Feeds Version 1.0 Fixes Major Bugs
January 8, 2009 — Mike (admin)First off, we apologize to anyone who was affected by the bug that caused Feeds to crash after updating to version 0.99. That being said, we have found the bug with the help of a couple users who were kind enough to email us their crash logs. Version 1.0 has been sent to Apple for review and hopefully it will be available shortly.
In addition to the crash fix, a few other items snuck in this version as well. The big one is that we have finally identified the exact cause of the instability of using Mobile Safari embedded inside Feeds. A bug report has been sent to Apple and they should get that fixed in the next iPhone OS update. Because we were able to identify the exact location of Apple’s bug, we were able to put a workaround in Feeds until Apple takes care of the problem. This should make Feeds MUCH more stable especially when viewing articles in Feeds. That wonderful news has caused us to shorten the warning in the Settings for Feeds!
Also changed in this version is the way syncing and the unread counts for feeds showed up when using Google Reader. Previously, Feeds would fetch the unread counts and display them before starting to sync the actual feed items. This caused some confusion when users went into a feed that had an unread count greater than 0 and there were no unread items yet. Feeds was still in the process of downloading them. What we do now, is only display the unread count once we have actually downloaded the new items. This should make using Feeds much more pleasurable. Or at least it did for us.
Hi guys… The incorrectly shown count-badges showed up again; this time I got screenshots if you’d like them. Not sure if it’s a trivial thing to fix, or difficult, or whether screenshots would help.
Basically it looks like the oval is getting put in the wrong spot, or it’s getting drawn over by the text box for the folder name.
If you want the screenshots, let me know how to get them to you.
Brett, When Apple releases the 1.0 version if you still see the problem definitely shoot over the screenshots and we will take care of it. If you already have the screenshots, feel free to send them to questions (at) prime31.com and we will hold on to them for reference.
Mike
Hi, Feeds is the best RSS reader worth its price. With Google Reader integration it is even better. It got crashy a bit now, but when I switched to Google Reader synchronisation, it works a bit more stable.
I have a couple of suggestions. iPhone has a very small screen for viewing webpages, and large part of that screen is used for virtual keys on navigation bars. Is there a way to get rid of top or bottom bar ? Especlially in landscape mode. Bottom bar is even fatter than top bar.
I mostly use up/down, <- back buttom, view page and ‘star’.
I never use ‘email link’ and ‘home’ buttons. Those are not very often used. I would suggest to get rid of two bars and put everything on one bar like this:
Buttons:
back|up/down|star|more|view page
and ‘more’ to open a menu for less used keys like ‘email link, share … etc’.
Also, it is more natural to have bar at the bottom (closer to fingers). And hiding status bar (with signal strength)
would be even better and would provide maximum screen size for displaying pages.
I dont know if many people agree with that, but maybe it should be configurable ?
I looked at ‘byline’ iPhone app, and in landscape mode it has only one ‘control bar’ with keys.
I don’t know if the same can be made in non-landscape mode since horizontally there is less space.
Second suggestion. If I turn ‘All Items – New only’ setting, it works for ‘All items’ in top level, but it does not work in ‘All Items in Category’ where all items (read and unread) are always shown. Inconsistecy or Google Reader limitation ?
Hi Max, Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. We apologize about the crashes. It should be OK if Google Reader integration is ON and we already patched and sent the update as the post said.
I like the idea of removing the bottom bar when viewing an item in the internal browser a lot. I will play around with it and see if I can get a smooth integration of the idea. I would like to see if I can come up with something that will hide it when you click the view button then maybe some gesture will get the bar to slide back in.
If we can pull it off and some more people like your ideas we will certainly get them on our to-do list.
Mike
hey. wondering if it is possible to save images using the internal browser like you can in safari. thanks.
Todd, Apple has not yet exposed a way for developers to use the save image dialogue. As soon as they do expect us to have it in there.
Mike
I got another idea. Regarding putting all commands to a one ‘top or bottom’ bar for controls in landscape or normal mode screen orienatation. iPod app has ‘more’ button that allows us to put custom function keys. That is a nice idea maybe for feeds, so users can put controls to a top (or bottom) bar depending on their choosing.
Just an idea
I downloaded this application just before New Year’s and now it hardly works. I’m very disappointed because it did kind of work at first and it was great to have an offline reader that synched with Google Reader.
Feeds synched with Google Reader to the extent that I have the full list of my feeds, including folders of feeds. However, the application times out whenever I try to sync all my items, so my feeds are never fully updated. It seems like the feeds are synched alphabetically, and I never get past “C”. So a few of my feeds might be synched, but even then it will often crash when I switch from an individual feed back to the home screen. I have about 80 individual feeds in Google Reader, is this what is causing the problem? Does it sound like this will be fixed when the update is approved by Apple?
Greg
Hi Greg, 80 feeds is more than likely the problem. We did testing with up to about 30 – 40. Syncing takes a bit of time especially the first load. Try changing the ‘Interval to Back Sync’ to ‘Never’. This will cause Feeds to load a few less items each sync.
The version that is awaiting approval by Apple will probably not fix your issue. The version that will be sent to Apple as soon as they approve the current one should actually fix your problem. It will be version 1.1. The way syncing is done in version 1.1 greatly speeds it up especially in cases where you have more than 10 feeds so it will be perfect for your case.
Please do report back when the 1.1 version comes out so that we know if it will work with 80 feeds.
Mike
1.1 sounds like it’ll be worth a try. I have around 100 feeds, and currently Feeds is unusable.
Please let me know if you’d like me to beta test 1.1 at all. It would make sense to have a few Google Reader users with large feed counts doing some testing.
Dan, Version 1.1 is heading in to Apple for review tonight. If all goes well it should be in your hands in less than a week. This version really speeds up syncing. For 100 feeds, the initial sync may take a while though. Please report back here when you give it a shot.
Mike
Hello, thanks for a good app.
By WiFi synchronization works perfectly, but when working through GPRS, app often shows errors “Lost netwowk connection” and “Timed out” and the application no longer synchronized till it restart.
It would be great, if application will remember number of unread items, that are available in the off-line because every time I start app, counters are empty.
Rostik, without a network connection when using Google Reader we can’t get an accurate unread count. We could put the number of unread items that are currently downloaded onto your device but that might be confusing as it would differ greatly from the actual Google Reader numbers. I would suggest using the All Unread link in conjunction with the setting ‘show unread only’ to view items when offline.
Mike
Thank for quick support!
And what about my first question? I have often a slow connection, and there is no way to connect via WiFi or EDGE.
May be it fixed in 1.1 I waiting the moment when it will be possible to try.
Second. I propose to display counters of existing (in offline) items, but when app connect to the GoogleReader server simply update counters.
Thanks a lot.
hi Rostik, we are going to do some testing and see how it works. We are considering displaying the number of unread items currently downloaded if there is no net connection. The problem with this method is that it will not be anywhere near the same as the number in Google Reader so it may confuse some people.
Mike
Hi, Mike!
Good idea. This is a very logical, especially when app say user “Feeds offline”, that means count of unread messages in the cache.
And what about the “Lost netwowk connection” and “Timed out” =)
10x
Hi,
I discovered Feeds when I went searching for a news reader that synchs with Google Reader. I downloaded it this morning and have been getting familiar with it for the past few hours. I have to say it’s the best reader I have used so far. I have some comments though.
In the iTunes Store, one of your screen shots shows the Starred Items page. The items on the page are listed under their categories. The only category I have is “Google Starred Items.” I don’t know if you’ve changed the design, or maybe you can’t do this with the Google Reader. If you do have control though, I do like the category header. I’ll go one further and say I would like to see that feature in any group display such as “All Items” and “All Items in Category” within folders.
I agree with Rostik about the lack of Unread Count numbers when offline. Your suggestion of using the All Unread link doesn’t appeal to me because all items are jumbled together by date whereas I like to see them by category first (my suggestion above would fix that though). You say that people may be confused because the numbers wouldn’t match those in Google Reader. How does that matter? If you don’t have a network connection, you wouldn’t know what the counts are in Google Reader anyway. The counts that are currently in the app are what matter, then they can be updated the next time a connection is made.
Also related to offline, is there a technical reason that you can’t mark all items read when offline? It would be nice to be able to do so. As an aside, you have a misspelling in that message: “…when your are offline.”
I would like the option to view Only Unread to apply to all views, not just the All Items view. Better still, add more Settings options to choose where to show Only Unread.
I vote with Max to minimize the space taken up by the bars. At the very least, you can skinny up the lower bar when in horizontal mode.
That’s enough for now. None of these things are earth-shattering (though the unread count issue may be annoying). I really like what you’ve got here, it fits the feature list I was looking for almost exactly, good job.
Roddy
Hi Roddy, Thanks for the feedback. Feeds got a bit complicated once Google Reader support was added. It is essentially two totally different RSS readers in one. The Starred items screen that is in the iTunes description is the one from when you are not using Google Reader. We will definitely consider adding unread counts while offline that do not match the current Google unread counts.
There is a technical reason that mark all items read doesn’t work when offline that we have a solution for. We were trying to avoid marking each and every item as read when touching the mark all as read button. When online, we can easily mark all read in real time the instant you touch the button. If you touch the button when offline, our only option is to save every feed item separately and then mark them all as read on your next start up which could get very, very slow. We have to make a web request for each item and performance would suffer greatly.
View Only Unread applies to all group views as of the next version (which is awaiting approval from Apple). Any folders will only display unread once that gets through. We will look into having all read items not show up for other views as well and see what everyone thinks about the idea.
Mike
Mike,
Thanks for the quick response. Fair enough on all this, I look forward to any updates you release.
There is one more thing (for now) that would be a nicety, and I may be the only one who would be interested in this, so take it for what it’s worth.
While viewing articles, I would like to have a button to mark all “visible” as read. Sometimes the list of new articles can be quite large by the time I get to them. You already allow for a small number to be gotten at a time (20 by default). A function like this would allow me to look through 20 at a time and then set those to read if I didn’t have time to continue. Later I could return to the rest. The current Mark All Read button sets all to read even if I haven’t brought them into view.
The Reader in the Google Mobile app does this. At the top of the list is the link “mark all as read,” and at the end of the list where you can optionally load more is the link “mark these items as read.”
Again, just a wish-list item.
Roddy
Roddy and Rostik, I just finished adding an unread count for those occasions when you are offline or in manual sync mode. Due to the fact that it relies only on the number of unread items that it already downloaded to your iPhone the number will not match Google’s at all. That being said, as soon as Apple OK’s the next update I will send this one off to them for review after a bit of testing.
Mike
1.1 has just hit the app store and first impressions are…awesome.
Sync is like night and day compared with the previous release. So fast the progress bars didn’t even keep up.
I’m going to use it a bit more and see what I find. But this release is seriously on the right track. Still a few edges to polish, but massive congratulations on a great release!
Dan, Thanks for the feedback! I take it that 100 feeds is doable then. That’s good to hear. We have one more quick update in the pipeline that we should be getting to Apple in a day or two.
Mike
I’ve just checked an my actual count is 172 subscriptions (not all active, I’d add). Feeds just eats this now. There are a few seconds where the app becomes unresponsive and hangs, but nothing like previous releases. Would it help to put an email together with feedback in? I think we’re talking minor tweaks at this stage. Great work!
Wow, it is fast. With only 30 subscriptions, I didn’t wait too long to begin with, but now it’s like there’s no pause at all.
I look forward to the next version where you add the unread counts for offline use. Ironically, I read your message this morning (offline) while I was blindly selecting each subscription to see if there were any unread messages.
Keep up the good work,
Roddy
Dan, Feel free to send over an email with your feedback. We are always open to new ideas.
Roddy, We have been testing the unread count for offline usage and all seems to be good so expect it in the version 1.2 update that will get sent to Apple in a day or two if all goes well.
Mike
1.1 Shows same errors: “Lost network connection” and “Timed out” on GPRS connection
Some screenshots:
http://prouni.ru/out/IMG_0001.PNG
http://prouni.ru/out/IMG_0002.PNG
Mike,
I really enjoy Feeds. I’ve tried NetNewsWire, Byline, Pro RSS Reader, Manifesto, and Newsstand, and currently the final two duking it out on my iPhone are Feeds and Newsstand. The one major frustration I’m having with Feeds is that when I turn “Use Google Account” on, it crashes upon startup–every single time. This has happened in .99, 1.0 and now 1.1.
When the Google Reader feature is off, Feeds works great. The only other quibble I have it that if I quit Feeds in article view, when I restart Feeds, it shows the title of the article as (null), and I have to go back to the feed folder to see the actual title.
One thing I’ve noticed Feeds seems to do better than other readers–and this may have to do with my inability to get it to function harmoniously with Google Reader–is that dates and times of article postings seem more accurate than with other readers.
Anyway, if you let me know your e-mail address, I’d be glad to send you my crash logs.
Thanks for your great work!
I very like 1.1 has no more a “splash screen” but a fake startup interface. it feels more natural
and it’s faster to start now.
Rostik, Those two errors come directly from the operating system. There isn’t too much we can do about the connection failing.
Mike
Maybe it possible to enlarge timeout counter in connection settings in your source code???
Indeed gmail steadily working on this connection =(
Thanx.
Dang it. I had to change my theme back to default green so that it matches the new start-up screen.
Mike: FWIW, the updating bar no longer appears to show progress. It just sits empty and then wham-o, the update is complete.
On the one hand, it’s no big deal: the update is significantly faster so in the end who cares about visualizing the update progress. On the other, it’s weird to have a binary progress bar.
If it matters, I’m using GoogRead synching.
I love that the only ‘complaint’ I have is a totally unimportant nitpicky thing.
Brett, we actually have an idea that may get the progress bar happy again. I’m not 100% sure it will work so don’t get too excited yet.
Mike
Something’s wrong on my end. The app has stopped working. The sync status was better before when it showed the individual streams being synced so you’d know the progress. Anyway when I open the app it just hangs up, the sync bar doesn’t move beyond halfway, it also slows down the device and nothing works in the app. I have to go back to the home screen to make things work.
Ed, The first sync can take a very long time sometimes. Have you tried giving it a few minutes to load? Have you tried restarting your iPhone? That sometimes takes care of any issues. If all else fails, deleting and redownloading the application almost always fixes any issues.
If that doesn’t work, if you can send over the crash logs, we can figuure out the issue easier. They are available at the following location depending of if you are using Windows or Mac:
Mac OS X: ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/\Application Data\Apple computer\Logs\CrashReporter/\AppData\Roaming\Apple computer\Logs\CrashReporter/MobileDevice/
Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\
Windows Vista: C:\Users\
Mike
Before this app I never knew what to do with rss feeds. It’s been great! Having said that I can’t get the app to load up since the last update… It works fine when google reader is off. When I turn it on now it just shows that white loading box and crashes back to the home screen after 2 seconds… It had worked until I closed it inside a feed item. Maybe the issues lies with it trying to load or sync inside a feed item?
Sorry to “double post” nut I deleted the app and reinstalled it and it’s working… For now.
Justin, You can also try the the ‘Reset on next start’ setting. This might take care of the issue too if one of the data files is corrupt.
Mike
Wow, 1.1 was a great update. The syncing is so fast, it’s actually a pleasure to quickly check my rss feeds while at work. My only nitpick request would be for removing the initial “loading..” box and “unread counts received” dialog. They seem unessecary at this point, and it never works for me. Every time I go into Feeds it shows both notifications, but no unread counts, even though when I press the sync button I do receive new feeds.
Maybe it’s because I have Feeds set to sync manually? I chose to sync manually because all the other options also seem useless (5 min, 10 min, etc.) because Feeds is only able to sync when Feeds is open.
I have tried a restart. I’ll try some of the other solutions that you have suggested and get back to you with the update. Thanks.
Re-installation worked like a charm. Sync works great now, thanks you guys awesome work.
Thanks for the quick response! Since deleting and reinstalling it’s been working fine. If the issue comes up again I’ll try your suggestion.
As much as I’d love to use the Google Reader integration, it doesn’t seem to work at all when using EDGE, which is a shame. It always times out… Once I connect to Wi-Fi it works like a charm, but I rarely have access to Wi-Fi. Any chance of getting it to work with EDGE?
Justin, What is the error that pops up when you are syncing over EDGE? Perhaps we could put a setting in so that you can set the timeout to a very high number and see if that helps…
Mike
Hi
I can’t seem to be able to re-order my feed folders (sync’ed with Google Reader), and they appear to be in random order. Will this option be available in a future version?
Thanks.
Hi playitcool, Google has not provided a way for us to get the sort order yet. We are hoping that when they release the Reader API in a month or so that they include sort orders. In the meantime, we are adding alphabetical sorting to all feeds and folders in either the next release or the one after.
Mike
Hi, having just purchased on the recomendation of SmokingApples.com thought I’d give some initial feedback having already used ByLine @ Newsstand for some time.
Already mentioned I know – the 2 bars take up a lot of screen real-estate especially in my preferred landscape view.
The preview of each feed only shows the title. Newsstand has an option within the settings to choose to show up to 4 lines of the article.
I notice Pro RSS Reader also has a nicer view showing 2 lines of preview text under the title.
I find being able to instantly see more about the feed can save the time needed to select the feed, realize it’s not worth Reading and having to return to the preview list of feeds as I find myself doing in FEEDS.
If these minor cosmetic/usability changes could be implemented then this product is a certain winner for me.
I also purchased this based on your blog, regular updates to improve the product and the fact you communicate with your customers/feedback.
It is greatly appreciated so please continue with the great work!
Fedorov, we appreciate you taking your time to let us know what future updates are important to you. As you can tell from the previous blog entries, as soon as we hear a calling for a feature enough times it usually ends up in the next update.
The landscape bottom bar is already on our to-do list for a future update. I like the idea of showing some preview text but there are some other considerations if we decide to do that. If we show preview text there will need to be a way to mark the items as read so that is you glance by some previews that don’t do it for you it will be quick and easy to mark them read. We will have to play around with it and see if we can keep things nice and simple and have all the expected available actions with the preview text.
Mike