FeedDemon 1.5 Reviews and Download

FeedDemon enables you to quickly explore the world of RSS from your desktop without having to visit hundreds of sites. Written by Nick Bradbury, creator of TopStyle and HomeSite, it makes RSS as easy to access as your email. Thousands of web sites offer their content as RSS newsfeeds.

Software License: Shareware

Operating Systems Support: Microsoft Windows

Download Link: FeedDemon 1.5

Homepage: FeedDemon

Version ChangeLog:

Added: Integration with Bloglines for easy feed synchronization (details...)
Added: Integration with NewsGator Online Services, which works much like the integration with Bloglines
Added: Podcasting supporting via FeedDemon FeedStation (details...)
Added: "Podcasters" channel group. If you don't see this group, you can add it from the "Default Channel Groups" page of the welcome screen (Help > Show Welcome).
Added: "Advanced" page on channel properties enables assigning per-channel newspaper style
Added: "Manage Channel Groups" now enables selecting multiple channels.
Added: FeedDemon now uses IE's popup blocker when running XP SP2
Added: Favicons are now shown in the channel bar, on browser tabs and in various other areas. This can be disabled on the Appearance tab in options. Note that in order to conserve bandwidth, each channel's favicon isn't downloaded until the feed has been updated, so it may take a few days for some favicons to appear.
Added: "Expando" and "Two Cube" newspaper styles
Added: Moreover, MSN, Flickr and del.icio.us added as "Search Channel" engines (special thanks to Oskar van Rijswijk)
Added: Default channel groups in "Welcome" wizard are now displayed as a tree which enables choosing the channels in each group
Added: Category column added to the list of feeds displayed when importing an OPML file (displays the category from the OPML)
Added: "New browser tab" toolbutton added above browser
Added: "Next channel group" toolbutton added to channel bar
Added: Significant performance and memory usage improvements when switching between channels containing a large number of items
Added: Performance improvements to downloading and parsing feeds
Added: Performance improvements to newspaper generation (most notable with large newspapers)
Added: Performance improvements with large watches and searches
Added: Improved auto-discovery of FeedBurner and WordPress feeds
Added: "Check for new version" hyperlink added to Options
Added: "Show news item descriptions" added to Appearance page in Options (this is still available from the toolbar above the news item list)
Added: Option to clear the auto-discovery list when switching channels
Added: "New Group" button added to "Manage Channel Groups"
Added: 'Delete news items' added to Options > Confirmations (disabled by default)
Added: Animation during software activation
Added: Author now displayed in default newspaper style
Added: Install now warns when FeedDemon is already running
Added: "Unread or Flagged" added to newspaper filter
Added: Modified date added to available columns in the news item list. This will be blank the majority of the time.
Added: Ctrl+Alt+Home shortcut for "Channel Home"
Added: Support for RFC329 with "feed"
Added: Alternate rows in the news item grid use a different background color. The color can be changed on the Appearance tab in options.
Added: When a feed returns HTTP status code 410 (gone), FeedDemon now prompts to unsubscribe from it
Added: "Hide unflagged items" added to view menu
Added: Filter toolbar now contains "Hide unread items" and "Hide unflagged items" buttons
Added: "Clear stored items" added to local search and web search
Added: "Category" added to available columns and "Group By" selection in the news item list
Added: Drag-and-dropping any URL onto the "New Channel" button displays the "New Channel" wizard
Added: Drag-and-dropping a feed URL onto the channel bar now shows the "New Channel" wizard
Added: "Export All Groups to OPML File" added to File menu. This will create a single, categorized OPML file containing all of your subscriptions.
Added: Enclosure icon in newspaper now includes URL in tooltip
Added: Starting FeedDemon with the command line /ua performs an "Update all groups" as soon as FeedDemon starts
Added: If Shift key is held down while selecting from favorites menu, the URL is opened in a new tab
Added: When changing the location of FeedDemon's cache, you are now asked whether to move your existing data to the new folder
Changed: Auto-discovery in previous versions would detect RSS feeds by scanning and tags, but now only tags are checked
Changed: Several newspaper styles have been removed from the install and placed on the "Download Styles" page
Changed: In previous versions, empty values in the news item list showed "(empty)" but now the values are left blank
Changed: The "Hide unread" and "Copy link address" menu items have been removed from the news item list's context menu
Changed: The menu item "Synchronize Group with Online Directory" has been renamed "Synchronize Channel Group with OPML File"
Changed: The "Synchronize Group" wizard now uses a tab control to separate new channels from deleted channels
Changed: The "New Channel" wizard no longer displays a validation warning with feeds that start with whitespace (first noticed with MSDN feeds)
Changed: In previous versions, FeedDemon defaulted to marking a news item as read after being viewed for three seconds. This has been changed to one second
Changed: Auto-update is delayed when computer returns from standy mode to give time for internet connection to be re-enabled
Changed: "Manage Channel Groups" now uses Alt rather than Ctrl to toggle copy/move
Changed: Temp files are now stored in the Windows temp folder for the current user (previous versions stored temporary files - such as those used during newspaper creation - in the \Temp subfolder of FeedDemon's cache folder)
Changed: Restoring from the system tray now requires only a single click on the FeedDemon tray icon.
Fixed: Duplicate "New Channel" entry in keyboard shorcuts
Fixed: Duplicate accelerators in several menu items
Fixed: FeedStation truncates source name when creating folder for downloaded enclosure
Fixed: Ctrl+A (select all) followed by Ctrl+Q (mark as read) fails when group header is selected first
Fixed: Maximizing FeedDemon, resizing the browser, then restoring FeedDemon causes browser to be offset to the left
Fixed: Browser height not always retained when the browser is shown at the bottom
Fixed: Progress bar remains visible when switching feeds if browser is showing external page
Fixed: Search panel doesn't scroll into view when starting a new search via a keyboard shortcut
Fixed: Characters on "Update All Groups" cut off when running with large fonts and using a larger font size for message box text
Fixed: Text on new channel wizard cut off when using certain fonts
Fixed: Duplicate error when loading summary
Fixed: Double-decoding of escaped entities in newspaper
Fixed: If the browser is hidden, it re-appears the next time FeedDemon is started
Fixed: Auto-purge may discard newer items depending on the sorting of items in the actual feed
Fixed: FeedDemon displays multiple warnings if another application incorrectly removes the eSellerate engine
Fixed: Feeds whose descriptions contain multiple, consecutive CDATA sections are parsed and displayed incorrectly. Note that the fix for this problem may result in temporary duplication of items in feeds that use this technique (such as Boing Boing's feed).
Fixed: Items in Feedster feeds show empty descriptions. Note that the fix for this problem may result in temporary duplication of items in Feedster feeds.
Fixed: The RSS and OPML export features now use MSXML to ensure that valid XML is exported. This resolves a number of issues involving exported RSS/OPML.
Fixed: In rare cases, block in every item display incorrectly (seen with flickr feeds)
Fixed: Empty title shown in news item list for items with an ampersand as the last character in their title
Fixed: Consecutively hitting Ctrl+T to open a new browser tab causes address bar to dropdown
Fixed: Access violation when running a watch or search on all channels
Fixed: Hand cursor over channel list doesn't show shadow
Fixed: XML parser incorrectly handles empty elements
Fixed: Uninstall fails to remove several FeedDemon registry items
Fixed: Uninstall fails to remove FavIcon cache folder
Fixed: Mousing over an channel's unread count doesn't highlighted the channel
Fixed: Parser error in newspaper
Fixed: Double-clicking a news item when the browser is hidden does nothing
Fixed: Incorrect parsing of descriptions that have text before CDATA
Fixed: Exception when attempting to display desktop alert when screensaver is active
Fixed: FeedDemon doesn't start in the correct position when split between monitors on a multimon system
Fixed: FeedDemon's browser only keeps the last two newspapers in its history
Fixed: Crash at startup when launched by ActiveWords
Fixed: Channel bar tooltip displays over other dialogs
Fixed: Subscribing to a secure feed on a site with an invalid security certificate fails without giving an indication of the problem
Fixed: Selecting all items then choosing "Toggle news item flag" fails to toggle the first item beneath each group
Fixed: Access violation after deleting last channel group
Fixed: Newspaper changes after channel update finds new items
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