A few weeks ago I announced the availability of the release candidate for the Jubilee release of RSS Bandit. We got a lot of good feedback from our users on that release and have fixed a ton of bugs based on that feedback. With the addressing of these bugs we believe the product is now stable enough for a final release. Thus we have refreshed the release candidate installer and made it available at http://downloads.sourceforge.net/rssbandit/RssBandit.1.5.0.9.Jubilee.RC2.zip. Our plan is to watch for feedback on this release candidate and if there are no major issues left, then we will release a final version with a version number of v1.5.0.10 on March 3rd, 2007.

Below is an exhaustive list of the bugs that have been fixed in the past three weeks. Since there are quite a number of them, I've highlighted the fixed issues that were particularly annoying to users based on the amount of feedback we got on them.

Change Log for RSS Bandit 1.5.0.9 (Jubilee Release Candidate 2)

  • Fixed: RSS 0.91 DTDs now fetched from local machine instead of http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-0.91.dtd to cope with announcement made by Netscape that the file will stop being available on July 1, 2007.
  • Fixed: Custom actions in installer prevent installation on Windows Vista.
  • Fixed: security exception on opening Options dialog if UAC is activated or a user does not have admin privilegs
  • Fixed: Scrolling through newspaper can mark items unread if they were marked as read outside the newspaper view(bug 1641219)
  • Fixed: Selecting multiple items then right-clicking on them, deselects them (bug 1642463)
  • Fixed: Size limit on podcast folder wasn't being honored (bug 1642923)
  • Fixed: The search index somehow becomes corrupted then every couple of minutes a dialog box would pop up with the error message "Unexpected Exception on SaveApplicationState() ---> System.IO.FileNotFoundException"
  • Fixed: Marking an item as read in a search folder doesn't mark it as read in the main feed.
  • Fixed: Some feeds refuse to display with the following error message - "Error retrieving feed ... from cache: Item has already been added".
  • Fixed: Save Search button was not working in the search panel
  • Fixed (completed): Back button chevron should be removed when web browsing
  • Fixed: Feed Subscriptions Panel width was not remembered on restart (bug 1647343)
  • Feature: search folders now have a context menu entry to toggle display of full item texts (somewhat slower than show summaries)
  • Feature: the font style and color used for watched news items are now configurable via Options|Fonts dialog
  • Feature: the font style and color used for unread counters in the subscription tree is now configurable via the configuration file options (sample enables rendering similar to outlook express)
  • Feature: Open browser tabs are remembered on restart
  • Fixed: Newly launched browser tabs grab the focus instead of opening in the background (multiple related bugs reported at sourceforge)
  • Fixed: Url combobox not always in sync. with the current displayed tab
  • Partially fixed: Back button chevron should be removed when web browsing (bug 1638805)
  • Fixed: Feed with initial focus is always refreshed on startup (bug 1634694)
  • Fixed: Sometimes the toolbars replaced by giant red 'X' while browsing the Web from within the application.
  • Fixed: Option "Initiate download feeds at startup" was not being honored
  • Fixed: Restore from system tray doesn't always re-display window (bug 1641837)
  • Fixed: Upgrade IE 6 to 7: cannot use ALT-Tab to switch tabs anymore (bug 1602232)
  • Fixed: mouse wheel support for treeview re-activated (wheel-scroll while not focused)
  • Fixed: The "On initial subscription: Only download X items" setting was not obeyed.
  • Feature: Can now drag multiple urls separated by newlines to the treeview for "batch" subscribe

 

Sunday, February 18, 2007 12:55:45 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Thanks for fixing the BITS bug. I'll be sure to download the RC and try to ferret out more bugs. :)
Zian
Sunday, February 18, 2007 4:21:03 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I still can't install this on my installation of Vista Ultimate.

I ran the MSI with verbose logging enabled and have stuck it up on my blog, here:

http://blogs.lefebvre.us/kenneth/content/RssBanditSetup.txt

Hopefully, you'll see something simple that can be done to fix this. Let me know if you need any additional information.

Ken
Sunday, February 18, 2007 4:26:31 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Here's an interesting twist... I just re-ran the installation, but this time I said to install it for Everyone, instead of Just Me. It finished successfully!

I usually prefer to install stuff to just my own profile, but it is a single user notebook so it probably isn't really that big of a deal. :)
Sunday, February 18, 2007 10:34:56 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Thanks, great new features!

I can't find the following feature (I'm using the German version 1.5.0.9):
>Feature: the font style and color used
>for unread counters in the subscription
>tree is now configurable via the configuration
>file options (sample enables rendering similar
>to outlook express)
Sunday, February 18, 2007 2:50:04 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Ringelnatz: you can find the sample here: http://www.rssbandit.org/ow.asp?YetImplementedFeatures#h3
Monday, February 19, 2007 5:28:55 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Installed fine for me on Vista Enterprise. I was the guy with the DEP error. I installed it 'foreveryone'. Thanks Dare.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007 6:43:05 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Awesome! That red X toolbar thing was driving me nuts.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007 5:16:23 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
RSS Bandit will not start on vista after crash - where do I go to post or get help? Is there a forum I am missing somewhere??
Matt Faulkner
Friday, February 23, 2007 3:48:57 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Matt,
The forum is at http://www.rssbandit.org/forum/
Saturday, February 24, 2007 5:33:52 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I installed RC2 over the stable version of Bandit, and had the problem that when I clicked on the title of an open item, I would get the webpage both in my default browser and in the bottom-right pane of Bandit (the option was set (and I checked that after the install) to just open it in the browser). I then uninstalled Bandit and deleted the settings from 2 directories in the "Document and Settings/MyName" directory and then installed Bandit again. This time I'm getting the following problem: When I click on a title in the item pane and the browser is not already open, I get an alert box that says (title): "RSS Bandit" and body: "There was a problem starting your configured default web browser: The system cannot find the file specified. Should we open the Url "blablabla" on a new Tab? - Yes/No", even though the browser opens normally as expected. So the only annoyance is the appearance of this alert box. If I click "Yes" a tab inside Bandit opens. If I click No nothing happens (although the browser has opened). This alert box doesn't appear when my browser (firefox) is already open. I run Windows 2000 and didn't have a problem with the stable version of Bandit.
Unknown x
Wednesday, February 28, 2007 7:06:40 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
It's me again... Apparently RSS Bandit "fixed itself" somehow after a few days and now I'm not getting the alert box anymore :-)
Unknown x
Thursday, March 1, 2007 6:59:49 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
As a simple matter of usability, I think the Flag Item... Follow Up, Forward, or Review could be significantly improved by making the Flagged Items folder (and subfolders) bold with the count of flagged items, even if the particular feed items are marked read. I use this feature often when I come across items that need more time to read and research than I currently have available and it's a bit too easy to forget to follow up later because there's no reminder mechanism.

I like the new tree control for the most part, but I find it requires way too much whitespace on the right side. It would be nice if I could make the tree just wide enough to see the full text of the longest feed title, but I have to make it about 30% wider than the longest title to make the horizontal scroll bar disappear.
Lothan
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