FeedIt development blog

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.