FeedsAnywhere blogs

Updates and Server Issues

chadm — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:59:20 +0000

We apologize if you tried accessing FeedsAnywhere earlier today and couldn't get through. Our server when down due to excessive load and it took a while to get running again. We made some configuration changes that should help avoid some of the problems we ran into.

In regular news, some bug fixes and other minor tweaks have been uploaded too.

Front Page Redesign, Login with Facebook, Google Reader Changes, and Bug Fixes

chadm — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 14:55:39 +0000

There are a lot of changes in this update, starting with a front page redesign to streamline it a bit and make the Feature Tour and Test Drive links more usable. We also added a login box directly to the front page to save an extra click, and while we were at it added Facebook Connect support so you can either login or create a new account using your Facebook credentials.

Selecting Login with Facebook the first time will open a new window from Facebook where you have to give permission for FeedsAnywhere to connect. From then on just clicking on the Login with Facebook button will log you onto FeedsAnywhere, assuming you are logged in to Facebook on the same browser of course.

A new Facebook tab will also appear in your user profile that gives you a way to unlink your Facebook account if you need to in the future and an optional check box to let your friends see that you have an account on FeedsAnywhere.

If you are a Google Reader user you've probably heard that Google Reader shared items have been removed in favor of sharing through Google+. Because of this we have removed the option of adding an item to your shared list. We'll working on adding Google+ support in the future. Email, Facebook, Instapaper, and Twitter sharing remain unchanged.

And finally there was a long list of bug fixes. Here is a sampling:
- Fixed a problem with the page count being wrong when not on page one.
- The jGestures plug-in will no longer be loaded when using IE8.
- Loading a page higher than one with no items will now show the navigation bar and the correct unread count.
- Mark Page Read is now hidden whenever it won't do anything.

The Latest Optimizations and Bug Fixes

chadm — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:33:57 +0000

I just rolled out a large list of changes that include performance and touch optimizations and bug fixes. Most of them are subtle touches like adding consistency to some color changes and tweaking behaviors so they are a little more appropriate for both touch and mouse interaction.

A few that you may be more interested in are:

- Touch gestures now work on Opera Mobile on Android, and on every other Android browser I've tested. The exception is changing the font size by pinching. I've only been able to get that working on the iPhone.

- Pinch to scale font size now works on a laptop with a touchpad capable of recognizing pinch events.

- An error will now be shown when a request times out. This will usually be due to a loss of network connection on a mobile device.

- Any item from the previous year will show the year in addition to the month and day.

Menu Changes and Better Support for Intermittent Connections

chadm — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 01:51:43 +0000

A new menu has been created to make navigation easier from the top of the page. Clicking the feed name will drop down a menu with entries like those at the bottom of the page. The existing settings menu that is accesses through the wrench icon has been widened.

All of the drop down menus will increase in size for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone devices to make them more accessible by touch.

The other big change is the addition of a transaction queue. Any action you take, like marking an item read or saving a story, will be saved and if your Internet connection is lost those actions will be retried once a link is clicked after getting connected again. I have found this to be very valuable when using my Android phone since the connections get confused a bit switching between WiFi and HSPA+.

And as usual some miscellaneous bugs have been fixed.

Gestures, Flexible Font Sizes, and Animations

chadm — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 21:19:32 +0000

Today's update features some exciting new capabilities. For the first time FeedsAnywhere supports some touch screen gestures that will, hopefully, improve your mobile reading experience. If, for some reason, the presence of gestures is causing you problems there is a disable switch in the settings. I also added disable for favicons.

Supported Gestures

- Swipe left to expand or collapse the item while in Title View. This is especially useful when reading a long item that you want to get past because you won't have to scroll to the bottom before closing it.

- Long (edge-to-edge) swipe left will open the original URL.

- Swipe right will either mark the item read or unread.

- Pinch open will increase the font size.

- Pinch close will decrease the font size.

One note about the pinch gesture is that I've only found it to work on the iPhone so far, although presumably it would work on the iPad as well. I'm not sure if it is a limitation of some of the Android phones, or if there is a limitation to the library I'm currently using.

Don't worry if pinch doesn't work though, because a couple icons have been added to the bottom of the settings menu (wrench icon) that will also do it. This is the method if you want to change font size using a mouse. One difference between changing fonts and other settings is that it is specific to the browser and not a setting being saved on the server.

The final item you will notice are some smoother animations when expanding and collapsing items.

Page Positioning and Icons

chadm — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 18:23:41 +0000

Today's update comes with a number of changes. The first one you may notice is the default positioning of the page on a mobile browser. Previously the address bar (and tabs in the case of Dolphin HD) remained on the screen, but now the screen is scrolled so they are hidden at the top and more usable content is shown. If you want the address bar back at any time simply scroll up and it's still there.

The second change has to do with thumbnails next to the title. If an appropriate image isn't found in the item, FeedsAnywhere will check to see if the website has an apple-touch-icon to use instead. If that does not exist either then the default arrow will be used.

And on the subject of icons you'll now see the favicon for the feed's website next to the title when viewing an individual feed. They will also be displayed on the Select a Feed page that displays your entire feed list.

And finally, there are some bug fixes to address some lingering positioning issues of images in an item's description and some feed parsing errors.

Going Backwards

chadm — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 02:35:37 +0000

One long standing open I haven't addressed has been getting the browser's back button to work. Because page numbers use hashes browser's would ignore a change and not go backwards. I'm please to say that this is no longer the case and moving back (or forward) will function just as you'd expect.

Sticking with the same theme I also made some improvements to how sharing a story on Facebook and Tweeting are handled. Previously if someone mistakenly tapped on the Facebook or Tweet link they would have to load up their accounts to remove the posts, but now all you have to do is press the menu entry a second time (after the check appears) and it will be removed. Google Reader already had this capability. Instapaper does not because their API only supports removal for subscribers.

Aside from those changes there are some more tweaks to how descriptions are displayed and some bug fixes.

A Simple View

chadm — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 17:06:14 +0000

I uploaded a few more modifications, including some changes to Simple View. Simple View is a option through the wrench menu that is only applicable when using Title View. It is irrelevant when using Combined View.

If you use Title View and want to see just the title without the second line listing the date, Mark Read, and the feed then Simple View is for you. The difference between it and Title View is removing that line. That's not to say the the functionality is removed, it's just added to what is hidden and will appear along with the item's description when clicking to expand it.

Better News Reading

chadm — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 02:08:54 +0000

I uploaded some new changes that should translate into a better reading experience on FeedsAnywhere. Previously the feed content wasn't formatted so it could look haphazard at best when some images were being shown. Now it will float images to the sides so text can move around them or center them as appropriate given the size of the images compared to the screen.

There were also some bugs fixes and the usual performance improvements as I can find them.

A More Explicitly Scalable Interface

chadm — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:20:14 +0000

When we first started FeedsAnywhere we wanted to create a scalable interface that was consistent from phones through desktops, but as displays moved to widescreen formats it became apparent that we sometimes scaled too far. The solution is to provide each user some control to define a maximum width.

The controls to do that are very simple. When the mouse is over the right edge of the site the mouse cursor will change and the border will have a green glow. The border can now be resized by holding a click down and dragging left and right. The new width will be saved and become you're new default.

We hope you'll like the new changes and that they will make your feed reading experience more enjoyable.

UPDATE: I forgot to add that double clicking on the right edge will expand the width to 100%.