We are almost feature complete for the next release of RSS Bandit and it is about time we started getting some feedback from our users. You can obtain the installer from RssBandit.1.5.0.1.Jubilee.Beta.zip RssBandit.1.5.0.2.Jubilee.Beta.zip. The major new features and bug fixes are listed below. There will be a comprehensive list of bug fixes and new features in the announcement for the final release.

UPDATE: There was an issue when upgrading from v1.3.0.42 to the Jubilee beta which is now fixed.

New Features New Features in Progress
  • Podcast inbox - This will be the similar to the podcast inbox of applications such as Doppler Radio or Juice Receiver which will allow users to keep track of pending and downloaded podcasts.
  • Revamping the search feature - We're moving the implementation of feed search to Lucene.Net from our custom feed search implementation which should make it faster and provide richer search options
Major Bug Fixes
  • Feed items appear in wrong feed folders - we now apply a set of heuristics to prevent this problem from surfacing ever again. I'm pretty sure this problem is due to bugs in HTTP Pipelining. However it is unclear whether the bugs are in the .NET Frameworks HTTP library, proxy servers that RSS Bandit is passing through or the Web servers that the application is fetching feeds from.
  • Relative Links in Atom 1.0 feeds appear incorrectly - now that this is fixed the links Tim Bray and Sam Ruby's feeds now work correctly
  • Atom feeds from the Blogger beta site show no posts when viewed in RSS Bandit - this was just a dumb bug on my part.
  • Sites with malformed cookies cause feeds not to be fetched - Specifically, fetching cookies from sites such as Windows Live Spaces results in the "An error has occurred when parsing Cookie header". Now we just ignore the error and soldier on.
  • RSS Bandit needs administrator privileges on first run - the fix for this was so esoteric it boggles my mind. 
  • RSS Bandit stops downloading feeds after a while - This was actually two bugs. The first was that the application stopped automatically downloading feeds if any of them timed out while being fetched. The other was that feeds with whitespace in the URLs were not being updated.
Major Bug Fixes in Progress
 

Categories: RSS Bandit
Tracked by:
http://www.vasanth.in/2006/11/27/NewVersionsOfDesktopFeedReaders.aspx [Pingback]
http://haacked.com/archive/2006/11/28/RSS_Bandit_Comment_Watcher.aspx [Pingback]
http://dotnet.org.za/armand/archive/2006/11/29/RSSBanditJubileeBeta.aspx [Pingback]
http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=4475747b-f5cb-46fe-b0ac-f9... [Pingback]
http://jawf5j3.net/local_news/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://silauma.info/ohio/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://weujmru.net/housing/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://vy3i7wz.net/leather/index.html [Pingback]
http://yftbsy1.net/ebay/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://weujmru.net/estate/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://ukpuuq8.net/musicians/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://tb9wlm3.net/12/index.html [Pingback]
http://mc4bmvg.net/05/index.html [Pingback]
http://kiva.startlogic.com/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://harlleyd.extra.hu [Pingback]
http://gator393.hostgator.com/~rocata/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://hrtfjhk.net/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://ks2vlvw.net/13/index.html [Pingback]
http://bombaylogger.web.aplus.net/02/index.html [Pingback]
http://node22.myserverhosts.com/~boosters/cingular/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://host239.hostmonster.com/~blogford/sitemap3.html [Pingback]
http://gator413.hostgator.com/~digital/dental/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://gator413.hostgator.com/~digital/wedding/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://lgicsge.net/investment/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://fwve5e4.net/imdb/sitemap1.php [Pingback]
http://gh9kwkn.net/livejournal/sitemap1.php [Pingback]
http://blogfordummies.org/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://zvbvids.net/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://qw6yfnf.net/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://d579737.u108.floridaserver.com/sitemap1.html [Pingback]
http://d579737.u108.floridaserver.com/sitemap2.html [Pingback]
http://gator442.hostgator.com/~hockteam/chat/sitemap1.html [Pingback]

Saturday, 25 November 2006 20:20:57 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Dare,
I have been using Omea Reader as awell as RSS Bandit and they too traced the mixing of feeds to the HTTP Pipelining. Unless you both coded the same, I would think that it would point to the framework.
Leigh Smith
Saturday, 25 November 2006 22:14:53 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Hi Dare,

I know this is beta, but RSS Bandit greets me with a TypeLoadException on my machine. Unfortunately no logs are written and debugging fails so I can't give you more information right now.

Ideas, suggestions?

Thanks,

Alex
Saturday, 25 November 2006 23:18:54 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Alexander,
Did you upgrade from a previous version of RSS Bandit or is this a new install? If it is an upgrade, what version where you using before and what OS + version of the .NET Framework do you have installed?
Sunday, 26 November 2006 00:13:33 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Installs run, but crashes (hangs) on "Import feeds" under Vista RTM with like 8 hidden WinForms windows appearing the taskbar.
Scott Hanselman
Sunday, 26 November 2006 02:13:37 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Scott,
As I mentioned in my post, the fix for the issues with Vista is still in progress.
Sunday, 26 November 2006 08:11:30 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Hi Dare,

I've just installed without problems, but the favicons do not appear. I also tried subscribing to some new feeds (just in case the favicon is acquired only during subscription) with no success.

TIA,
stefano
Stefano Scheda
Sunday, 26 November 2006 16:24:37 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Stefano,
Favicons are disabled by default. If you go to the Options dialog and click the Display tab, you'll see the checkbox to enable favicons.

I wasn't sure if this feature should be enabled by default so I took the conservative route. What do you think? Should favicons be enabled by default?
Sunday, 26 November 2006 17:03:42 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
FavIcons are okay. But Dare, you could replace the smiley with the new Bandid Smiley. ;-) PS: Many thanks for Jubilee!
Sunday, 26 November 2006 20:55:13 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I also got a crash when starting, a screenshot is here: http://img.waffleimages.com/01c4f663b4b8f6b1275eabd8fec3debb90da095c/rss%20bandit%20crash.jpg

I upgraded from the previous "official" release (1.3.0.42). As for the version of the .NET framework, according the Add/Remove programs (let me know if there's a better way to tell), I have installed versions 1.0.3705, 1.1, 1.1 Hotfix, and 2.0.

Any suggestions as to what I should try?
David Kozinn
Sunday, 26 November 2006 21:02:20 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Well, good news, I guess: I uninstalled both the beta and "production" versions and re-installed the Beta version. It seems to be working OK now.
David Kozinn
Sunday, 26 November 2006 23:41:56 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
A very interesting site, I think. The Idea of Technometry was new for me but worth to be read and thought abot it (although I'm not a native english-speaker and have some difficulties whith this language)
Monday, 27 November 2006 01:39:12 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I got the same exception error message others reported. I removed RSS Bandit, and reinstalled, but as Everyone, instead of Just Me, and it went away. Not sure if it was because I changed this, or if it was the uninstall that did it.

I was using the same version reported in a few posts ago by someone else.
jason_bentz@hotmail.com (Jason)
Monday, 27 November 2006 18:58:37 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I've tracked down the issue that causes the exception error mesage when upgrading from v1.3.0.42, the version of the Jubilee installer with the fix is http://rssbandit.sourceforge.net/builds/RssBandit.1.5.0.2.Jubilee.Beta.zip
Wednesday, 29 November 2006 06:56:51 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Hi Dare.

I cannot install this version on my Vista RTM machine anyway,it always rollbacks at end of installing without any message, why don't you provide a zip one so we can extract it directly?
Wednesday, 29 November 2006 08:33:00 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Upgrade worked great for me (XP). Excellent stuff!
Wednesday, 29 November 2006 12:27:17 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Looks good -- though a minor nitpick -- the fonts in the leftbar are a bit too large
Wednesday, 29 November 2006 13:51:00 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
This version installed with no problems at all. The newsgroup access is probably 10x faster now. I don't know what you did, but it's great! The only thing that bothers me is that with the last version, I could select the highest node on the tree and press '*' to have all the node expand. In the latest version, I have to manually expand all the nodes, which is at least 10 more clicks. Not a big deal, but I wish there was an option to automatically expand all nodes on start up.

Great job!
Derek
Wednesday, 29 November 2006 14:22:40 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I left my machine running overnight and when I came in the morning I had several errors on my screen that said that an error had occurred and was logged to an error.log file. The reason given was: Specified cast is not valid. @:RSSBandit".

I have the error file, can someone (Dare?) tell me where to send it?

Incidentally, it looks like it kept running anyway. This is with version 1.5.0.1. (I will likely install the latest version this morning.)
David Kozinn
Wednesday, 29 November 2006 17:43:01 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Well, I upgraded and have not had the good experience that other have. I run RSSBandit off my flash drive so I can run it home and work or anywhere without needing Newsgator or anything else. Well, first I was getting errors about the cache moving to another drive (it was trying to put it in my profile directory... I finally found in the CVS changelog the line to add to app.config to fix that)

Then I noticed it was not only running very slow, but it was slowing down the whole PC. I noticed it was the enclosure download going nuts, pulling down entire archives of old podcasts if they're stillin the feed, even though I only show the last month and all but the last day or so of those are marked read. So I turned off the options to download automatically but that had no effect. So I tried restarting RSSBandit, well, it still downloads and it will minimize correctly (if I do Minimize All or use process explorer), but that's it, beyond that the UI is completely frozen and won't even draw the screen except for the 2 empty white boxes (feed list and display pane) until I kill it with process explorer. The weird thing is that it's CPU usage never goes above 5%, and is usually below 1% during this, yet the virtual size is just over 500MB, about the same as VS2005 with no solution loaded.

Oh well, I'll wait until I get home tonight to do anything, but I'll probably try downgrading to the last release version later and watch the changelog before trying future betas.
Wednesday, 29 November 2006 19:17:42 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
John Meyer,
I've opened two bugs on SourceForge to address the podcast downloading behavior that you have complained about. Can you open a bug at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id=96589&atid=615248 and upload your error.log file from C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\RssBandit so we can determine what the error was with the change to the cache location?
Thursday, 30 November 2006 08:09:29 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Derek: you can now use the "+" and "-" keys on the number pad to open/close all nodes in the tree. Further: the last treenode's open/close state is saved between Bandit restarts.
Thursday, 30 November 2006 13:31:15 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Torsten: I just noticed that it's saving the last tree state - thanks! It's the little things in the end that make a product so much better.
Derek
Thursday, 30 November 2006 14:34:33 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Dare,

I'd like to upload my error log but it's empty. The error with the cahce location, which I fixed by specifying it's location in app.config,AppSettings was that it would continue to use the old cache because the new cache was on a different drive so it couldn't convert it. I'll see if I can login to the site later and put some more info in the bug reports.

Also, I tried it at home last night and after taking about 10 mintues to startup, it worked fine... until my flash drive (1GB, about 350MB free) filled up from BIT???.tmp files (??? are numbered sequentially in hex) and most of them are 0 bytes... when I tried it in work this morning these files kept coming at about 6 to 8 per minute (VS is compiling in the background, so it might be faster than this otherwise... but so far it's been doing this for about 45 minutes and I still can't use the UI, although 2 podcasts downloaded--about 250MB between the 2 files)
Thursday, 30 November 2006 16:49:28 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Any chance we could get flash impletmentation so that youtube/revver/etc videos show up? I haven't been able to get this to work.
robert bosworth
Thursday, 30 November 2006 18:11:54 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
John Meyer,
The problem is that you are likely subscribed to a feed with large video enclosures and we are trying to download every enclosure since you specified that the application should automatically download enclosures. I'll be making a bunch of changes to prevent this from happening in the next beta.

robert bosworth,
This is supposed to work if you go to Tools->Options->Web Browser tab and enable ActiveX controls. However it seems we have a bug which we will address for the next beta.

Thursday, 30 November 2006 18:36:34 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Thanks for the consideration -- I have activex enabled and it is still not working. Another question -- one that is a stretch but a feature that i'd LOVE to see is the ability to control the default browser? I'm sure I'm not the only one that would prefer that the wrapper could handle firefox. Possible?
robert
Friday, 01 December 2006 13:38:35 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Hi!

My experience has been that it is very slow and drives the system at 100%. It has overwritten the preferences that were set up before. Almost all feeds fail. Upgrade from 1.3.0.42. Ended up uninstalling everything and installing the beta again. No better luck. This is XP SP2 with .Net framework 2.0.

Have gone back to the previous version until the next Beta.

RSSBandit is the best! Can't wait until the new version is working a little better for me!

Thanks! Dave Venus
Dave Venus
Friday, 01 December 2006 15:05:55 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Dave,
Performance issues to that extent are unexpected on Windows XP. Can you look for the C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Application Data\RssBandit\error.log file and send it to the RSS Bandit contact email address or file a bug in SourceForge with the file attached?
Wednesday, 06 December 2006 14:18:41 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I'm running into an issue with the beta where a feed will stop downloading (It's happened twice so far). If I change the url for the feed, refresh, then change it back, the feed starts working.
Other than that, beta looks good!

Chris
Chris Berg
Wednesday, 06 December 2006 15:08:35 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
A minor nuisance:<br/>
The Feed Subscriptions window insist on being centralized, thus making it often necessary to drag the horizontal scroll bar if one wants to reach the +/- signs (to expand or collapse groups).<br/>
Could the horizontal position of the tree be made to stay fixed (relative to the left border of the window)?
pastraga@yahoo.com (Paulo Braga)
Tuesday, 19 December 2006 18:49:13 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
"Feed items appear in wrong feed folders" was one thing that irritated me most before. Now I just got that problem again. So the bug fix didn't solve it fully.
Saturday, 23 December 2006 14:41:20 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
installed on two boxes running Windows XP SP2. on the first one, everything seems working fine, on the other one it drives the system to 100% (svchost process). dont't remender if I used same mode ("all user" or "only me") for both install.
to be continued...
Jean Marc
Friday, 05 January 2007 18:30:50 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
With the previous release version (1.3.0.42), I have been using AdsBlocker plugin and I loved it. But it doesn't work with (1.5.0.2). When I try to install it via Tools-Addins menu, I don't get any error messages but it doesn't install (does not show up in the list of addins). I have version 1. Is there an upgrade for it that will work with Jubilee or is it a problem in Jubilee? I hope you guys fix this soon cause I really love using it.

On another note, I second Paulo Braga's suggestion that the subscription window should not auto center. It is annoying.

Thanks for a great (and free) product.
Adam
Comments are closed.