2.4 Hints and Requests

[kuetsch]

Sorry, I messed up here - I edit your post instead of replying, and then lost the text...

Michael Ströck

[jeff_johnson_dev]

- If I typ sth. into the filter bar, the first available article gets selected automatically. This can be handy sometimes, but if the article is still unread, it will be marked as read, even if it's not the one I searched for. Even more important, if I continue typing and the selected article is not in the new filtered list any more, it might be hard to find out which article got marked as read without actually having read it.

I've fixed this for the next version.

[kuetsch]

Hi again,

I'm curious to know your thoughts about the other requests I made.

Especially I would like to know your opinion about a sync feature.
Are you going to implement something in the future or will this definitely be not a feature?

Best Regards,
kuetsch

[Michael Ströck]

- It would be cool, if the integrated browser supports multitouch gestures... I really got used to swipe left or right for back and forward actions in safari.

I wrote that feature last week or so, due to your request. Download the latest version from http://www.vienna-rss.org and start swiping up, down, left and right. You will also notice that the article-pane has swiping built in now. Just experiment :-)

- My last one is a request, I feel I'm not alone with: I would really love to see some way I could get my newsfeeds synced to my iPhone... I often read news at my iPhone and it's annoying to go through Vienna afterwards marking all the read items as read manually. Most requests in this forum mentioned a sync with Google Reader which of course would be handy even for me (always in sync "over the air", handy for Vienna-users with other handsets, etc). But I don't want to focus on GR only... If there's a way of keeping Vienna and the iPhone in sync I would be really happy with that.

Well, someone would have to write a version of Vienna for the iPhone :-) That's a completely new app, and neither Steve nor I have time for that ATM. We are currently looking at Google Reader sync for 2.5 - but no promises at this time. It would definitely awesome to have that feature, and we are absolutely not opposed to it - but somebody has to do it!

I'm afraid Your other requests are to specific to your own useage of Vienna. Vienna's stated purpose is to be as simple as possible to use for everyone. We really don't want to clutter up the interface any more.

[Cas]

It's a small thing, but in the update screen/release notes, could you put the "no longer works in 10.4" further up? I automatically hit "update", thinking "yay, even better Vienna!" and then nothing would work. When I went back through the release notes for 2.4, the note that it needs 10.5 was buried at the bottom of a long list of tech stuff.

[stevepa]

Good point. I'll move the Mac OSX 10.5 requirement to be more visible.

[Michael Ströck]

It's a small thing, but in the update screen/release notes, could you put the "no longer works in 10.4" further up? I automatically hit "update", thinking "yay, even better Vienna!" and then nothing would work. When I went back through the release notes for 2.4, the note that it needs 10.5 was buried at the bottom of a long list of tech stuff.

Hi Cas,

You are of course right - it shouldn't even let you update if your system can't run the new version. I'll make sure that this issue is fixed in the next release.

Best,
Michael

[jeff_johnson_dev]

Unfortunately, the version of Sparkle shipped with Vienna does not support minimumSystemVersion.

[kuetsch]

Thanks for the information!
The other things pointed out in my first post are primarily hints and suggestions for you, not that these would be absolute necessities for me... If you have ideas on how to improve Vienna because of this, it's good. If not, it's also ok!

Vienna for the iPhone would definitely be a cool app!
But the main problem is still, how to sync... AFAIK for the iPhone there are 2 possibilities at the moment:
- over wifi with Vienna acting as a sync server
- or - more elegant - via a web service...

The second one would require either a Vienna-WebService (very unlikely to happen) or using an existing one like Google Reader.
This is what leads me to hope for Google Reader Sync in the future... I'm pretty ok to use Google Reader with Safari, as long as I'm synced with Vienna on my Mac...

Is there a (rough) schedule for 2.5? Perhaps I'll have a look at code of the 2.5 branch and the GR api ;-)

Best regards from the city this app is named after ;-)

[kuetsch]

I wrote that feature last week or so, due to your request. Download the latest version from http://www.vienna-rss.org and start swiping up, down, left and right. You will also notice that the article-pane has swiping built in now. Just experiment :-)

This is a welcome addition! Thank you! What I couldn't find out by now is what kind of swiping do you mean in the article-pane?

best regards
kuetsch

[Cubytus]

Just adding my two cents to an old topic.

Yes, I would pay up to $5 in a heartbeat for even a closed-source version of Vienna, if it provides FAST sync for offline reading, back-sync to desktop Vienna. This is the only drawback so far of Vienna over NNW, not having an iPhone-OS compatible version. If open-source is paramount here, I can't wait to read a lawyer's advice on wether it's compatible with Apple's NDA.

I'm strongly opposed to any Google Reader sync, not only because of its poor attitude towards developpers (undocumented APIs), but also because of its poor ergonomics, its lack of support for nested files, and most important of all, because Google stores and uses all the information that we happen to give it using its services to serve ads. As such, it's the largest spyware ever created.

I left NNW right when they decided to sync only through big G services instead of NewsGator.

If some people insist on Google Reader sync, fine, but keep the choice of using an open web platform to sync news for others. Alternatively, a module connecting Vienna to the integrated Apache server in OS X could do the job, for those able to open a port in their firewall.