Feeds – The Next Minor Update
April 24, 2009 — Mike (admin)UPDATE: ReadItLater seems to be working well and our testing of the other changes is complete. Feeds version 1.5 is now in Apple’s hands.
We are wrapping up testing on the next update now. There isn’t too much to report on this one. There are a couple additions and we are starting the process of removing some settings as well.For the additions, we are adding ReadItLater support. There will be a spot in Settings where you can put your ReadItLater login and password so if you don’t have a ReadItLater account now is the time to secure your username. Apparently ReadItLater is getting popular really quickly and we didn’t want to be left behind.
Also added in the update is a toggle to turn off the features that use shaking to activate. We also make it require a bit more effort to get the shake to be recognized so that we can avoid false positives.
Probably the most significant update and also the most elusive is a small change we made to attempt to remedy some syncing issues. Without getting into too much detail, currently Feeds will ALWAYS grab the freshest unread count from Google every time you start it up. Feeds does not always do a sync though. Currently, if the ‘Refresh Feed Items’ setting time has not elapsed Feeds will not fetch the new items. This leads to the unread count being slightly different (or very different depending on the RSS feeds and the interval set) than the number of actual unread items. All this dies on this day. Feeds will sync each and every time you start it up. We are no longer going to worry about the data plan you are on and trying to penny pinch the couple kilobytes of data. The complaints far outweigh any benefit in us trying to be frugal with the feed updates. This is the first step in eradicating all the confusing options in the Settings app. More to come.
Hey Mike,,
Thanks for responding to everyone’s questions. Here is (hopefully) a definitive list of things that I’ve noticed not working properly since the update to 3.0:
1. Unread item counts don’t match between individual feeds, all items in folders, and unread badge count on home screen. At any point, one or all of these may occur.
2. Sync and read feed markings fail
3. Swiping to star or mark a feed as read does not work.
4. Pictures within threads sometimes either load extremely slow, or not at all.
That should about do it for bugs. I’ve tried resetting the google sync as well as a reinstall, and all of the issues above will persist. Also, a couple requests (that I know have been mentioned before):
5. Graphical flair – how is this coming? Any updates/progress?
6. Can there be an option to remove shared items and/or starred items from the list? I never use shared items and it’s just a waste of real estate for me, although I may be the only one, which obviously wouldn’t warrant a lot of extra time for an option that wouldn’t be widely used.
7. Any updates/progress on the feed search, whether on Google’s side or within the app?
That does it. Thanks for listening to your customers and trying to fulfill as many needs/requests as possible. Still the best app in the app store, as your splash states!
Mike, thanks so much for the response. You’re right, I don’t need back sync since I almost never leave any items unread when using Feeds, and rarely read my feeds any other way.
And WOW what a speed jump going from 1-day bak sync to none. For some reason the entre app feels faster, not just the lightning-fast sync. To anyone else frustrated by long sync times, check your back sync setting.
@Victor, the only issue we have had reported with 3.0 is number 3 which will be fixed in the next update. Perhaps you should try the ‘Reset on next launch’ settings to clean out Feeds internal database.
The graphical update has been delayed until the release after next so that we can clean up some bugs and get them out in the wild.
I personally don’t like the starred or shared items myself either. Adding yet another option seems like overkill. Does anyone out there use starred and shared items? Search may be available in a future update though I must admit it is pretty low on the priority scale. There isn’t much demand for search on the mobile front due to the excellent search capabilities of Google Reader.
I do use the starred feature. It’s perfect when I’m in a hurry and want to read an article later without having it buried in a mess of new ones. It’s just too quick and easy to hit that star- then it’s a piece of cake to come back to. Maybe that’s why people use Instapaper – I tried that and much preferred starring. Maybe it’s me, but I certainly don’t feel that Feeds is cluttered. Perhaps you can add more toggles to the settings and let people pick and choose what options are visible. Still, this is a great app… please don’t take my stars away.
Regards,
Scott
Just added FEEDS after reading about it on a Mashable post and was hoping it would resolve a big frustration I have a mobile GReader. This may be part of the 3.0 swipe issue reported above.
How can I mark an item as Read/Unread?
My big mobile GReader complaint is that an item is marked as Read when you view it. Often I open an item, read a little, realize it’s too long for reading at the point… I have to scroll, scroll, scroll, to the bottom to mark it as Unread.
I’d prefer to have items remain Unread until I mark them as Read.
Am I completely missing something w/ FEEDS?
@Shane, Feeds will automatically mark items as read if you either request to read the article (get to the article details page) or swipe from left-to-right on the item in the feed list. Please note, this is broken in the 3.0 version of the OS. We have fixed the problem and will send the update to Apple Monday after some more testing.
Feeds WILL allow you to mark an item as unread. This part is very important though: it will only appear as unread in Google Reader if you have read it recently. Unfortunately, I can’t define recently as it is a Google secret. I would estimate something on the order of 10 minutes. You can’t go to an item that you read last week and mark it as unread. Google won’t allow it. To mark an item as unread, you just swipe from left-to-right on the item in the list of articles. But, as noted above this won’t work in 3.0 until we get the update out to you.
I hope that all makes sense.
First off, I love this app. Your responsiveness to bug reports should be used as a model to other app developers.
Regarding push notifications, I think having badge support would be enough. Nobody in their right mind would want a pop up each time a new feed updated. I simply want to see that I have 20, 42, 100 new feeds available. Make sense?
Quick bug report. If you tap the Starred table entry and then Feeds (in the upper left corner) right away, guaranteed crash. This usually happens when I meant to hit ‘all items’ but accidentally hit ‘Starred’ instead. If you wait for the starred items to load, it won’t crash.
Enhancement request: ability to reorder main screen items would be nice. Also, the item alignment on the first screen always looks a little off. Perhaps the use of same-width icons would fix?
As for the colors comment, I think it looks fine.
Mike,
As far as the bugs I mentioned are concerned, I’ve done the reset on next start option and can replicate their failures quite often. As far as the pictures in feeds not loading and count discrepancies are concerned, these happen very often, and I do reset the app quite often (the reset within settings). For the most part, the issues clear up immediately, but only temporarily, and occasionally, they reoccur upon next launch. Not sure why.
Thanks again, as JG said, you all should be a model for other developers. Couldn’t have said it better.
@JG, we do our best to keep up with any bugs reported. Speaking of which, we just sent out an update to Apple to deal with the issues that the 3.0 OS brought up.
We are still thinking about push notifications and their feasibility for Feeds. Sending out a notification for each new story is absolutely not going to happen. We would have to SPAM Google Reader so badly to do that that there is no doubt we would be blocked in no time.
Starred item bug noted and on our To-do list.
We very much want to be able to reorder the feed list as well. Google is *supposed* to release a public API for Google Reader (currently, we are using Google Reader information without an available API). Once the API is available, reordering will come shortly after.
@Victor, do the unread count oddities come either shortly after you were offline or while you are offline?
@Mike – do you have a general feel for how long it is taking to get apps approved through Apple these days? I’ve been checking for App updates at least daily lately since I have a few apps not functioning at 100% w/ 3.0. I’ll be keeping an eye out for a Feeds update so i can continue my eval of the app. Thanks!
@Shane, Apple seems to be a bit backed up right now. Updates are taking anywhere from 1 – 2 weeks on average from what we are seeing.
I hardly ever (if ever) go offline, so it wouldn’t seem that this is the case, but I could definitely be wrong. I’m not sure what is causing it, but sometimes it’s more than minor, as in it’ll show 50 unread, when there’s really 100. And sometimes (but fairly rarely), even after the Google sync reset, it will do the same thing. Just awkward.
Also, my post above about the ability to remove the starred and shared items from the list was a suggestion more for the fact that I NEVER use shared items, but I do ALWAYS use starred items. I just mentioned the starred items option because there may be some that don’t use them.
@Victor, I can’t say I ever used the shared items besides testing. Starred is definitely needed. Does anyone object to Shared Items getting removed? It doesn’t really serve much purpose in my opinion.
You could always make it an option. :p
Mike, I feel like at this stage, flat-out removing any feature is probably A Bad Idea. This one in particular, though, since Google appears to be trying to enhance the social elements of Reader lately. But I am 100 percent in favor of turning it off by default and adding an entry in the Settings app to turn it back on.
On a totally unrelated note, I LOVE this WPTouch plugin! Got to install it on my blogs.