

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:15:46 +0100

We've just released a new version of FeedGhost to general release; FeedGhost should detect the new version automatically, or alternatively you can download it from the website.

This release can be summarized as follows:

It helps make better use of your time when reading blogs;
It allows people who don't read many blogs to use a cut-down "lite" version for free.

Read on for an overview of the new features...

Prioritization

Often in a set of subscriptions there will be some subscriptions and articles that are of particular interest to you, and some subscriptions and articles that are of less importance. FeedGhost's prioritization feature allows you to read articles in the order that they matter most to you. Sort your river-view or articles list by priority, and you'll be shown the articles that matter to you, first.

In the absence of any other priority settings, FeedGhost will try to guess which subscriptions are your most and least favorite. Subscriptions accumulate "points" which are used to automatically rank them. If you want to take more control over prioritization, you can override FeedGhost's guesses with manual settings.

Another way to tell FeedGhost which articles you're interested in is to use the search boost feature. Using search boost, FeedGhost will scan articles for particular keywords and either raise or lower the priority of that article. Priority boost terms that are found in articles are highlighted; bold and green for increased priority, dark red for lowered. Boosted articles will also be marked in the tree, list, and river-view article headers.

Feed Filtering

Sometimes certain subscriptions will contain a mixture of articles, some that you're interested in, and some that aren't of any interest. FeedGhost allows you to 'filter' subscriptions so that only those articles of interest appear. Articles that don't match the filter are completely discarded, so you won't waste any time reading them. Feed filtering is available by editing a subscription in the tree, and choosing the third tab.

Feed Location and Browsing

We've changed the feed locator system from a modal wizard to a non-modal tab. You can now locate several feeds at once, and keep using FeedGhost while it searches for feeds. We've also integrated browsing and subscribing more tightly, so that clicking an orange RSS icon in a browser will change the browser to a locator. This change also allows you to preview a feed before subscribing.

"Lite" Version

For those users who would like to make use of FeedGhost's powerful features, but can't justify a paid-for subscription, we now offer a free "lite" version of FeedGhost.

The "lite" version is restricted to twenty subscriptions (not counting subscriptions that are hosted on feedghost.com), but is otherwise fully-featured.

Other Improvements

We've taken the opportunity to improve the core reading panes of FeedGhost. The river-view now has header and grouping items, giving summary information as well as the ability to skip or mark-as-read entire blocks of articles. We've given the visuals a slight facelift too with subtle striped, graded colors.

Following requests from users, the articles list can now be customized on a per-feed basis. If a particular feed benefits from showing (or hiding) particular columns, this can now be achieved by overriding your global choices.

If you use the browser tab regularly, we've added a "homepage" setting. Open a new browser tab and your homepage will load ready for use.

As an alternative to dragging, subscriptions and folders can now be moved using the "Move to folder" command (Ctrl+Shift+V).

Bug Fixes

As always, we've been fixing bugs that have been reported to us, either sent to us by users, or automatically by our crash reporting system. The following are the most important fixes:

Fixed framework browser control launching Internet Explorer windows when scrolling quickly.
Fixed import from Google Reader's OPML format.
Better sign-in system sends unwanted subscriptions to the recycler instead of deleting them.
Fixed conversion of illegal characters in feeds.
Fixed syncing issues when sorting or re-ordering the tree.
Fixed thread issues in update manager.
Fixed scrolling in list when sorting.
Fixed date parsing across timezones.
Speed-ups in river-view when viewing tens of thousands of articles.
Fixed data loss when marking subscriptions as not synchronized.
Better memory footprint including more aggressive auto-archiving.
Fixed scrolling anomalies in river-view.

FeedGhost Beta Available

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:29:33 +0100

We're nearing completion of what is probably the most exciting release of FeedGhost yet, so we thought we'd make a general beta available to all our users in order to get some feedback, before we release the full version in a couple of weeks.

Important Information

The FeedGhost Beta will safely upgrade your existing installation; there is no need to uninstall first.
The FeedGhost Beta will upgrade correctly when we release the full version; there will be no need to uninstall the beta.
The FeedGhost Beta, and the following full version, will be backwards-compatible with older versions of FeedGhost; running the latest version on one machine and an older version on another is a supported configuration.
We strongly suggest you keep a backup copy of your data directory, in case you need to switch back to the older release version. The local data format is not backwards-compatible.
Please let us know about any crashes, problems, or comments you may have by contacting us.

New Features

Prioritization

Prioritization allows you to read articles in the order that they matter to you. Priorities can either be assigned automatically be FeedGhost, based on your reading habits, or can be overridden manually.

A new ‘Priority’ column has been added so you can group and sort by the news item's priority. If you're upgrading an existing installation it won’t be visible by default; you'll need to select it from the 'Columns' button on the news list header.

Read the help here.

Feed Locator Tab

Adding subscriptions or locating subscriptions from websites has been significantly improved. Instead of a modal dialog, locating feeds is now handled in a tab. Feeds can be previewed before subscribing, and location is integrated into the browsing experience.

Read the help here.

Feed Filtering

To complement prioritization, feed filtering allows articles to be completely filtered out. Regex expressions can be applied to particular feeds to include matching articles only.

[Help not yet written].

Other Improvements

If you use the river view to read articles, there's now a header and grouping items. Groups of articles can be marked as read en masse, or skipped entirely. We've also updated the visual appearance.

Alternatively, if you use the articles list, columns can now be customized on a per-feed basis. This option can be found in the "Display" drop-down menu.

Free/Lite Version

Although this won't necessarily be of interested to existing users, FeedGhost will now support a free "Lite" version. This version will be limited to twenty subscriptions (excluding FeedGhost subscriptions).

Read the help here.

Download

You can download the installer for the FeedGhost Beta from:

http://www.feedghost.com/Support/FeedGhost-Beta-Setup.exe

What's Next for FeedGhost?

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:37:52 +0100

We have three main features we're aiming to include in the next version:

Prioritized Grouping of Articles

I find I have quite a few subscriptions, some of which I tend to skim-read (like Digg for example), others I like to spend more time on and don’t want their associated articles obscured by other less important posts. With this feature you’ll be able to set a subscription’s priority, and then configure either the river view or the news list to group the posted articles by their associated subscription’s priority. We will allow both manual setting of the priority as well as an automatic way that will monitor your reading habits and assign priorities accordingly.

Improved ‘Add Subscription’ Interface

Currently when locating a feed for a web-page a modal dialog pops up with the list of feeds that you can select; this is less than ideal especially when FeedGhost is marked as the default RSS reader in Firefox, since there’s currently no way to look at the contents of a feed without subscribing to it first. In the next release a new tab will be created that will show all the available feeds from the specified page plus a preview of its articles.

Free/Lite Version

A fully functioning free version of FeedGhost is going to be made available, with the restriction that the user will only be allowed 20 feeds. (The paid-for version will continue to support unlimited feeds). For the initial 30 days after registering, FeedGhost will run in unrestricted mode, thereafter it will revert to free mode.

Hotfix Available

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:13:35 +0100

We've just released a hotfix build of FeedGhost. Unlike most hotfixes, this one does actually contain a couple of small features, but since the last release was only a week ago we wanted to give the option of waiting for the next full release. Click the "Check for Updates" button on the toolbar to download this hotfix.

Easier Link Blogs

FeedGhost already has support for hosting and publishing as many link-blogs as you like, but since that functionality was only available from the website, it wasn't immediately apparent. We've now made link-blog-creation a first-class citizen within the FeedGhost application. Click the "Sharing" button on the toolbar and explore, or have a read through the help pages for more information.

Toolbar Changes

Based on user requests, we've made a couple of changes to the toolbar.

The "Tag" button on the toolbar now supports a drop-down menu for easy tagging. Click the larger left-hand part of the button for the usual functionality, or click the smaller right-hand part for a quick drop-down list.

We've also added a "Browse" button to open a new web-browser tab - previously this was only available through the shortcut key Ctrl+T. (Incidentally, did you know that Ctrl+Enter fills in the "www." and ".com" parts of a web address automatically?)

Bug Fixes

As always, we've fixed a number of bugs that have cropped up:

100% CPU being used in some situations.
Various synchronization issues.
Update password functionality missing from client application.
Application unresponsive when deleting tens of thousands of items from the list.
PageUp doesn't always work correctly in river view.

Don't Pay For FeedGhost, Win It!

Thu, 03 May 2007 12:23:07 +0100

Brian at CSharpZealot has announced the two lucky winners for April who have won a year's free subscription to FeedGhost. If you'd like to be in the running for the May competition then get over there and get posting.

Help the community and win free goodies - that can't be bad.

(On a personal note I'm going to start sharing my "Orcas" issues there in the hope that Microsoft might take more notice of a larger community site compared to a single user).

New Release and Future Directions

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:33:00 +0100

We've released a new version of FeedGhost, so you should see an update reminder in the top-right of your toolbar. This release is a bug-fix roll-up; we've fixed a number of annoying problems in the past few weeks, but there are no major changes to this version.

Having stabilized FeedGhost, we now have some new features in the works. Of course these ideas are subject to change, but in the rough order of when they're likely to appear...

Easier Link Blogs

At the moment, to create a link blog you have to visit our website. We appreciate this isn't ideal, so we're working to make this an integral system within the application itself.

Free Version

FeedGhost will remain a paid subscription service, but we'd like to make it available to "light" blog users. We're planning a free version with a limit on the number of subscriptions allowed. Link blogs produced using the free version may also be ad-supported.

Extensions

We've been working on an extension system to FeedGhost, allowing you to choose extra features to add, and even write your own. If you're interested in either writing an extension, or have a suggestion for one you'd like to see, please contact us.

The Future

Longer term, we're looking into technologies for a web-based reader, and we'd like to improve our internal download system to improve offline reading.

Hotfix Available

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:24:22 +0100

After taking a few days off over Easter, we've been working hell-for-leather catching up with any issues and emails that have accumulated. We've just published a new hotfix version of FeedGhost, so if you've experienced any of the issues below, click the "Check for Updates" button on the toolbar.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an occasional crash when sending to tray.
Fixed slow restore from tray.
Fixed bad rendering of notification icon on toolbar in small-button mode.
Fixed occasional crashes in notification "locus" effect.
Fixed notification tooltips sometimes not responding to clicks.
Fixed tooltip in system tray not updating.
Fixed lost scroll position when restoring from minimized.
Fixed subscriptions tree redraw issues.
Much better conversion of <pre>, <p>, and <blockquote> tags in article descriptions.
Fixed some keys not working in subscriptions tree filter.
Fixed tree selection changing when expanding/collapsing splitter.
Drop-down "Display" menu now opens on the same monitor as the button.
Fixed articles list scroll issues.

Improvements

Added F5 (refresh subscription) and Ctrl+F5 (refresh all subscriptions) keys.
Added Ctrl+Shift+Tab key to cycle focus between subscriptions tree, articles list, and articles browser.
List-mode now doesn't auto-mark-as-read when scrolling.
Left arrow-key now works on all subscriptions tree nodes.
Window position memory now keyed to screen size, including toolbar button size.

Affiliates, part 1

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 13:49:15 +0100

We've been meaning to set up a proper affiliates scheme for FeedGhost for some while, but we've been concentrating on the FeedGhost client user experience and the website, so we're a little delayed. In the meantime, until Affiliates part 2 arrives, if you'd like to help promote FeedGhost, we have some images in various sizes available:

http://www.feedghost.com/UserArea/Affiliates.aspx

So why would you want to promote FeedGhost? What's in it for you? Brian from CSharpZealot shows an example.

New Version of FeedGhost Available

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:07:56 +0100

There’s a new version of FeedGhost available with some great new features available.

River View

The most obvious change to FeedGhost is a true “river-of-news” view, to replace the old (and slightly confusing) “Read More” function. FeedGhost now has two basic modes of operation, depending on whether you have the articles list expanded or collapsed.

River View mode: articles list collapsed

If you have the articles list collapsed, FeedGhost will be working in "river-of-news" mode. All unread articles in the selected feed or folder are displayed at once. Press J to move to the next article, and K to move backwards. As you scroll past articles, they are marked as read. The current article is displayed with a bold border; toolbar commands such as tag (keypress T or S) act on that article.

List mode: articles list expanded

If however you have the articles list expanded, you are in "list" mode. The articles viewer shows those articles that are selected in the list. Toolbar commands operate on the list selection instead. When a feed is selected, the first item in the list is selected.

So which mode should you use? I'd suggest that you try both: if you've been using the list, try collapsing it and using J and K. If you've been an F8 "Read More" user, why not try both the new river style, and the powerful list, and see which suits you better?

Setup Wizard

For new users, we now ask three questions the first time FeedGhost is launched to help configure some common options. The first is whether to use "river-of-news" or the list; the second is whether to add the example subscriptions or import OPML; and the third is to choose the color scheme.

If you're an existing user and you're setting up FeedGhost on a second machine, just cancel the wizard and sign in as usual.

Help

Where the "About" button on the toolbar used to be, we now have a "Help" button with a suspiciously similar icon. Click this to open a tab containing online help for the major FeedGhost features. If you want to see the about box, click the link at the bottom of the help page.

Author Column

To help with feeds that have content contributed by more than one author, you can now choose to display, sort, and group by author in the articles list. The article viewer will also display the author, if set.

Better Multiple-Display Configuration Support

FeedGhost has always remembered your dialog positions, selections, column widths, etc. We've extended this memory to differentiate between different display configurations. For example, I have a dual-monitor setup on my development machine, but when I remote-desktop in from my laptop, I only have one smaller display. FeedGhost now remembers your positions on a per-configuration setting, so you can customize FeedGhost to large and small displays independantly. One small caveat is that your settings from the last version will be lost.

Website

The only change to the website that might affect existing users is the addition of a CAPTCHA system for commenting on our blogs. We'd prefer not to annoy people with these but we're getting around 20-30 spam comments per day now so it's become a necessity. To make things a little easier, if you're a registered user and you're signed in on the website, the CAPTCHA won't appear.

We've done a ton of other work to the website; a vastly improved front page; customer reviews; better screenshots; bulk buy discounts; plus of course the online help.

Addendum

Apologies for anyone having troubles connecting to the website on the 27th - we've switched to a new system for downloads and we had a little teething trouble getting it working on the production server.

The good news is that the new system makes a personalized download available - if you want to install FeedGhost on a subsequent machine, use that download and you will be signed in automatically and your feeds will synchronize automatically.

FeedGhost Firefox Add-On

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 14:34:18 +0000

If, like me, you use Firefox as their primary browser, you might be interested in our new add-on. It provides:

a direct link to FeedGhost for RSS feeds (via the usual Firefox orange RSS button);
a "Tag" button on the statusbar for keeping or publishing web-pages via FeedGhost;
a "Tag" menu item in the right-click and "Tools" menus.

We've been approved by an editor at Mozilla.org, so it's hosted on their site. You can grab it from:

http://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/4469/

Application Auto-Update

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:39:34 +0000

Now that FeedGhost is out of beta and starting to accumulate users, we think it's time to settle down to a more leisurely rate of program updates, instead of one every week or so. We appreciate that users want to actually use FeedGhost, and that every update, while it may bring new features and fixes, is a potential annoyance.

On the other hand of course, if a user has a problem that can be fixed quickly, without compromising the stability of the application, we'd like to be able to respond as quickly as possible.

We've therefore decided to move to a two-tier auto-update system. FeedGhost automatically checks for updated versions on startup; in the new system it will ignore 'hotfix' updates, and only tell you when a major update is available. If you want to check for hotfixes as well, you'll have to manually choose to do so by clicking the "Check for Updates" button on the toolbar.

NB: Since we didn't consider this to be a major change (i.e., it is itself a 'hotfix'), you may find that your version of FeedGhost doesn't have this separate functionality yet. If you do need to check for hotfixes, simply download the latest version of FeedGhost from the website.

New FeedGhost Update

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:29:57 +0000

We released a new version of FeedGhost last Friday that has some nice features that we would like to share with you.

Improved Tagging

We've improved the tagging support allowing you to also add comments and change the titles of tagged items.

Comments are then shown in the tagged article when viewed.

Link Blogs

You can now create your own link blogs that is hosted by us. These are blogs that are made up from articles or web-pages you want to share with people. Like a traditional blog you get an RSS link as well as a HTML page where your shared items are published; additionally you can embed gadgets into your site's web-page (if you have one) showing your top five link blog posts, all of which are customizable. Link blogs are created by publishing tag categories to share. By default no link blogs are enabled so you need to go to the admin page in your user area where you can create one or more link blogs. When you're creating a link blog you specify the name, description and the tag the link blog will be associated with as shown below:

(The "Publish on community blog" option will be explained in the next section).

After you've saved the new weblog you will be sent back to the admin page shown below:

You can see in the above snippet the Link Blog Admin page has RSS, Web page and Gadget links for each link blog I've setup. So for example here's a my link blog web page for music and movies. The gadget page (shown below) is great if you want to inject one of our gadgets into your web page, if you have one. They have various off-the-shelf themes that you can pick to suit your site's look; or if you're happy writing CSS you can match the gadget to your own site.

Note that any items you un-tag get immediately removed (after syncing) from its respective link blog.

Community Blogs

When you create a link blog you have the option to publish the tagged items to one of our new community blogs. We currently have nine different categories that you can publish to. So how does it work? Firstly you need to create a link blog selecting the community blog you want to publish to. Then when you tag an article or web page with a tag that's been associated with a the link blog our server checks if the tagged item is to be published to one of our community blogs, which in this case it does. Before posting, the server checks to see if the item already exists on our blogs; if it doesn't find one it will post to the community blog you specified earlier. If the tagged item has a comment but no description (as in website tagged items), then the comment will used as the description; otherwise a comment will be added as the first comment to the new post instead. If there was an article already posted and you have a comment then the comment will be added to the original post's comment list. Once published, the icon in the list changes to show that there is a corresponding blog link.

If you don't have the state column in your news list header you can add it by clicking on the columns button and dragging it onto the list header. On the context menu you can see the "Visit Community" menu item; it's enabled because the selected item has been posted onto one of our community blogs, and clicking on it would take me to the corresponding blog entry.

Authentication Support

Now FeedGhost will use your default authentication credentials so if for example you're running within an intranet and have feeds needing authentication then this feature should help. We don't currently support specifying different credentials than your defaults.

We hope you enjoy the new goodies this release brings and as always, if you have any problems or suggestions please let us know.

The FeedGhost Team

New Feature: Tagging

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 15:20:30 +0000

Based on the feedback we’ve received from the first release of FeedGhost, we’ve uploaded an interim build containing some of the tagging features that users have been requesting. You can now categorize articles or web pages for later reading. Later in January we’ll be completing the tagging feature with the ability to automatically create ‘link blogs’ from categories you mark as publishable, letting people subscribe to a list of articles you find interesting.

One major omission from the tagging system is keyboard shortcuts. We can’t decide how best to implement this:

1. Should we allocate a block of keys (for example, Ctrl+1 … Ctrl+9), and allow you to choose a hotkey for certain categories? This is the easiest for us to implement.

2. Should we switch to a two-key system, allocating a single initial key-press to tag articles, and an arbitrary send key to choose the category? For example, we could allocate (say) Ctrl+Q as the tag key, and then you could choose any key as the second category key, so you might have Ctrl+Q, Ctrl+P as publish. This is moderate coding complexity.

3. Should we implement a complete key-binding feature in FeedGhost, allowing you to re-allocate any of the command keys? This would be the most expensive in coding time.

I’ve included coding costs in these choices since clearly an extra time we spend on this feature, is less time we can spend on other features. Do let us know what you think regarding keyboard shortcuts, and also what features you’d like us to consider next. You can either post on the forums or contact us directly via email.

As another little usability experiment, I’ve altered the behaviour of the “Read More” command (F8 or Ctrl+U). This will now page-down through the article browser if possible, before marking as read and moving to the next block of unread articles. The idea is that you can now read all your blog articles with a single key-press. As always, feel free to let us know if you either love or hate this feature.

We’d like to thank all of our users and everyone who has contributed suggestions, bug reports or other feedback, wishing you a very merry Christmas!.

Regards,

The FeedGhost Team

What are we doing now?

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 10:59:09 +0000

Feedback from users has shown us that we need a tagging feature that will allow them to mark posts and or web pages with customizable tags. For me I would probably have "Read Later" and "Keep" tags. By default FG will be setup with some default tag names as yet to be decided.

The tagged items will be synchronized between installations and also be made available on the website via the user area. Optionally you will also be able to publish some or all of the tagged items via an RSS feed. I will post another article on this blog when we’re closer to releasing it.

Regards

Lee