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CITA RSS Aggregator version 2.1

Version 2.1 provides the following improvements over version 2.0:

• We have added support for the Atom feed standard. Atom serves the same function as RSS (click here for more information about Atom and RSS) but in a slightly different way. Atom support means that you can monitor feeds that are published solely using the Atom standard (such as Google's Gmail feed). The Universal Subscription Mechanism (USM) provided by the Aggregator now also fully supports Atom feeds.
• We previously implemented a blanket minimum refresh interval of one hour to ensure the Aggregator does not overload feed servers. That is good RSS etiquette. However, some feed providers are clearly designed for much shorter refresh intervals. We have therefore added a new feature that allows us to introduce lower refresh limits for individual feeds. The Aggregator is updated via the CITA RSS feed. To start with, we have reduced the refresh limit for Gmail to five minutes. Let us know if you think we should reduce the limit on other feeds.
• We've introduced a new 'Disable normal alerts' check box in the alert settings screen. Use this option to suppress normal alerts; you will then see only newsflashes, download (podcast) alerts and weather alerts. You can see that other news items are available through the RSS icon in the system tray.
• Download (podcast) alerts now show the file name in the alert. This might help you decide whether you want to download the file, or not.
• We've made the end of a news summary clearer by adding a black border at the bottom edge of the feed page.
• If the Aggregator detects you have no internet connection then it will resort to displaying the normal feed summary if you click 'show' on an alert describing a single item (instead of going direct to the feed page). You'll find this useful if you update your feeds on a laptop for review later while you are travelling.
• The Aggregator now supports the 'comment' tag in RSS 2.0 feeds.
• When creating web links, the Aggregator correctly handles page titles containing '\' and ':' characters.
• The Aggregator no longer crashes if it:
  • encounters non-numeric data in what should be numeric fields in the Weather Channel feed;
  • sees an incorrectly qualified 'about' attribute in an RSS 1.0 feed; or
  • is passed an invalid 'Last-Modified' header to a feed file.

Click here to find out what changed between versions 1.9 and 2.0.

If you are unsure which version of the Aggregator you are using: click the Aggregator icon in your system tray to open the main window, and click 'Help', 'About RSS Aggregator'. You will see a window that shows you the Aggregator version number.

If you'd like to learn more about RSS, or if you would like to use RSS in your business, get in touch. We'd be pleased to hear from you.

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