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NewsFire 1.3 (v53) Beta

Site Icons in NewsFire 1.3

NewsFire 1.3 (v53) Beta is now available for download. This release fulfills the long-standing request to have NewsFire download and display site icons for its feeds. I had always debated with myself whether site icons were unnecessary visual clutter or useful visual cues. The latter opinion won out in the end, though individual users can set the appearance preference whichever way they prefer. Site icons are enabled by default right now, but I may change this.

Unless I have any last-minute feature inspirations, I believe that the 1.3 beta line is wrapping up. I’m sure there will be a few bug-fix releases before general release, but most of my feature goals have been met.

On a different topic, I ordered a stock Intel iMac today, with expedited shipping even, so I can immediately get to the task of verifying and optimizing all my software for these new machines. I never had any real interest in getting a developer “transition” machine, opting for the real thing instead. My software is essentially pure Cocoa, so I do anticipate delivering universal binaries within a few hours or days of getting the box… depending on how much fooling around I do before working, of course.

  • January 10th, 2006 10:12 pm

12 comments...

Chris...

Too bad you didn’t get yourself a DTK, Apples now replacing them with the new Intel iMacs. http://developer.apple.com/dtkexchange/


Josh...

Great news! I prefer the asthetic of not having icons shown, so I appreciate you leaving it as an option. Thank you for all your hard work.

Congrats on the iMac. Maybe since it won’t take very long to create the universal binary, you could spend the saved time figuring out the whole Photocasting RSS API and maybe using Newsfire to subscribe to photocasts instead of iPhoto!

Cheers


Chris...

Thanks for this, been something I rather liked in NNW. Congrats on the new iMac purchase, I was just about to do the same. 7-10 days shipping time for us Aussies.


dwblog...

If Photocasting is just RSS that anyone can subscribe to, then I don’t think there’s anything that needs to be done. It should just work already.


Rob...

Nice. I can dig it.

And all I can say is that I hope the proceeds from Newsfire (and others) helped pay for the new machine. Seriously amazing stuff and I appreciate all the work you put into it on a regular basis. The best keeps getting better.

Have fun with the iMac!


Jack...

Thanks for the update, and also congrats on the new iMac. I am wondering if there’s any localization plan for the brand new NewsFire 1.3, like what we did before for v1.0. I am always ready to start localization for this great application. :-)

Cheers


Josh...

Hopefully that will be the case, but it looks like from the demo that even if you have Safari RSS set as your default reader, iPhoto catches all the Photocasted links, so there must be something special in the url that tells iPhoto to grab it instead of Safari. Maybe even a new URL scheme. Whatever it is, I am sure it will be trivial for you to add it if it’s something you plan on doing.

Catching photocasts on Newsfire. The thought of that is just awesome.


dwblog...

Josh, if you watch the keynote closely, clicking the photocasting link launches Safari first and then launches iPhoto. It’s not a new URL scheme – it’s Apple’s applications colluding with each other presumably to lock out third-party developers.

Now, this is just speculation. Perhaps if you have an RSS reader other than Safari listed as your default, it will bypass iPhoto. I tried testing this with the photocast URL used in the keynote, but it is dead.


Josh...

Wow. That’s interesting. I really hope they are not blocking it out. I’d rather keep my iPhoto to myself and not have it buldging with a bunch of other people’s content. Newsfire is the perfect thing to keep track of a photocast.

See the new photos as they show up, get notified by growl/dock icon. If I like the photo, then I can save it to iPhoto, if not, let it be.

I can’t wait to start using it. Thanks again for all your work!


Adam...

I tried a photocast URL, and it worked like a regular RSS feed in Newsfire. I don’t have iLife 06 yet so I’m not sure if that would affect the behaviour once it’s installed.


Andrew...

I can’t seem to get PhotoCasting to work with NewsFire. I’ve installed iLife ’06 on my PowerBook, but when I try to view the PhotoCast URL in safari – it automatically launches iPhoto and subscribes.

When I try to add the feed in NewsFire – it adds but refreshing yeilds nothing. It’s as if the feed doesn’t exist.

Ps. Is there any way we can have some kind of status on the interface that lets us know when feeds are refreshing and downloading?

Great work Dave, Andrew!


Nico...

On Growl support, I would like to be able to click on a Growl notification (not on the X dismiss target) and have NewsFire display the related post. This is a behaviour I have working with FMenu (a Facebook gateway) which works with Growl to load the user’s page when a notification from them is click on, but still allows a notification to be dismissed. In the Growl PP I have selected ‘Inform NewsFire when a notification is clicked’ but it still doesn’t behave in the way I had hoped/expected.