NetNewsWire and Atom

Grok Headline matches for NetNewsWire and Atom

NetNewsWire 2.0b10 and Atom

NetNewsWire 2.0b10 and Atom 12/31/2004 05:04 PM
The Atom parser in NetNewsWire 2.0b10 is a complete re-write. It’s much improved. (The change notes page goes into detail, listing tests it passes and so on.)

Aside from doing the things it’s supposed to do—decoding base64, handling namespaces, etc.—it adds a feature that I really like: it presents alternate, via, and related links.

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll explain...

An Atom item may contain multiple links. In the past, NetNewsWire just ignored the extra links. Now it parses them and presents them below the description.

For instance, Anne van Kesteren’s feed often includes related links and sometimes includes via links. Those links are displayed immediately below the description, as in the below screen shot:



This is a pretty cool feature of Atom, that you have a specified way of adding these links.

If you’re interested in more about this, check out Mark Pilgrim’s How to make a linkblog in Atom.

NetNewsWire Atom beta

NetNewsWire Atom beta 02/12/2004 07:39 PM
dear mac users, please join the rest of us in embracing THE INEVITABLE FUTURE

Blogger, Atom, NetNewsWire, bug
work-around

Blogger, Atom, NetNewsWire, bug
work-around 02/13/2004 05:23 PM
We found a bug after releasing the special Atom beta of NetNewsWire yesterday.

If a feed has summaries but no content, NetNewsWire ignores the summaries—and items display in NetNewsWire as titles only.

We’ve seen this so far with some Blogger weblogs. (To be clear: it’s not a Blogger bug.) Though we’ll fix the bug in a future release, in the meantime, if you have a Blogger weblog and you want to work around it, you can.

On the settings for your site’s feed, under Descriptions, choose Full instead of Short. Here’s a screen shot.

ucomics Atom feeds for NetNewsWire

ucomics Atom feeds for NetNewsWire 12/19/2004 03:25 PM
HubLog: ucomics Atom feeds for NetNewsWire: “So, I made a better version in Perl, that produces an Atom feed instead.”

NetNewsWire special Atom beta

NetNewsWire special Atom beta 02/12/2004 02:15 PM
Yesterday Sheila posted on ranchero.com that it was NetNewsWire’s first birthday—and now today we have a small present for you.

But first, a note about birthdays: the first beta of NetNewsWire Lite appeared going on two years ago. So if it seems like you’ve been using NetNewsWire for more than a year, it’s probably because you have.

Anyway, today we’ve posted a special Atom beta for testing NetNewsWire’s Atom parser.

Atom support is part of NetNewsWire 1.1—but this build is not a build of 1.1, it’s really 1.0.8-plus-Atom. NetNewsWire 1.1 will have a bunch of new features, but this build is just for testing the Atom parser.

NetNewsWire beta adds Atom support

NetNewsWire beta adds Atom support 02/12/2004 04:52 PM
Ranchero Software has posted a new beta version of NetNewsWire that adds support for the Atom syndication format...

More details about Postel’s Law,
Atom, and NetNewsWire

More details about Postel’s Law,
Atom, and NetNewsWire 01/16/2004 11:01 AM
Here’s something that happens all the time. An RSS feed has errors in it. It displays in NetNewsWire, but it displays incorrectly, with some weirdness. A NetNewsWire user validates the feed and sees that it has errors. Then the user emails me asking if I can fix the weirdness anyway so it would display perfectly.

Here’s the thing: being forgiving doesn’t always work. You end up not showing exactly what was intended, and users notice it, and they want to see what was intended.

It never ends, either. There’s always something new to work around. What happens is all the pressure to make things work comes down on the aggregators.

Despite all that, I agree with Postel’s Law. Atom is not a special case.

But with Postel’s Law you still have to make decisions. What’s the baseline? I’m saying that the baseline for Atom in NetNewsWire is XML well-formed-ness. NetNewsWire will probably end up liberal regarding other aspects of the spec. (I’m hoping there will be some guidelines regarding what to be liberal about and what to be strict about; but, if not, I’ll work it out anyway.)



What does this mean in practice? Some stats...

So far I’ve subscribed to 34 Atom feeds to test with.

I just tested each against the Feed Validator: 14 of these feeds are invalid according to the Feed Validator.

NetNewsWire displays all but two of them. In both cases the error is an XML parsing error.

So, obviously, there are degrees of strictness. NetNewsWire will not be as strict as the Feed Validator—not even close.

Choosing XML well-formed-ness as a baseline is not some unrealistic dictate that will prevent Atom from being popular.

I like Atom, by the way, and I’m applying this standard because I like Atom. I would be utterly pleased if in the future people would say things like “Well, you pretty much know it’s going to be well-formed XML, because it’s an Atom feed.” In other words, I’m doing what I can to make sure this future comes about, where people can do cool and creative things with Atom feeds and real XML parsers. I want Atom feeds to have the reputation of being high-quality.



You might wonder in what ways is NetNewsWire’s RSS parser forgiving of XML errors. It’s not as forgiving as you might think.

First thing to know is that it uses an XML parser (Apple’s CoreFoundation XML parser). There’s no pseudo-parser here.

It tries to be forgiving of string encoding errors with this algorithm: first it tries to parse the XML with the encoding specified in the feed (or UTF8 if not specified). If the parser won’t parse it, then it tries a few other encodings. Sometimes this gets the job done, though there may be some loss of fidelity.

It also tries to be forgiving of unencoded ampersands—but it does so in an inelegant way, and what you end up with is a feed where all the HTML tags are visible in the descriptions.

So those are also the two things NetNewsWire is not doing for Atom. In the case of the two feeds with errors, it’s possible that applying these work-arounds might have worked. But then the bugs in these feeds might never be found. (And it looks possible that in the case of one of them it’s a bug in the weblogging software that generated the feed. Everybody wants bugs like that to get fixed.)

NetNewsWire 2.0b10: podcasting, Atom,
bug fixes, more

NetNewsWire 2.0b10: podcasting, Atom,
bug fixes, more 12/31/2004 05:04 PM


NetNewsWire 2.0b10 includes bug fixes, a rewritten Atom parser, a bunch of small new features and enhancements—but the feature that will probably get the most attention is podcasting support.

Note: it’s still a beta. It still has bugs. In fact, one of the changes we made was that, the first time you launch it, a window appears that reminds you it’s a beta.

Some of the changes you were waiting for—they’re in there now. Some things you’re waiting for aren’t there yet—but we’re working on them!

The change notes go into more detail.

Screen shots

Before talking more about podcasting, here are a few screen shots, since the look of things has changed a little bit since the previous beta:

• Traditional view
• Widescreen view with datelines
• Viewing a web page
• News item with enclosure not downloaded
• Enclos ure being downloaded
• Enclos ures prefs
• Rendezvous sharing now working

Podcasting

We weren’t originally going to add podcasting support to NetNewsWire 2.0—but after intense lobbying by a thousand and one podcast enthusiasts, we changed our mind.

Here’s the gist of how it works:

1. Whenever there’s a news item with an enclosure, NetNewsWire tells you, and gives you buttons you can click to download it to disk or to iTunes.

2. You can tell NetNewsWire to download enclosures automatically or not.

3. You can tell NetNewsWire to send audio enclosures to iTunes. You can tell it to use the name of the feed as the playlist name, or you can specify a playlist name. You can also specify a genre and you can tell NetNewsWire to delete downloaded files after sending them to iTunes.

4. You can create a smart list that shows all your enclosures.

(See some of the screen shots further up to see what all this looks like.)

This is all still beta, of course—there may be bugs, and the feature may still evolve based on feedback.

More features

There are a bunch of other cool things I want to point out—but I’ll save them for follow-up posts...

Ranchero Software: NetNewsWire Atom Beta

Ranchero Software: NetNewsWire Atom Beta 02/13/2004 02:07 AM
Support adoption of Atom — download the NetNewsWire beta now!

ranchero.com/netnewswire/atombeta
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NetNewsWire 2.0b10: podcasting, Atom,
bug fixes, Yahoo search, more

NetNewsWire 2.0b10: podcasting, Atom,
bug fixes, Yahoo search, more 12/31/2004 04:41 PM


NetNewsWire 2.0b10 includes bug fixes, podcasting support, a rewritten and much improved Atom parser, Yahoo news search, performance optimizations, and a bunch of small new features and enhancements.

See the change notes for the full scoop. Also see this post on inessential.com for some screen shots and more about podcasting.

NetNewsWire, NetNewsWire Lite updated to
v1.0.7

NetNewsWire, NetNewsWire Lite updated to
v1.0.7 12/22/2003 06:30 PM
Ranchero Software today released NetNewsWire 1.0.7, the latest version of its easy-to-use RSS newsreader for Mac OS X...

NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.7
released

NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.7
released 12/22/2003 02:58 PM
This release of NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.7 adds support for favicons and feed URLs, boosts performance, and fixes dozens of bugs. The full version includes a new widescreen view especially suited for laptops.

See Wha t’s New in NetNewsWire 1.0.7 for details.

Cars To Be Assembled Atom By Atom

Cars To Be Assembled Atom By Atom 06/20/2004 12:47 PM

NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.8

NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.8 02/10/2004 02:51 AM
NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.8 fix a couple small but important bugs and add a bunch of feeds to the Sites Drawer.

See Wha t’s New in 1.0.8 for details.

NetNewsWire 1.0.1

NetNewsWire 1.0.1 03/14/2003 06:18 PM
NetNewsWire is a scriptable RSS reader and weblog editor. Cha nges in this release include bug fixes in both the news reader and the weblog editor.

NetNewsWire 1.0

NetNewsWire 1.0 02/12/2003 01:04 AM
NetNewsWire 1.0 has officially shipped. Which is great news. Thanks to Brent for all the work he did in getting this out. The only problems

NetNewsWire 1.0.1b4

NetNewsWire 1.0.1b4 03/11/2003 09:44 AM
NetNewsWire 1.0.1b4 fixes some news-reading bugs.

Read the cha nge notes for the full scoop.

NetNewsWire 1.0.1b3

NetNewsWire 1.0.1b3 03/11/2003 09:44 AM
NetNewsWire 1.0.1b3 includes a variety of bug fixes.

One of the most common causes of problems in both the news reader and the weblog editor is unencoded ampersands—and NetNewsWire is now more forgiving of this error.

Downloading categories from Radio UserLand weblogs should work again. (It was broken in a recent beta.)

See the cha nge notes for more info.

NetNewsWire 1.0.1b2

NetNewsWire 1.0.1b2 03/11/2003 09:44 AM
NetNewsWire 1.0.1b2 contains mostly fixes for the new XML-RPC code the weblog editor uses.

It’s still a beta! There are plenty more bugs to fix.

By the way, I hope to release my new XML-RPC client under a BSD license some time this week.

NetNewsWire 1.0.1b5

NetNewsWire 1.0.1b5 03/11/2003 02:00 PM
NetNewsWire 1.0.1b5 fixes some crashing bugs, partly fixes a bug regarding Movable Type categories, and moves commands from the View menu to the Window menu. (Commands that should have been in the Window menu to begin with, since they have to do with opening and hiding windows.)

Read the cha nge notes for the full scoop.

NetNewsWire 1.0.6

NetNewsWire 1.0.6 10/29/2003 07:09 PM
There are so many good things to say about NetNewsWire that it is hard to find anything wrong with it. By Bryron Hinson (ActiveMac via MyAppleMenu)

NetNewsWire 1.0.1 out

NetNewsWire 1.0.1 out 03/15/2003 08:20 AM
Ranchero reports on the release of NetNewsWire 1.0.1, the greatest RSS reader for the mac, and the only shareware product...

NetNewsWire 1.0.8

NetNewsWire 1.0.8 12/17/2004 06:35 PM
NetNewsWire is an easy-to-use RSS Web newsreader for Mac OS X. Its familiar three-paned interface -- similar to Apple Mail and Outlook Express -- can fetch and display news from thousands of different websites and weblogs, making it quick and easy to keep up with the latest news.

NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire 03/13/2003 10:16 AM
Brent has a new beta of NetNewsWireLite out. This one contains redirection and bandwidth monitoring, the two hot topics du...

NetNewsWire 1.0.7b7

NetNewsWire 1.0.7b7 12/18/2003 01:08 PM
NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.7b7 have been posted.

In the process of working on 1.1, we fixed a mach port leak and some performance bugs, and we didn’t want to wait until 1.1 before making these fixes available, so we decided to do a 1.0.7 release.

1.0.7 also contains a few of the smaller features that were planned for 1.1: a new wid escreen view is especially suited to laptops; favicons< /a> are now displayed in the Subscriptions pane; NetNewsWire now responds to the f eed URL scheme.

See the change notes for more new features and bug fixes.

The features chart comparing NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite has been updated.

NetNewsWire 1.0.7

NetNewsWire 1.0.7 12/23/2003 04:29 PM
An easy-to-use RSS web newsreader for Mac OS X.

New NetNewsWire 2.0 betas

New NetNewsWire 2.0 betas 02/05/2005 09:06 PM
Ranchero Software today announced new public beta versions of NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite. I've been a beta tester for a while now, and I have to say (along with a lot of other people) that Brent runs the best damn...

NetNewsWire Goes To Version 2

NetNewsWire Goes To Version 2 09/22/2004 10:44 AM
The public beta of NetNewsWire 2.0 is out, and it has a ton of new, and interesting features. In particularly for me, the Smart List feature is really interesting. Look likes the role of MyAppleMenu.com plays in the grand scheme of things is diminishing.

NetNewsWire 1.0.8fc1

NetNewsWire 1.0.8fc1 01/24/2004 09:30 PM
NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.8fc1 are the same as 1.0.8b1 except that the Sites Drawer has been updated with new feeds. Two new categories, Movies and Music, were created.

We’re looking for deal-stopper bugs. If none are found, we’ll change the version number to 1.0.8 and release it.

Beta: NetNewsWire 2.0b3

Beta: NetNewsWire 2.0b3 09/23/2004 11:22 AM
The RSS and Atom newsreader adds flagged items that are kept indefinitely, incremental searches, an embedded web browser, and other changes.

NetNewsWire Updated

NetNewsWire Updated 12/22/2003 05:26 PM
Ranchero Software has updated NetNewsWire, its popular newsfeed aggregator for Mac OS X. Version 1.0.7 offers many improvements, including support for newsfeed favicons, a new widescreen view format, quick subscribing from feed: URLs, and other performance enhancements. NetNewsWire is $39.95. A free version, with less functionality, is also available.

NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.7

NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.7 12/23/2003 04:29 PM
An easy-to-use RSS Web newsreader for Mac OS X.

What’s New in NetNewsWire 1.0.7

What’s New in NetNewsWire 1.0.7 12/23/2003 04:58 AM
NetNewsWire

ranchero.com/netnewswire/whatsnew/netnewswire107.php
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NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.8

NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.8 12/17/2004 06:35 PM
NetNewsWire Lit is an easy-to-use RSS Web newsreader for Mac OS X. Its familiar three-paned interface - similar to Apple Mail and Outlook Express - can fetch and display news from thousands of different websites and weblogs, making it quick and easy to keep up with the latest news.

Safari, RSS, NetNewsWire

Safari, RSS, NetNewsWire 06/28/2004 02:57 PM

“So, Brent, what do you think of Apple putting RSS reading into Safari?”

The first thing to know is that we have no intention of stopping NetNewsWire development.

The second thing is, I’m not surprised. I half-expected it last year, and this year I’d heard rumors (even seen some screen shots) before WWDC, so it’s no shock. Syndication is such great technology, it makes sense for Apple—and Microsoft—to add RSS reading to their systems.

The RSS reader in Safari is not a full-featured newsreader, at least from what I could tell by the demo. For instance, it doesn’t appear to remember what items you’ve read or tell you how many unread items you have. And some of the other features that it does have—such as RSS searching—are coming in NetNewsWire 2.0.

So... even with Safari’s RSS reader, there is still a need for newsreaders that do more. (Much more.)

What I like about this announcement is that it popularizes syndication. Despite its fast growth, there’s still a huge education job to do. The average Mac user doesn’t know about the technology yet, but putting it in Safari means they will know about it, and it gives the technology a kind of validation, an Apple seal of approval, for the people who are slower to look at new technologies.

It also may mean that Apple will evangelize RSS to publications that haven’t yet adopted it. Which is great: it’s not something we have much time for, and when CNN hears from Apple it carries a bit more weight than when they hear from Ranchero Software.

This could trigger a shake-out in the Mac OS X newsreaders market. There are a dozen or so readers right now, but by this time next year there may be Safari and just a few others. (NetNewsWire will be one of them.)



So I don’t feel as we’ve been Sherlocked. But it does look to me as if the Konfabulator folks might have something to say about Dashboard.

NetNewsWire 1.0.2 progress

NetNewsWire 1.0.2 progress 03/19/2003 10:44 PM
In case you’re curious on how NetNewsWire 1.0.2 development is going...

It’s a four-step process:

1. Move low-level, relatively bug-free code into separate frameworks. The RSS parser, for instance, goes into a framework. (The main reason is that it makes code maintenance and testing easier, and it makes it so I can re-use this code easily in other software.)

2. Fix a bunch of small quick-hit bugs. Things like bugs with date display and keyboard shortcuts. A particular crashing bug in the weblog editor. That kind of thing.

3. Fix—or at least dramatically improve—performance and memory issues when one has lots of subscriptions and lots of unread headlines.

4. Add a few new features—mostly weblog editing features such as supporting more Radio and Movable Type options. (Some other things too.)

I gave myself a week to do step 1—but it’s already finished. I did it over the weekend. It was totally fun, by the way. If you’re a Cocoa developer, but you’ve shied away from building frameworks, you should know that it’s a piece of cake.

So now I’m in the middle of step 2, doing a bunch of quick-hit bug fixes. This is one of my favorite things to do, because it’s all about polish, getting the details right. With some good hours of brain-time you can knock off bugs by the anthill.

Later this week I’ll move on to performance and memory issues, then on to adding new features probably next week. Then I’ll release the first beta of 1.0.2.

NetNewsWire and Jaguar

NetNewsWire and Jaguar 07/03/2004 06:04 PM

To be clear, in my previous post I’m thinking out loud about requiring Panther for NetNewsWire 2.0.

It’s just thinking, though. No decision has been made, I’m just bringing up the topic.

But if you’re a NetNewsWire user who uses Jaguar, I’d especially love to hear what you think. (And I’d like to know why you’re still on Jaguar. I’m sure there are good reasons I haven’t thought of.)

NetNewsWire and Keynote

NetNewsWire and Keynote 03/19/2003 10:44 PM
An interesting feature request for NetNewsWire appeared on Tom Bridge’s weblog today—creating Keynote presentations from RSS feeds.

Tom Bridge writes: “Imagine for just a moment with me. You wake up, and on the way to the shower flip open your powerbook, fire up NetNewsWire and go get clean. When you've come back, NNW has created a Keynote presentation for you.”

It’s a good idea!

But... I have a few things to do first—fixing some bugs, adding new features to the weblog editor—before I could work on this. It will be a few weeks before I can do much with this idea.

AppleScripting NetNewsWire

AppleScripting NetNewsWire 03/13/2003 10:16 AM
A screenshot of AppleScripting NetNewsWire from Brent Simmons. This rocks my world. For those without the joy of Mac in...
Grok Description matches for NetNewsWire and Atom
GrokA matches for NetNewsWire and Atom

Vulnerabilities in Merak Webmail Server.

Vulnerabilities in Merak Webmail Server. 08/17/2004 09:08 PM
Criolabs (Aug 17 2004)

Merak Mail Server Suite v8.0.3

Merak Mail Server Suite v8.0.3 06/22/2005 03:04 AM
Multiple awards winner mail server with ultimate features, complete security and guaranteed stability. Provides a wide range of optional components and services including secured mail services, user-friendly Web-Mail, Anti-Spam with updates (SpamAssassin, SPF, Bayes, SURBL, ChallengeResponse), Anti-Virus with updates, Instant Messaging (based on the Jabber protocol), GroupWare, FTP, load balancing, monitoring and report facilities. [Shareware $3940.00 30 Days 22.95 MB]

NetNewsWire and Atom

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: merak "add rss"