FeedIt development blog

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

FeedIt goes Open Source!

After many requests, I have decided to disclose the source code of FeedIt. I've placed it under the Mozilla Public License, and the project is hosted on BerliOS. Access to the source code is through SVN: I recommend you the very good Tortoise SVN.

Saturday, January 01, 2005

Time limit removed

Happy new year to everyone!

You may have noticed that the current version of FeedIt expired with the new year. I've removed the time limit: you can download the new version from here. No other changes have been made, because of lack of time...

Thursday, September 30, 2004

A small fix for RSS 2.0 dates

Only a few hours after posting the new version, StuC pointed me a problem with date parsing in some RSS 2.0 feeds. Here is a new version that fixes this problem.

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

New version available!

I've just put a new version of FeedIt for download here. Only a new feature is present (requested by Stu Collier): you can open an item in your default browser. You may need to add the relative button to the toolbar if you customized it.

This version will function until the end of the year. Let me know if you find some bugs!

Monday, August 30, 2004

FeedIt: yet another feed reader?

I was not very happy with the available feed reader tools available on the Net. I was using feedreader, but it has some troubles in being a good Windows citizen (I haven't yet managed to start it in the traybar at logon without its window popping up).

So, some weeks ago, I decided to write my own feed reader.



I wanted it to be fast and small, so I choose C++ and WTL to write the GUI. WTL is a very lightweight template class library that wraps the Windows GUI API. The result is a nice, fast GUI, and a small executable. I have used wxWidgets for some other projects and, even if it is a really good toolkit, the memory footprint is not negligible and under Windows XP some GUI elements don't have the proper look (see, for example, the status bar background and the lack of ReBar controls).

Now, after some internal use, I want to make FeedIt (yes, this is the name of the thing) available to other users for extended testing. You need Windows 2000 or XP in order to install it (no service packs needed, but as always I recommend you to use WindowsUpdate when your PC is hooked to the Net).

You can download the installer here.

This preview will work until 01/10/2004, but well before this date I will post a newer version. I haven't decided yet which features to add next, and which kind of licensing to use (freeware, shareware, etc.), so I will be glad to have your opinion on these.