This post goes out to anyone who is seeing an issue with Feeds having items marked as unread even though they have been read. It turns out, Google changed a few things on us and it took us a few days to figure it all out and get things patched up. We have one more day of testing before we send the next update to Apple.This version has a few minor cosmetic changes to the feed details page. We removed all of the buttons on the top bar except for the star button. This cleaned up the interface a lot and generally makes Feeds more usable as you won’t accidentally press the wrong button anymore. So, what did we do with all of those buttons? They all moved to a new location hidden from view. If you touch the new Feed Actions button you will be presented with a list of actions that inclues tagging, sharing/unsharing, emailing, etc. This will give us the ability to add a couple new items in there.
Also added to the feed details page is the title of the current feed that you are reading. This helps out when you are using the All Items or any folders so that you know what feed you are reading.
The final feature addition is a toggle to turn ‘View only Unread’ on and off from within Feeds. When you are on the main feed page just give your iPhone a shake and you will be able to toggle the setting. This comes in handy when you want to view some old items that are already read. Just give it a shake, and get going to read the old read items. When you are done, give it another shake and you are back to showing only read items.
Thanks for the update. May I ask, are you planning on improving the Title/Preview text to be more dynamic and use up the empty lines more efficiently. Quite often there is a gap between a short title and then only 1 line of preview text when 2 or maybe 3 lines of preview could have fitted in the whitespace.
Other than that, I’m quietly contented with Feeds
Fedorov,
We currently dynamically adjust the title to either 2 lines of preview text or 3 depending on the title size. Any gaps that you see in there are RSS feeds that include their own line breaks. If I start removing the intended line breaks the amount of support tickets will be through the roof.
I found a minor bug. If something is shared and showing as unread in the shared list, it keeps reappearing in its original feed as unread even if you keep marking it read there. You have to mark it read in shared as well to make it go away.
@John, thanks for the bug report. We are looking into it now.
I like the ‘View only Unread’ feature, glad you considered it as was one of the things I mailed in requesting. Nice!! Did the update get shipped up to Apple, I did notice the unread weirdness?
@MikeC, We sent the update to Apple last week. Hopefully the review process will be quick this time around. The unread toggle is super useful. I don’t know how I lived without it before.
I have a suggestion, that may be too difficult to implement and may bog down the app too much, but it would be ABSOLUTELY AWESOME if it could be done…implementing search into the application (maybe into the “list of actions”) similar to that of the google reader search. It’s a function that I love dearly in the full web use of google reader, and think would be a great addition to the app. Great work thus far, the update function is getting fairly stable now, with speeds that are just amazing!
@slickvic621, Thanks for the feedback. Searching could definitely be done, the only caveat is that it by no means could ever be as accurate as that done by Google. We could send the searches through google but then you have to have network access and wait for the results to come back. That might be a pretty good option. We will certainly consider it..
I’m now on 1.4 and still enjoying the product. I waited to report this one bug thinking it might get fixed in 1.4 but it didn’t. I’ve noticed that sometimes I try to unstar something I just read in my starred list but it stays starred and I have to unstar it a second time. I can’t reproduce it on command but it happens often. I go to my starred list, drill into an item, view in Feeds browser, unstar, go back to list, see the item still starred, drill back, unstar, done. I thought maybe I was going back to list too quickly so I tried waiting but that doesn’t change the outcome.
One enhancement I’d suggest is making shake to star when viewing a particular item.
Liking the cleaner look of 1.4 already, is it my eyesight or are you now shrinking images with the correct aspect ratio in this version?
Nice work, running great!
Hi Mike,
your update gives me the chance on giving big thx to you for this excellent app.
Could you please comment s.th. more precisely those issues with Google Reader API ?
Thx
Hannes
@John, thanks for the bug report. It looks like it is actually properly unstarring the item. The actual issue is that it remains in the starred item list until you leave and return to it. Example: if you go to starred items, view a starred item and then unstar it and go back to the starred items it will still be in the list. If you look closely on the left side of the item the star will be gone. Technically it should be fully removed from the list. We will get that patched up ASAP.
@Fedorov, we didn’t get the aspect ratio down pat yet. We are still doing a simple approach that doesn’t use any external processing.
@hannes_47, thanks for the feedback. I’m not sure which issues in particular you are asking about with the Google Reader API. The main issue with it, is that it is 100% undocumented as of now so anything we add we have to manually trace what Reader does and mimic it perfectly on the iPhone.
What are your plans for offline behavior? Right now it’s pretty bad and I avoid using Feeds at all if there’s no connectivity. Those offline popups keep coming and items I’ve read come back as unread when I sync again.
1.4 rocks, Thanks!
Regards,
Scott
After using Feeds for the last few months, i’m going to have to jump back over to the other App i prefer for Greader Syncing. The last update was problematic, but this newest one is incredibly unstable for me. Unread Number badges never show up once a sync has occurred unless i click the EDIT button then DONE to have the screen redraw. And the loading of the titles of a folder for 15 titles took 5 minutes to load.
I love this app, but can no longer support it’s use. I will retry once the next version come out….
thanks.
@John Shkolnik, Google has added a few goodies to the undocumented reader api that we have seen in the last few weeks so we will probably be implementing them. This will get offline to online a ton faster and more accurate.
@John Fischetti, it sounds like something is very wrong with your install. There are two things you can try:
1. Set the ‘Reset on next start’ option to YES in the Settings.app
2. (recommended) Delete and reinstall Feeds.
It definitely sounds like something is wrong with your install; perhaps a corrupt file (we have seen quite a bit more corrupt downloads in the last month or 2 than we ever did before).
I updated and now my app is much more stable, and much faster. The last release was not working for me, despite multiple re-installations. This is great. I like the new stuff, too. Thanks!
There’s still a problem with how it updates counts. Let’s say I have a folder with 5 feeds inside it. Before a sync the folder shows 5 unread. I sync and it shows 3 unread but when I close Feeds it shows 12 unread which is the same number I see when I return. There is another variant of the problem. Just now I had 6 unread but I then read them in Reader earlier. I did a Feeds sync, the new count was 3, I closed and re-opened to a count of 4.
@John, sounds like you need to up the setting ‘Interval to Back Sync’ a bit. It will take a little bit longer to sync but it will end up being more accurate.
Feeds will get out of sync by design every time with the following situation (and others, but this is the most straight forward):
1. Set ‘Interval to Back Sync’ to ‘Never’
2. Open Feeds and leave some articles unread then close
3. Open Google Reader on your computer and read the articles you left unread in Feeds
By design, Feeds will not fetch items that it has already fetched so it will be out of sync. Some ways to avoid this:
1. Always ‘Mark All Read’ in Feeds when you are done reading (obviously not an option for all reading styles)
2. Up the ‘Interval to Back Sync’. Slightly longer sync times but more accurate.
I personally try to do number 1. I prefer really fast syncs and having some stray unread items isn’t a problem for me because I eventually hit the ‘Mark All Read’ button when I get caught up or the items fall off the bottom of my list.
I have it set to back sync 1 day and this problem can occur within an hour. I always mark all read. The example I outlined is a straightforward counting problem. Forget Reader altogether and it still happens. Setup a group of feeds in an iPhone app, show unread only, display unread badge, refresh feeds manually, back sync 1 day, sort oldest on top. Sync and now you have x number unread count showing next to the group. Close Feeds. Open Feeds a little while later when you can be sure more unread items will have been added to the feeds in that group. Sync and this is when the bug happens for me. The group’s unread count doesn’t become x + y, it becomes a nonsensical number less than what the sum ought to be but not x or y. Close Feeds and the unread count on the icon will (almost always) show x + y and when you open Feeds again it will be x + y.
I’ll add some more to the bug topic. I just got home and in Feeds I had 8 unread in one group. I opened up Reader, went through all the other groups either starring or marking all read but didn’t touch that group which Feeds shows as 8 unread. In Reader it was up to 9 unread now. I hit sync in Feeds and then count went from 8 to 3. I closed Feeds and the count is 9.
I’m sure you’re loving me by now but I’ve got a new issue. Since I upgraded to 1.4 I’ve already twice had the “show only unread” flag turn off unintentionally. I’m guessing it thinks I shook it even though I didn’t. There needs to be a way to deactivate that feature.
@John, would making the shake less sensitive cover your concerns?
Mike, since I can’t imagine ever using it I’d obviously prefer to just turn it off. If that’s not an option then making sure it doesn’t switch without a very real shake would suffice.
@John, the reason I ask is because there is currently one other option that relies on the shake gesture (back in the article view when navigating web pages). If the shake is less sensitive, then it would require 0 new settings, when if it is not changed, two new settings would be required: 1 for turning off shake to changed read/unread only and 1 for the back button.
I like the shake feature to toggle “View Only Unread”, but there are two things that don’t make sense to me.
When I first saw this feature, I was excited because I thought it would change the main feed page to only list feeds that had unread articles. That’s the default view in Google Reader, and I don’t understand why it’s not the same in Feeds. I have to scroll through lots of feeds to find one that has a number next to it.
While this is probably a useful feature as it is, it seems like it should be on the individual feed page, where it lists the articles, since that’s the view it affects. Unless I’m mistaken, it has no affect on the page where you have to do the shaking, and that seems a bit odd.
Thanks,
Russell
@Russel, we have the hiding of actual Feeds with no items in them on our list. Once it gets done it will all make sense.
It should probably be made less sensitive regardless because I didn’t even sneeze while holding the phone for it to happen both times. Personally, I’d prefer settings but I’m just one user. One of the strengths of Feeds is that it can be customized for so many different user styles. Maybe you could consolidate them and any other shake-related settings into a new sub-menu there?
Mike, that sounds great about hiding feeds with no items. Glad to know it’s on the list.
Russell
Great job, I’d like to know if you are planning to add support for Readitlater, now that that service has a dedicated iphone app? That would be great and blow away every other web app solution!
TIA
@kappa, I am not familiar with ReadItLater. If we get enough requests we can certainly add the feature. We currently have support for InstaPaper which seems to have quite a large following.
I’d also prefer a toggle (setting) to turn off the shake “Show Unread/All Items” option. Walking with Feeds on (while it’s updating and it’s in my pocket, for example, or while checking some headlines really quickly while walking) is a hassle. It also sometimes gets set off when picking it up from a desk or when putting it down.
@John, consider it done. We will add a toggle in the next update.
Another vote for the shake toggle, or better, a button on the main screen to do the toggle. I gently put my iPhone down twice yesterday on a cushion, picked it up to continue to read my unread posts and found it had toggled to include the read posts, very easy done.
Mike, did you plan on having FEEDS automatically returning us to the main screen once a folder has no more unread counts to save that extra button press in the top-left? I am increasingly using the View All Items more and more because when I hit the Mark All Read button it then takes me back that extra step.
Many thanks.
Mike, there is a great review of ReadItLater here:
http://www.whatsoniphone.com/blogs/read-it-later-pro-review
Certainly sounds like some good competition for InstaPaper and it has some cool features.
I hate to say it, and I know it’s not going to be very helpful, but Feeds isn’t running well anymore. It might’ve been the most recent version or one prior but there’s something wrong with how it loads items. Sometimes I do a sync, it comes back with the counts, but when I try to view a particular feed’s items it just shows as loading for a long time. This can sometimes be worked around by closing Feeds and reopening but at other times it can get even stranger to do that. I reloaded a couple times, no difference, I then hit “all items” from main page and got the items for a bunch of feeds I used to have for Feeds/Reader but got rid of a while back. Why are they still there? They don’t show anyplace but “all items”.
Another side bug I found while enduring all this is if you drill into a feed and the items are still loading, then back out and go to another feed it might load the results from the previous feed you backed out of.
I’m having more and more instances of 100 previously read posts showing up as unread (always 100…).
Is there an easy way to migrate my feeds to Google Reader?
@Michael, it is highly recommended to use Google Reader integration. If you either post or email me your device ID I can get your feed URL’s for you.
To add to my previous comment above, this morning I tried to sync and it froze without even coming back with counts first. Closing it took a couple minutes to respond (with some delay even after the app would close i.e. black screen then unresponsive home page for a few) and I got the same result when I tried to sync a second time. I’m just going to switch to Safari-based mobile Google Reader until you have a chance to figure this out. I’m still a fan of the product but I have no choice for now.
Mike, I’m going to hazard a guess from what I read on whatsoniphone.com that you may already be using the API of ReadItLater to support it.
If not, can I please vote for it as the Pro version is way cheaper than Instapaper and the product just rocks!
Thanks
Ok, Ok. You guys win. The next update will have ReadItLater support along with an option to turn off the shaking features. You also have to shake a bit harder to trigger them, so that may help out some folks.