RSS Bandit (codename: Collossus) will bring stability, bug fixes and Facebook integration

Mo 4 Mai, 2009; by dareo - Project Status

I’d like to apologize about the lack of updates on this site in recent months. Both Torsten and I have had the combination of work and new additions to the family at home take up a lot of our free time. I’m slowly beginning to get some time back as my son has started growing and things get less hectic at work. This weekend I started hacking RSS Bandit code again and feel it’s a good time to open up communication channels about a codename for the next release Collossus and the planned features.

Right now, I’m working on integrating support for reading your news feed from Facebook using their recently announced Open Stream API. You will be to select Facebook as a choice from the “Synchronize Feeds” menu

once that choice is made, you have to login to Facebook.

For the best experience, you should check to option to stay logged in to RSS Bandit so that we don’t have to prompt you for your Facebook username each time you run the application.

In addition, we will also be looking at bug fixes for a number of the crashing bugs that have been reported which have affected the stability of the application. We know there is at least one problem caused by the inability to render favicons in the tree view correctly which causes the application to crash. If you suspect you are hitting that problem, a temporary workaround is to disable favicons in the tree view by going to the Tools->Options menu and unchecking the option to use favicons as feed icons from the Display tab.

If you have any issues, thoughts or requests related to future versions of RSS Bandit please leave a comment in response to this post.

#1 Jeremy on Mo 4 Mai, 2009 at 1:49

Cant wait! I've always hovered around using RSSBandit as my full time reader, but there was always some feeling of instability.

Ever since FeedDemon put ads in their product I've been hoping that RSSBandit gets rolling again.

#2 Robin Capper on Mo 4 Mai, 2009 at 4:57

A few thoughts;

- Truly manual feed check (right click check category). Once running the current version will do this but irrespective of options will always check all feeds on start-up. I use a common feedlist for work & home, would like to just check the work feeds at work.

- Fix Upload/Download Feed state, used to work but never had it work on the current release (several installs on several machines). Error reading the uploaded feeds every time.

PS: What happened to the ribboned Bandit?

#3 dareo on Mo 4 Mai, 2009 at 5:23

Robin,

I know the issue of feeds being checked on startup has been an ongoing issue you've raised and I thought it was fixed in the current release. Do you have feed refresh rate set to zero?

Upload/Download feed state is fixed in the current source tree.

#4 Robin Capper on Mo 4 Mai, 2009 at 10:04

Dare, I didn't have update on 0, thought that stopped even manual updates. Will try it :)

Reason for ribbonisation query was I flip Bandit from Widecreen laptop to normal aspect monitor. Toolbars, even locked, jig around but ribbon apps reconfigure better.

#5 Robin Capper on Di 5 Mai, 2009 at 6:09

Hi Dare, For me with .870 and all feeds set to 0 refresh still seems to update.

I had favicons on, trying with it them off but seems the same. Will be a day or so before can be certain.

#6 Faust on Di 5 Mai, 2009 at 9:49

Can I assume from the mockup that you are also adding sync with google reader?

#7 Davin Peterson on Di 5 Mai, 2009 at 3:11

NewsGator FeedDemon has added Google Sync in it's latest beta, and it works faster that RSS Bandit.

RSS Bandit is much slower.

#8 dareo on Di 5 Mai, 2009 at 3:17

Faust,

The current available release of RSS Bandit already has the ability to sync with Google Reader.

#9 Robin Capper on Mi 6 Mai, 2009 at 1:03

Re #2,3,5

Closed Bandit yesterday with all feeds marked read.

Launched Bandit, today & minimsed it.

Feedlist should stay "all read" but is refreshing and showing new unread items across all feeds.

- Initiate DL Feeds on Startup not ticked

- Feed Refresh all 0

- Favicons off

#10 friendster graphics on Do 7 Mai, 2009 at 10:10

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#11 friendster graphics on Do 7 Mai, 2009 at 10:10

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#12 Sur Sture on Fr 8 Mai, 2009 at 6:02

Sorry boys - the RSS bandit does NOT work with Windows 7. It installs, runs OK....but after reboot the GUI is gone and one cannot access the program.

#13 Sur Sture on Fr 8 Mai, 2009 at 6:05

Sorry Boys - The RSSBandit does not work with Windows 7. It installs, runs OK but after reboot the GUI is gone preventing access to the program. Also the RSS Bandit process cannot be stopped using the task manager... A fix would be greatly appreciated.

#14 dareo on So 10 Mai, 2009 at 6:01

I'm using RSS Bandit with Windows 7 right now and it works for me. Can you look C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\RssBandit folder for an error.log file that describes the error that is occuring when you run the application?

#15 dareo on So 10 Mai, 2009 at 6:01

#16 justausr on Mo 11 Mai, 2009 at 2:21

I am on Windows 7 and things are working as well as they did on Vista. There were some issues with the display that have been fixed by the RC, but these were not RSS Bandit issues but Win 7 Beta and HTML control issues.

#17 Todd on Mi 13 Mai, 2009 at 2:40

I've been using rss bandit for quite a while and there are a few things I'd like fixed/resolved It would be most helpful. I don't know if you have plans for them or not.

1) The speed is pretty horendous on an older computer. And so is the memory consumption.

2) The other thing is the ability to "filter" feed entries out. For example, I subscribe to "computer tech" but I only want feeds related to "C++" to be displayed.

Thank you so much, I love RSS Bandit though.

#18 john on Mi 13 Mai, 2009 at 7:49

That's cool, I didn't know about it.

#19 Tomislav on Sa 23 Mai, 2009 at 10:21

* for remote storage I use FTP service. When I upload RSSBandit state to FTP everything works fine. But when I try to download RSSBandit state I got error „Feedlist download failed with error: Closed ..“

* I define custom formatter Outlook-express. But when I read articles using Search Folder on preview pane default Outlook2003-orange is applied.

#20 dareo on Sa 23 Mai, 2009 at 4:09

Tomislav,

The issues with remote storage will be fixed in the next release.

I will look into the search folder issue. However we tend to use a different formatter for search results.

#21 Todd on So 24 Mai, 2009 at 8:41

It would be a really good idea if there was a better way to organize the tabs. Sometimes I have a lot of tabs open and the only way to get to the last tab is to very slowly scroll using the little arrows. The other way is to keep clicking the last tab, but if you accidentally click too many times, you'll close the tab! :-O