New Features for the Next Major Update
August 18, 2008 — Mike (admin)This post is just to keep everyone up to date on the development of Feeds and all of the new features that will be in the next major version. We have receive a ton of feedback on what everyone wanted to see in the new version and we quite simply put them in the order that they were most requested and started working on them. Here is a list of what to expect in the next major version (I’m sure I’ll forget a few so there will probably be updates to this post):
- Offline Mode – Feeds will store your feed items on your iPhone so you don’t need to have internet access to be able to be able to read them
- Unread Count – Each of your feeds will have the current amount of items that are unread next to the title
- Editable Titles – You’ll be able to edit the titles of all of your feeds to whatever you’d like
- Categories – Categorize your Feeds into ‘folders’ for simple organization. Great for those with a lot of feeds. (Note: if you don’t have any categories for your feed it will work exactly as it does now. All feeds with no categories will appear on the front page)
- Read Web Pages in Feeds – instead of opening Safari to check out the originating web site you will be able to check them out right in Feeds. PLEASE NOTE: This one comes with a major disclaimer. It will be available only from the Settings application on your iPhone/iTouch. This is because there are quite a few bugs when using Mobile Safari in an application that causes it to crash when a web page has a lot of external assets (images, style sheets and especially javascript files). We originally had this in Feeds but the instability caused us to remove it. Due to popular demand, you can turn this on and take the responsibility for the instability by your own choice!
There are probably a few more that I am missing, so when I think of them I will update this post.
Thanks esp. for the last point! =)
Fantastic!! I can not wait for these updates. Can you please explain more about the instability of viewing the feed of the originating website? Why does embedding web viewing within an app cause it to become unstable? Also can you give us an eta on expected updates? Thank you for your excellent work on such a great app. I look forward using the new features you are working on.
Hi Jason, The issue I’ve come across with viewing web pages within the app are almost always due to there being a lot of javascript and CSS files for the website. This causes the embedded Safari to rapidly eat up the limited amount of memory available for the application and the iPhone has a killswitch built in to automatically close an application when it uses too much memory. It makes it look like the developer made a sloppy application when there is nothing that we as developers can do about it. That’s why the harsh warning will be in place for that feature. That being said, lite use and most web sites will work fine in it. If you view some resource intensive sites that were designed for normal browsers with 2+ Gigs of RAM it’s going to crash Safari at times.
As for release dates…we try to avoid giving them because you just never know. I can say that all of the server side code is done and mostly tested. The iPhone side of things is moving along rapidly as well. We have categories and renaming feeds done and we have the offline syncing just about wrapped up. That’s about all I can say but not too worry, it won’t be much longer.
Mike
First of all I love feeds. It’s my favorite app now for my iPhone. I use it at least two or three times per day. The new features sound awesome and I’m really grateful to the developer for working hard to make this great little app even better.
I have a feature request that I’d love to see in Feeds eventually but I don’t know how feasible it would be. I’d love to be able to sync my iPhone Feeds to an online service or desktop app. I don’t know how feasible this would be but I’d love to be able to read my feeds on my desktop when I’m at home and have the read/unread count reflected in my iPhone. Also adding and managing my feeds would be much easier on the desktop. Could you possibly have feeds sync using the Google Reader API? Or what I would like even better than that is if there was a Feeds for OS X that could sync with the iPhone version!!!
Jake, thanks for the comments. As soon as Apple gets the new version in the App Store and we are sure it is stable we are planning to begin work on integration with Google Reader. We are big Reader users here and always intended to get it integrated. We already have a nice base ready to go but injecting that base into Feeds will be a bit of work.
Mike
is there going to be an option to clear the read feeds?
Jiub, the current version does not allow you to clear read feeds. This is something that we can certainly consider adding in we get some more requests for it.
Your latest version of Feeds is great. Can you add a settings option in “Items Per Feed” for something less than the current minimum of 100? (maybe 50 or 25). Downloading 100 items for each configured source while operating in a Edge coverage area (low data rate) is sometimes very slow. Limiting the new items to 50 or 25 would considerably speed up the refresh time while on a slow network . Thanks.
Hi Dean, The ‘Items Per Feed’ setting is just to let Feeds know how many you want to keep on your iPhone for each feed. If you do a sync and there are only 5 feeds available, Feeds will only download 5. We can certainly consider setting a smaller number which would keep Feeds from ever downloading more than that number.
Thanks for the feedback.
Mike
I bought this great product. Thanks so much.
The killer missing feature for me is ability to import from Safari the RSS feeds. I have dozen of feeds I read, and I don’t want to retype long URLs to use this.
Thanks.
Hi Bob, thanks for the feedback. We don’t have the exact feature you asked for but we do have something similar. Check out the blog post 2 newer than this one titled Feeds 0.95 Finally Available in the App Store Plus new Features or go directly to http://feedadder.appspot.com.
Let me know if that helps you out at all.
Mike
Any chance that RSS authentication can be added? I use base camp by 37signals for project management and there is an option to get updates via RSS but it requires a user name and password to access the feed. This would be a great addition if possible.
Hi Lee, With our current setup we cannot use authentication without passing your username and password over a non-encrypted connection which is something we don’t want to be responsible for. If we get enough demand we would consider springing for a secure server without a doubt.
Mike
Hey guys
Love the app — i am totally addicted.
In preparation for the Google Reader integration, i got my gReader feeds organized and now i’m loving that on my desktop.
Roughly, what’s your ETA for the new iphone app version with gReader integration?
Hi John,
Thanks for the feedback. We try to stay away from release dates so as not to release anything before it is ready. That being said, we are well on our way to Reader integration and we can already get your feed list, get feeds, mark them as read or starred, mark all as read, add feeds, remove feeds and a bunch of other things. There is a bit more to do and we have a LOT of testing to do but we are very happy with our progress.
Sorry that answer is so vague…
Mike
it wasn’t vague. Thanks for the response.
I volunteer myself a beta tester of the new version if you need people.
I think the current version of Feeds for iPhone is very nicey done.
The only “requests” I’d have for future versions would be: a) option to customize or eliminate the Green Startup Screen and b) add a “Sort by Name” feature to allow feeds to appear by name vs. in the order added.
Otherwise, looking good !
Brian, Thanks for the feedback. Customizing the startup screen is not allowed by Apple so we can’t do anything about that one. As for sorting feeds, just touch the ‘Edit’ button and drag the feeds in any order that you want.
Mike
Hey guys — i just wanted to pass along a few recommendations while you are readying the next version of Feeds.
First of all, i can not wait for the gReader integration. I’ve tried some other apps out there, and all still do not deliver what Feeds offers, and when your gReader syncing app comes out, Feeds will be the app to beat.
1. Please make sure you keep two-lines for the headlines of each feed in the unbold font . So many other apps use one-line BOLD headlines and it is totally inefficient for browsing when you can’t make out the stories.
2. A preference setting to allow additional lines of the story under the Headline would be cool (similar to the way the iPhone Mail app works (0-5 lines of the message)
3. Full gReader ‘Folder Support’ is essential.
4. Preference to default to a Folder of feeds: Example: I have a folder called ‘Favorites’ which are my go-to feeds whenever I want to read, and it would be great if the app would load those if set in the preferences. (Mobile gReader has this feature)
5. “River of news” for Folders is essential as well – i hope you are considering it. I often like to read some NEWS site’s feeds individually, but with some folders, i.e. Entertainment – i really don’t care where the info comes from — just want the info from all of them at the same time.
5a. In “River of News” mode (folders) adding the site name next to the date/time of the post on the first line would be helpful.
Just a few things that i think will make Feeds top-notch, I am a big fan of your app and want it to succeed as the best RSS reader app for the iphone.
Best of luck on the new update.
A minor enhancement suggestion. In the add new feed menu, can you add a www. button? Would be a natural addition to the .com button already there!
Brian, The keyboard button cannot be modified unfortunately. They are all done by Apple and we can’t add or remove keys from them.
Mike
This was the second feed app that I used with the iphone and one of the best I’ve seen – kudos to you guys for creating such a solid app. There are, however, a few suggestions I have for what I think would be solid and highly attractive new features:
*Offline caching: for peeps who are disconnected for long periods of time (e.g. subway, flight), an offline caching ability such as the one that Byline uses would be killer. Byline syncs not only the feed highlight, but the linked full article as well – and unlike all others that I have seen – including pics.
*Ability to sync with GReader (which I see you are now working on).
I have been using Byline of late for these two reasons. That said, one thing that sucks about Byline is it’s inability to add/manage feeds locally – a product of it;s 100% dependence on Google reader. IF you guys could bridge this gap you’d leave the others in the dust with a comfortable lead.
Keep up the great work
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the feedback. GReader sync is taking a bit longer than we had expected due to Google changing a bunch of things. We fully expect to have feed management of your GReader feeds built into the program including adding and removing feeds. We have one more small update coming out to get some more background stuff done before the big GReader release.
Offline articles is something that we considered but didn’t implement yet due to the fact that it takes *forever* to cache all the articles over Edge and even some 3G connections. Perhaps after GReader is ready…
Mike
I would love the ability to get rid of feeds I have read. For me, I star the ones I want to keep…the rest is just clutter. Maybe an option to swipe and delete the ones I no longer want (similar to email)?
Keep up the good work!
Hi Tammy, the new version coming in about a week or so has something similar but not exactly what you are looking for. There will be an ‘All Items’ list that will allow you to only show unread items. We will consider adding the ability to delete items in a future update.
Mike
Thanks Mike!
In the app store description under “Feeds allows you to:”, the third bullet is “Categorize your feeds into folders”. I have checked the settings as well as options in the app and can’t seem to find this option. Am I missing something?
Thank you,
- Tammy
Tammy, to add categories, tap the edit button in the top right corner than touch the feed you would like to add to a category
Mike
Thanks! Worked like a charm. Now, if only we could get rid of those pesky “read” items… =)
Hi there. I have not read all of the comments but I would greatly appreciate being able to choose from within the reader if you would like to view the rest of the feed in a new safari window or within the reader.
NetNewsWire has this option by a single button “view in safari” and the integrated browser on the link in the title or just on the title.
Hi Magnus, Believe it or not, the version of Feeds that is currently being reviewed by Apple has an option in the settings to do exactly what you are looking for.
Enjoy,
Mike