Version 2.5 of the CITA RSS Aggregator
As usual, 'our' best ideas have come from feedback. Many thanks to everyone who made suggestions for improvement.
Version 2.5 provides the following improvements over version 2.4:
- Windows Vista and, if you use 'limited' user access, Windows XP bar you from making changes to files in the 'Program Files' directories - which is where we used to store your settings file. The Aggregator automatically copies your settings file to one of the 'Application Data' directories created by Microsoft for this kind of data. This means:
- You should not see warnings or failures as a result of using limited user access
- If different people use a single PC they will automatically get their own settings and preserve their individual feed status.
- If you use multiple PCs in the same network and the network supports 'roaming profiles' then you will take your settings and feed status with you from PC to PC.
- If you back up your settings file, you need to back it up from it's new location (either: C:\Documents and Settings\your user id\Application Data\CITA\RSSA or C:\Documents and Settings\your user id\Local Settings\Application Data\CITA\RSSA. Note that these folders are 'hidden' by default. To see them, run Windows Explorer and click 'Tools', 'Folder options...', 'View', select 'Show hidden files and folders' and press 'OK'.
- If you encounter a problem, we will log the problem to a file in your 'My documents' folder rather than the 'Program files' folder.
- You can now look for, and remove, adverts that start with given text and continue to the end of the item. Previously "<>" at the end of a match string was ignored.
- We have made several improvements to the way we handle enclosures and downloaded files:
- You can now elect not to receive download alerts from a channel. Useful if you never download the channel's enclosures.
- You now get more flexibility when deciding which downloads to show on the downloads summary screen. Also, the Aggregator 'remembers' your settings so they remain the same each time you show the summary until you decide to change them.
- If you right click a downloaded enclosure in a tree view, you now see an option to drop that enclosure. This offers to delete the associated download file (if it exists) and removes the enclosure from the tree view by marking it as ignored. If you drop an item by mistake you can reinstate it by showing ignored items ('View' and 'Show ignored items' on the main screen) or through the downloads summary.
- You can now use any of the options to move a downloaded file, to rename the file as well as - or instead of - moving it to a different folder.
- The Aggregator now remembers where you moved a downloaded file to, so the file continues to appear as 'available' and you can move it again if you want to.
- There is an emerging trend to use an enclosure size of -1 to indicate the size of the enclosure is unknown. This caused problems in the Aggregator when deciding whether to download an enclosure automatically, or not. The Aggregator now converts any enclosure size less than zero to zero.
- The downloads summary is automatically redisplayed if you move a downloaded file.
- We have made several improvements to the way tooltips are shown if you hover your mouse over a feed icon:
- & characters now appear correctly
- You are less likely to see escape sequences in the tooltip; for example, • appears as a bullet point
- We limit the size of the tooltip to five lines of description text; longer descriptions end with "..."
- We convert some HTML tags into spaces or punctuation to make the tooltip more readable.
- Pressing your 'Delete' key when an item is selected in a tree view or the downloads summary screen 'ignores' an item or drops a download.
- We now show the standard RSS feed icon at the top left of the orange flash that tells you there is an RSS feed on the page you are viewing in the Aggregator.
- We previously had difficulty decoding web pages if the server didn't tell us how long the page was. In 2.5 we correct this problem so that if, for example, you read a feed containing Hungarian characters we will decode it correctly whether or not the server tells us the page size.
- If you used time settings to establish certain characters as time separators, the Aggregator would crash. This problem is corrected in version 2.5.
- We have increased the Aggregator's resilience to problems when detrying to detect if it is already running.
- Between version 2.4 and 2.5 of the Aggregator we made an interim release of the RSS Subcription utility to provide better integration with FireFox 2. This version is included automatically when you update to version 2.5 of the Aggregator.
Click here to find out what changed between versions 2.3 and 2.4.
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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