February 21, 2004
@ 01:23 PM

Torsten and I have fixed about a dozen bugs since the v1.2.0.90 release and implemented one or two minor features. There are two major issues we'd like to tackle in the next few weeks then ship a minor release then work on the next major version of RSS Bandit. The issues are both performance related

  1. High Memory Consumption: We don't consume as much memory as the other free .NET Framework based aggregator, SharpReader, which I've seen consume over 100MB of memory but we do stay in the 30MB to 60MB range which is excessive. I'm pretty sure I have a good idea what the prime culprits are for the memory issues but currently can't think of a good way to reduce the memory consumption without removing or degrading some features. However our perf goals are to reduce those numbers by half in the next few weeks.

  2. Feeds with Lots of Posts Take too Long to Load: This is related to one of the culprits in the previous problem. If you are subscribed to a feed such as Weblogs @ ASP.NET which gets 50-100 posts a day which translates to about 1500-3000 posts a month then there is a perceptible slowdown in how long it takes to load the listview when you click on the feed. 

We'll be fixing bugs and implementing minor features along the way while getting the aforementioned performance issues under control. Once we are satisfied with the perf , we'll have a beta period and then ship a release. This should be within the next month.

After this there are a number of significant features we have slated such as NNTP support, subscription harmonization using SIAM, translations to multiple languages (German being the first) and better integration with IE (such as supporting the Favorites menu).  The release where these features show up will be in 2 or 3 months.

In the meantime, Torsten and I will be discussing RSS Bandit development in our blogs and on the RSS Bandit mailing list