Feeds 0.95 Finally Available in the App Store Plus New Features
September 10, 2008 — Mike (admin)Apple has finally gotten around to giving Feeds 0.95 the OK. Hopefully future updates will push through a lot faster than this one did. We are chalking it up to the September 9th event Apple had.
We snuck a couple new features into Feeds that we hadn’t talked about previously. One is the theming support. You can now make Feeds’ color scheme match Apples blue or you can go with the default green, black or orange. Hopefully this is enough color choices to keep everyone happy.
Another new feature that we snuck in at the last minute is the online Feed Adder tool. This tool will allow you to go on your computer and copy/paste any of those large, ugly URLs into a website saving you the trouble of typing them on your iPhone/iTouch. (Note: You will need a Google account to use this feature. To keep your feeds secure they are password protected and only available if you sign in using a standard Google account). If you add some feeds and proceed to visit the exact same website on your iPhone/iTouch you will be presented with a list of all the feeds you added. Any feed that you touch will launch the Feeds program and add the feed for you!
The first things we are going to hear are “Why do I have to add each feed individually?” and “Can’t I just add all of the feeds at once?”. We are well aware of this limitation of the Feed Adder tool. It is really only for huge, ugly URLs that are just too hard to type into the iPhone/iTouch. It isn’t meant to be a batch adder.
For anyone interested in implemented a way to add feeds right on your website/blog you can do this easily with a regular anchor tag. Instead of putting http://www.theFeedUrl.com just replace the ‘http’ with ‘rssfeed’. The url rssfeed://www.theFeedUrl.com will automatically launch Feeds and add the feed for the user. Feel free to make your own feed lists and share them with anyone else using Feeds.
To use the Feed Adder you will need to do the following:
- Visit http://feedadder.appspot.com from your computer
- Copy/Paste any feeds that you would like to add
- Visit http://feedadder.appspot.com from you iPhone/iTouch
- Touch any feeds on the page to add them to Feeds
Its finally out!!
I have to say it was well worth the wait. What was already a great little reader has turned into a really solid application. Everything about of feels smoother than before. The offline reading is wonderful, the new themes are a welcome addition and categories are really useful too!! Thanks guys!
I have one piece of constructive criticism. The little gray unread count badge next to each feed is nice but when it’s in the single digits the little half circles that the badge is made from overlap and look kinds pointy. I’d suggest making the single digit badge it’s own circular image instead of constructing it from the oval badge’s end caps. Also when the count is zero I’d prefer no badge as opposed to the zero.
Overall I’m really happy with Feeds! It’s great!
Jake, you have a keen eye to notice that one! Thanks for the comments and we will try to clean up that pointy little semi-circle in a future release. It’s good to hear that your only criticism is such a minor one.
Mike
Thank you very much for all your hard work. You listened to what the users wanted and implemented it very nicely. I have only one thought for you. Once you put your feeds into categories, it would be really nice to have the category indicate how many unread feeds are contained within it so as to not have to go through each and every category looking to see if there are any unread feeds. Just a thought that would make things nice and put that last bit of icing on the cake. Thank you so much for getting the updates out so quickly. You are no my only RSS reader on my iPhone and I am very happy.
Thanks again,
Jason
Jason, thanks for the feedback! The unread count for categories sounds like a good one to add for the next update. I just put it on our TODO list so we should be able to get it in a future update. We have one more major update coming up in the next weeks (Google Reader syncing) so we will shoot for getting it out around then.
Mike
Thanks for the great update.
In the settings what does the “Display unread badge” do.
No matter what I choose the little counter still appears.
What about “refresh Feed Items”?
Is it for an auto update? If so a manual option would be cool.
As for the offline reading, does it store the pictures too?
Thanks!
Hi Hoang, The ‘Display unread badge’ will do what you think it does with one little hitch: if you turn it OFF, you will have to open Feeds to get it to disappear. When you change any of the settings Feeds doesn’t know that you changed them until you reopen the application.
‘Refresh Feed Items’ just sets a timer so that they don’t automatically update every time you open Feeds. If you set it to 10 minutes, and open Feeds twice in a row Feeds won’t refresh your feeds. This was done to prevent excessive battery drain because it is resource intensive to fetch the feeds. You can still use the manual refresh button in the application but only if the last time you refreshed was longer then the time you set. If you are in an actual feed (not on the main feed list page) you can touch the refresh button anytime to refresh just that feed. I hope that isn’t too confusing…
Offline reading doesn’t fetch pictures yet. We are trying to find an efficient way to get the images that won’t slow down the application and eat up too much battery juice. An update in the near future should download images as well as soon as we get it all working nicely.
Mike
Very nice so far, thanks especially for the color choice, another thing would be the removal of the splashscreen.
Much more important, the best feature would be full google reader sync (subscribed feeds, read/unread, starred/unstarred) – that would be superb.
Finally! Having played with Feeds for 5 minutes, I have to say that, for my needs, it’s nearly perfect. The offline mode is working great, love the way how categories have been implemented … you’ve done a terrific job!
Personally, I think it would be useful to have the ability to define have a “manual” option in the “Refresh Feed Items” setting. This would be nice in situations like when you’re on GPRS or 3G, if you have like 50 feeds and you just want to check a sports result on a single feed, it wouldn’t make much sense to be charged for the pooling of 50 feed data, instead of a single one.
Having said that, again, THANK YOU for such a useful update!
Hello,
You have mentioned “display unread badge” and “refresh timer” options in settings.
What settings?! How to get there? On main page i have only three options: “add feed”, “edit”, and “refresh” – no settings?!
I have 0.95 version.
Thanks!
I’ve just downloaded the App after looking for an RSS reader for weeks now. I chose Feeds because it’s simple, but powerful, and developers seems to fulfil all requests to make this app the best.
Some initial thoughts:
- It would be good to configure how many lines it displays when i click on a feed. Currently i can see a small date line and two other lines. I need to have 5 lines for some feeds, 2 or 3 lines for others. So it would be good to have if we can configure this by feeds, not global.
- We should have the ability to configure font sizes for the feeds
And last question: auto feed checking is only possible when i’m in the application? It would be good to have this option outside feeds…
Florian, We are avid Reader users on our computers so expect Reader syncing in the next major update.
CarlosLuz, Thanks for the feedback! If you are viewing a feed you can push the button in the bottom right corner of the screen (a little spinning arrow) and it will refresh just the feed that you are on. We can certainly add a manual button in the settings to the feed refresh timer so that it won’t try to update all of your feeds when you launch. Look for it in a future update.
Mike
Marko, If you close Feeds and just touch the Settings application that is on your iPhone/iTouch desktop you will see that Feeds has an entry in there where you can change the settings.
Let us know if you find it.
Mike
Hi Roland, Number of lines for the feeds sounds like a reasonable suggestion. Font size changes are something that we wanted to get into this version but it didn’t quite make the cut. That will most certainly be in the next major update. As for checking feeds when the application is not open, Apple doesn’t allow it. There isn’t any way for us to check for feeds when the application is closed and still follow Apples rules.
Mike
This is a great application. However, I would really like to use the “Feed Adder Tool”, but I don’t feel it was explained well enough in the post. Am I supposed to login to google reader on my iPhone and then Feeds will pop up with the prompt?? You gave a screen shot of the “Feed Adder”, but what is the link to that site? I’m sorry but I don’t understand.
Hi Ryan, To use the Feed Adder you will need to do the following:
1. Visit http://feedadder.appspot.com from your computer
2. Copy/Paste any feeds that you would like to add
3. Visit http://feedadder.appspot.com from you iPhone
4. Touch any feeds on the page to add them to Feeds
I will add these instructions to the main post as well. If that doesn’t make sense let me know and I will explain it a bit better.
Mike
pardon my ignorance, but how do you create a folder and place selected feeds in that folder –i see no options for grouping.
Great app BTW — i cant wait for Google Reader syncing.
Hi John, It isn’t at all obvious how to make a folder which is probably why you weren’t able to find it and we didn’t get the tutorial video done in time to include it with the application. All you need to do is touch the Edit button, then touch the feed that you want to move into a folder. You will then be able to create a folder or add it to an existing folder.
Mike
Ha Ha — I tried that once before, but i guess it wasn’t a solid enough tap – Thanks.
This is a great app — i’ve been really loading it up and am amazed how fast it loads my 18-20 feeds.
Keep up the good work.
The app was great and work wonderfully. There are a few suggestion I would like to raise:
1) Add an option to only display “unread” news
2) Add an option to only display feeds with “unread” news
3) Display total unread badge for all feeds inside the folder.
In addition to the comments I make have, it would be even better to move the up/down arrow to the lower left and right corner and put the “email link” and “view page” button to the top. By such arrange, I can use one hand to operate the reader to change to next news
Hi Dick, Thanks for the feedback. We will definitely squeeze some of your suggestions in the next release which should be coming out pretty soon. It is going to consist of just the few items of feedback we have received since 0.95 came out.
Mike
Hmmmm… I guess I am the only one for whom the update does not work.
I updated it through the app store on the iPhone and when I open up Feeds it takes me to a screen that displays the “Feeds” button and the “Edit” button with none of my feeds showing. Only “All Unread Items” shows.
Before writing this I tired updating through the App Store in iTunes on my mac and no luck only now I can go back to the previous version and I miss my news!
Please help! Thanks a bunch. Aside from this hiccup I love Feeds and it is a major part of my iPhone experience.
Hi Lenny, It sounds like you ran into a bug that Apple has been trying to fix for quite some time. Every once in a while when you do an update your previous data gets lost. There is some more information here if you are interested: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7740432�
Unfortunately, there is no real way to fix the problem. Some people recommend restoring your iPhone/iTouch to before the update and then trying it again and that works but is a bit of a pain. Hopefully Apple will patch up the problem as soon as possible.
Mike
I just installed this and, so far, I’m impressed. I’ve suffered with NNW since it was released. NNW just takes way too long to sync. This is almost instant – very nice. If I can echo the other suggestions, it would be to remove the splash screen, definitely add a total unread badge beside each feed folder, and consider only displaying feeds with unread items. I also agree with the poster above – if there are no unread items, don’t display a badge at all. Could I also request the ability to “leave open” a folder on the front page, to display the feeds in a hierarchical fashion, main folder and subfolder, all on one page (did this make sense?)
Keep up the great work!
DBMFan, thanks for the feedback. I am right now in the process of testing an update that adds the unread count to folders and removes the count altogether if it is zero. As for leaving the folders ‘open’ we had a poll of all of our users and the result was that every vote was for having the folders open on a separate page so until that majority sways we will probably keep it the way it currently is. Thanks for the suggestions though.
Mike