Software Update: RSSOwl 1.2.1 RC1

The RSSOwl program can retrieve the latest news from various RSS, RDF and Atom feeds over the Internet. Looking up news items is done via the search function and thanks to the tabbed interface you keep an overview of all the news on offer. Because the program is written in Java, it runs on Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows, among others. The developers have dismissed the first release candidate of version 1.2.1 with the following announcement:

We are happy to announce the first release candidate of upcoming RSSOwl 1.2.1. It includes a lot of bug fixes and some really cool new features that improve usability.

Version 1.2.1 Release Candidate 1

Features:

• #122120 Next Message should go to the next feed This feature has been improved to respect the current selection in the tree of favorites such as the next favorite is searched in the tree beginning with the selected one.
• It is now possible to mark a Newsitem as unread by clicking on the icon in the first column of the News-Table that indicates the unread-state. Another click will mark the News read again. This allows to easily mark a News as unread without using the contextual menu or a hotkey.
• Creating a new Favorite, the contents of the Clipboard will now fill the URL input field in case some text is available that makes a valid URL. This way, simply copy a Feed’s URL into the clipboard (usually Ctrl+C), hit “New Favorite” in RSSOwl and find that URL already fill the input field. Note that the URL will not fill the input field in case the URL is matching a Favorite that is already present in the list of all favorites.
• The Feed-Discovery-Dialog is now also automatically pasting the contents of the Clipboard into the input field, if it contains a valid website.
• The Favorites Tree is now keeping its vertical scroll position when doing various operations, like drag and drop or renaming of Items, rather then focusing on the selected item. This brings stability that makes it easier to manage favorites and categories when a lot of items are visible and expanded.
• It is now possible to move a Tab from the TabFolder to a different position, simply by dragging the Tab to the desired location and dropping it there.
• Performing a Search on a Category now allows you to see and change the Category from the search dialog. The UI is quite the same on how the Category is shown for Adding or Editing a Favorite.
• The “Select Category” dialog is now pre-selecting the Category in the Tree that is set making it easy to see, which Category has been selected for the item.
• Creating a Category from the “Select Category” is now sorting the new category to the correct position, based on a lexigraphical compare with the other items. This makes the position of the new Category consistent with the new Category being created in the Favorites Tree.
• The “Select Category” dialog is now indicating Categories containing unread Favorites with the common icon that is also used in the Favorites Tree.
• If a Category contains no unread Favorite at all, the icon will no longer show as unread, even if the Category contains sub-categories with unread Favorites. The bold indicator remains untouched. With this new way of indication (none, bold and special icon) you can now easily spot, wether a Category directly contains unread Favorites, or only unread sub-categories.
• Added a new Menu-Item “Open” to the context menu of any Category in the Favorites Tree. When selected, RSSOwl will open all direct Favorites of the selected Category inside Tabs of the TabFolder. This new Item is only showing up when Tabs are enabled at all in preferences.
• When “Link with displayed Feed” is enabled, the linking is now working bi-directional, such as when selection changes in the Tree and the Favorite or Category is open in the TabFolder, it will automatically select the Feed in the TabFolder as well.
• Windows: All custom Colors in RSSOwl (eg the background color of the main toolbar) are now made consistent with the colors of the Themes Classic, Silver, Olive and Royal as well as the Blue Theme on which the colors where already optimized for. In addition, in case any other classic theme is used (including High Contrast Mode), RSSOwl is not using custom Colors anymore, to ensure a consistent look on these Themes as well.
• Failing to create the Internal Browser on Linux will now automatically open the FAQ and highlight the entry that deals with how to setup the system in order to use it.
• The default update interval for new Favorites is now set to 1 hour. This new default will only take place when installing RSSOwl with an empty profile.

Bug fixes:

• The XML Parser is now also supporting Java encoding names, besides the common ISO encoding names. This makes RSSOwl recognize even more newsfeeds.
• The Tree in the “Select Category” Dialog did not respond to a double-click on the Image left to each TreeItem.

Version 1.2.1 Preview 2

• Improved shutdown performance giving RSSOwl a bigger chance of saving the state of read/unread News on an abnormal shutdown (eg forced by the OS).
• The XML Parser is now also supporting Java encoding names, besides the common ISO encoding names. This makes RSSOwl recognize even more newsfeeds.
• Changed license to EPL, the Eclipse Public License

Version 1.2.1 Preview 1:

Features:

• RSSOwl for Mac is now using universal binaries, allowing to run it both on Mac PowerPC and Mac Intel.
• All Favorites are now remembering their number of unread News between restarts. That allows to easily spot Feeds with unread News after startup, without the need of reloading the Favorites.
• #122120 Next Message should go to the next feed. Calling “Go to next unread News” will now automatically open feeds with unread News if available from the Tree of Favorites. This easily allows to navigate to the next unread News without having to open its feed first.
• Several improvements for the Offline Mode:
  • While being in offline-mode, the connected menuitem in the “File” menu will now indicate that with a special icon. The text of the item is no longer changed for better indication when being in offline mode. On Mac, where no Icons are used for MenuItems, the indicator is the system’s default “checked” symbol.
  • In case a feed is opened that cannot be displayed in offline-mode, a new Button “Work Online” is shown in the Error-Tab. Once that is pressed, RSSOwl will go into “Online”-Mode and reload the feed automatically.
  • A hotkey can now be assigned for the action “Work Offline”
  • While being in offline mode, the Title will show an additional “- [Work offline]”as indicator for this state.
• Calling “Go to next News” will now automatically open Feeds from the list of Favorites.
• Updated to HttpClient 3.0 final
• Updated SWT to 3.2 M5
• Updated SWT-NL to 3.1.1
• Added new language Slovak (thanks to Vlado Jasan)
• Added new language Croatian (thanks to Neven Zitek)

Bug fixes:

• Finally fixed a very annoying bug where RSSOwl kept losing stored authentication credentials for feeds that where redirected to a different URL (like Gmail).
• Windows: The Newstext was not allowing to open any link externally if set in preferences. This fix is ​​basically a revert of a change for RSSOwl 1.1. Links will now open in your external Browser if clicked from the Newstext view again. This allows to reduce the usage of Internet Explorer to a minimum (display of simple HTML for the Newstext).
• In some rare cases, settings where completely reset to defaults, in case RSSOwl was shut down abnormally during shutdown of the operating system.
• Focus is now automatically given to the internal Browser-Tab after entering a URL into the location text-field, selecting the Browser-Tab or displaying a Feed as HTML. This fixes the issue where you had to click into the Browser in order to scroll with the Mouse-Wheel.
• Focus is now automatically given to the location-field in the Browser-Tab if the current URL is about:blank. In addition the title of such a Tab is now showing “No Title” instead of “about:blank”.
• The setting “Set Focus on New Tabs” is now working as expected and only avoiding setting focus on _new_ tabs. Any Tab that is already opened however, will always get focus in case requested. This fixes an issue where the History-Dropdown in the Toolbar was not usable at all when selecting an item.
• When the browser is disabled for Newstext display, a lot of HTML Tags where not stripped from the view. Now most of the tags are removed from the Text. Still showing are anchors allowing it to click on them for further browsing.
• When determining whether a News is new or not, Guides where only taken into account in case they where valid URLs. But some Feeds simply use a unique number or non-URLs. These are taken into account now as well.
• Fixed a bug where RSSOwl kept showing News as unread, even if they have been marked read. Affected News where coming from Feeds that use non-URL-valid GUIDs.
• The Format-Attribute was not set to a Channel in case a feed missed the version attribute. This could result in a crash when searching or discovering Newsfeeds.
• Fixed a crash and a lot of problems when displaying Feeds that either do not provide any title-information or use HTML in that title-tag.
• TabFolder showed screen-cheese when switching between using Tabs and not using them in preferences.
• Reduced Table-Flicker when sorting Table (no longer using setVisible but setRedraw)
• Most Toolbars where not accessible using the Tab-Key.
• In some places FileInputStream / FileOutputStream was used unbuffered. Improved performance by wrapping these with buffered streams.
• A Favorite in the Tree was no longer showing its unread status, if edited in the Favorite Dialog.
• Language Attribute from Atom 1.0 Feeds was not parsed
• #1431620 Ctrl-C to copy doesn’t work in Browser
• #1413074 Browser status line shows shortcuts (underlined character)
• #1394656 xml:base not respected in Atom 1.0 Feeds if set in Root-Element
• #1233293 [SWT-Bug] [Browser] “Next Message” should not move Focus When focus is on the NewsText-Browser, it will not be grabbed by the Newstable when calling “Next Message” or “Next Unread Message”. This is helpful when a News is long enough that scrolling is required.
• #1369224 Dates not always parsed correctly – Added some new Date formats that are now recognized by RSSOwl.