Poll: What kind of features you'd like to see in Feedreader?


We are constantly want to make Feedreader better and better. In this forum users are talking mostly about small additions to Feedreader. But at the same time we'd like to add some bigger features, too. Features what are not small usability additions (like "add configuration option to notification dialog") but REALLY NEW FEATURES POSSIBLY NOT EXISTING IN OTHER READERS.

So in this thread you can do some brainstorming and let's see if something interesting comes out :).

Greetings
Toomas

Update Feed Delay

I'd like to see an option so that FeedReader will wait x minutes after starting to update feeds for the first time and then continue with the regular update schedule thereafter. My machine takes so long to boot as it is and I have found that the feeds updating slows this process down even more. So I have turned off automatic updates and am only do manual updates, but often forget about it for the entire day. Thanks in advance!

Order of incoming feeds, and add option to highlight a feed.

Hi, thanks for the great program.

I have 2 requests.

I have some articles which when i hover the mouse pointer over them, have a box, with a light yellow background, and bold printing, that pops up. I can't find any characteristic that identifies this particular article to "pop-up", nor can i find an option to disable this bothersome action. I would like an option to disable this.

I use the Classic view. I would like when the focus of the mouse pointer is within a window, to be able to use the wheel to scroll THAT window, without having to click to change focus.

thanks,
Ron

Automatic syncronization

Hello!
I really like ReedReader, but there are two things that i would like to see in the next version:
1. An autosync feature, which automatically runs the syncronization every xx minutes. Also i would like an option to sync "silent", meaning that the sync box does not appear when the application syncronizes. Maybe just a notification in the status bar of when the last sync was made.

2. When you choose to open links in the applications web browser, and choose to open links in a new window, the application opens them in IE, even though my standard browser is Firefox. If it's possible to update this so that there is an option "open in new tab", that opens the link in a new tab in the user's standard browser.

Thanks for a great application!

//Victor Mangs, Sweden

xxx

When you add a new feed, feedreader creates an associated smartfeed with always the same settings...

Match any of the following rules
Feed name / is / new feed

...I would like the ability to change this standard layout for example to..

Match all of the following rules
Feed name / is / new feed
Satus / is / Unread

...so that each new feed I add will have these preselected setting or preselected filters.

You could probably make a hidden reference smartfeed, that is only accessible through the options menu or so...

Highlight and other sugestions

hi, i really love feedreader and hope to new one with updates is coming out soon. can i just suggest a few things that may be possible and i wish them to be added, they are as follows;- 1. highlight, flag the folder in which you currently have a flag on a feed. 2. have a few options for sounds e.g. play a sound when adding a feed, play a sound when update is complete, play sound on the desktop alert.

xxx

A checkbox for each rule to be able to disable it without removing it..

xxx

Some kind of shortcut to refresh the unread count maybe in the bottom bar since it never works 100% correct and as you said yourself you won't be able to fix that.

xxx

A count for archived articles in the database information window.

Build feedreader into a screensaver

Hi, is it possible to build feedreader into a screensaver?

I've seen this type of function on a friends computer in Swededn but not come across it in the UK.

release the source code under an open source licence

if you do so, many developers like me will be happy to tune the application or add new features requested by the user for free.

here is a study of the impact of releasing your closed source code into an open source code. I was one of the writer :-)

website: http://www.publicsectoross.info
final report: http://www.publicsectoross.info/images/resources/15_154_file.pdf

Abdelkrim

Avoid the download of enclosures several times

A "hash file + size + original URI" should be created in the feedreader DB listing all enclosures already downloaded.

Several times, feedreader download the same enclosures again and again.
an option must exist to avoid that.

PS: I don't have an unlimited bandwidth, when i leave feedreader open, sometimes it downloaded 0.5 Gb after 2 hours for nothing as the enclosures are already there.

thanks,

A option that articles

A option that articles become starred when I click on the title to open them in the browser cause I open only news that seem to be interesting and then I want them to be starred anyways...

Automatic marked as read

Ok I know this is not a REALLY NEW FEATURE POSSIBLY NOT EXISTING IN OTHER READERS. But it's a useful one, in fact it's a default behavior in rss readers and it would be really nice to at least have the option for people who don't want to ctrl+R every feeds they have. Thanks.

New Features - COMMON FEED LIST

We need synch with the IE COMMON FEED LIST "now", so would welcome it.

- Winston Maike; //infos
Brisbane, Australia
(21 1820ZMar08)

Synchronization of enclosures with MP3-Players

for a better podcatching-experience. I suggest a sync-feature for MP3-players i.E. MTP-devices. Perhaps it should work more stable than HappyFish.

Please add a option to

Please add a option to disable automatic fetching of records when new articles arrive. Articles should be fetched only one single time when I click on the feed. My config doesn't allow fast fetching of records so it's pretty impossible to read messages in list view (ALT + 2) and I hate it when the list of articles changes all the time cuz new articles arrive. Last thing is, that it takes much longer to mark my spam smartfeed as unread.

This one is solved with

This one is solved with noautomaticviewrefresh=1 !

Archive folder for web links

There is already an archive folder for articles.
Add an archive folder for web links.
-
See detailed description in post "Archive folder for web links" of this forum.
-

Simple rule management

Filter rule 1 (+)(-)
Filter rule 2 (+)(-)
Filter rule 3 (+)(-)
Filter rule 4 (+)(-)
Filter rule 5 (+)(-)

If I press the (+) at filter rule 2 I want the new rule to be inserted between rule 2 and rule 3 not on the last postition below rule 5. The rules become totally chaotic after a while cuz there is no way to manage them.

2D maps of feeds

Now this is something that would really make FR stand-out form the crowd.
One of the challenges of modern digital life is to make one's way inside the tsunami of information coming at you. The question is how to visually display information in a space-constrained way (space is constrained by the size of the screen). Traditional feed readers are linear, like is the case with the webview.
-
What would be nice is to display the feed information visually, graphically, like you can see on many mashups these days, like digg or flickr mashups.
One example is this:
-
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm?layout=1&selected=us&categories=world,nation,business,technology,sports,entertainment,health
-
This site fetches news from Google news aggregator and displays it in 2D maps called Newsmaps.
-
FR could do something similar with feeds, and maybe call it FeedMap. :)
-
Edit: example of another of those mashups, this one is for digg. By clicking on the buttons at the top left, you can change the way the data is displayed. The thing can even be made dynamic. It would really be cool to browse through feed articles with this kind of interface.
-
http://www.yourminis.com/swfs/diggexpose.swf
-

Favorite feeds

Define and manage Favorite feeds as described in the thread "Favorite feeds".

Database clean up...

I want to be able to remove all read messages from the database by using the "Clean up databse" function, not only the ones older than 5 days.

+1 for "Pause Updating"

+1 for "Pause Updating"

"Pause updating"

Could you add "Pause updating" to the context menu from the tray icon? Because sometimes you want to do something while it's updating and you can't because Feedreader doesn't stop fetching records or its slowing everything down and so on...

Feedreader for PocketPC

Feedreader for PocketPC, see separate post in the General forum

Custom/Personal Folders in My archive

Hi,
Sometimes I want to save something I read for later use. It might not seem to be important in that moment but I would like to keep it at hand just in case.
By now I have hundreds os post in My Archive what makes it hard to find anything.

Could we get something like an 'Archive Manager' where I can add new folders (it would be great if they were actually separated files) and move posts I stored there ?

Moving / Copying posts directly to does personnal folders, by drag-and-drop, would also be great.

Thanks in advance,
Pedro Ivo Faria

Greetings, part of this

Greetings,

part of this feature is added to FR 3.13 roadmap.
Currently there is only one My archive feed, it's sleeping feed, no arhive size, no updates, just holding important articles.

In FR 3.13 user can define N archives.

Ingmar
------
FR dev

Instapaper is for you

In the mean-time, you may try iinstapaper to bookmark your webpages for later read
Read the review here: http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/instapaper-bookmark-posts-read/

Just 1 remark for FR 3.13. Please make this special folder for later read like a "chest" eg. even if article is deleted from original feed, it should still remain in the "for later read" folder. The only way to remove article should be to delete directly from the "for later read" folder (or "archive" folder or whatever you call it).

Please add / Body /does (not) contain any of following/ x;..

I needed 2 hours to to copy my filter configuration to Feedreader MySQL. If it was possible to write a list of words in one row, parted with semicolons, it was so much easier to handel the filters (besides my other suggestion for filters).

Manual Update of a selection of feeds

I would like to do an "Update oll feeds" but only for a selection of all my feeds (my core feeds), as described in thread "Manual Update of a selection of feeds (not "Update all feeds)."
The benefit is to limit bandwidth and to focus better my attention on my core feeds.

webviewcount quickchange / "options" naming

I use Feedreader for Youtube feeds and I collect all my tags into one smartfeed. When I want to look through them, I change the webviewcount value to 1000-2000 to see all preview pics at once. For a quick view the value is too high so I have to put it back to normal. So what I'd like to have would be for instance a slider in the bottom bar to change the webviewcount value quickly.

What I don't like either is the naming of your "options" for example "Do not group feed for display", as I'm german I needed quite a while to figure out what this does. If you had called it "Don't load webview for folder" I would have known much faster what it does.

And another suggestion would be to save the webview / "row view" individually for each folder.
Thx and Bye.

Formating

I would love to see 3 small additions to feed reader.

Ability to change text color, background color, and font.

Features Requests

Hi,

1. Ability to choose the browser for the feed opening
2. When using IE, open the feed in a real new window and not the last opened
3. Real Search Engine ! (match case, any words, all words, exact phrase, wildcard, dates of creation, tags, with attachement or not, in a specific subfoler or set of folders ...)

Thanks,
Charles

Alternative strategy to handle "slow feeds"

As posted in detail in the Support forum, I would like an alternative strategy to handle "slow feeds". "Slow feeds" cripple feedreader's performance, and in some cases, none of my feeds update at all!
This feature is not something existing in other readers, however, I do not have such an issue with other readers.

Deciding to "group similar" based on article contents

Improve the "group similar articles" feature based on comparing the contents (including html code) of the article. You could draw the line like this: "For article with same title, if more than 70% of article contents is similar, then group". See separate post "Deciding to group similar based on article contents"

Specify my own download manager

I would like to use my own download manager, as I explain in thread "Download with other application" in this forum.

Text compare with differences highlighted

Sometimes, I get similar entries inside a feed. "Grouping similar" is a way to get rid of them, but I would like to see the text differences to understand why similar items are generated and warn the author of the feed about it. Sometimes it is just a tiny difference hidden inside the html code, not even visible.

So a feature "Text compare with differences highlighted" would be nice to understand where the difference comes from. For example, the editor PSPad has such a function. Screenshot here: http://www.pspad.com/img/screen/textdiff.png

Something like this integrated inside Feedreader appllied to selected feed items would be nice.

wfwCommentRss

What about wfw:CommentRss? SharpReader and Omea do support it.
http://wellformedweb.org/news/wfw_namespace_elements

BTW. Maybe you could think of a more advanced comment support? E.g. display slashdot discussions as trees.

Greetings, this feature I

Greetings,

this feature I planned to FR 3.13 ;)))

Ingmar
------
FR dev

IDN support

FeedReader really needs international domain name support.

Handle bad Time Stamp

A couple of people have commented on this already, but you glossed over it as unimportant. This really is very important to me. I subscribe to several feeds where for whatever reason FR is not able to interpret the time stamp. The incoming tags look like this:
(pubdate)Nov 27, 2007 3:05 pm(/pubdate)
(lastbuilddate)Nov 27, 2007 3:05 pm(/lastbuilddate)
(Yes, the angle bracket"<>", but hard to display in this forum.)
And FR displays the time as 00:00
I don't know whether their tags are wrong, but I do know I can't get them to fix it. I also know that in another reader the time stamp displays with no problem. Unfortunately, that reader lacks the tagging feature that I really like.

So here's my request. If it's too hard or too time consuming to make their time stamp tags work, could you instead give me the option of displaying the date/time that FR read the feed so I can get some relative time stamp from one article to the next. It's not terribly important that I know precisely what time they published the feed, but it is important that I know which article came first.

I see 2 ways of doing this.
1. Allow me to display the FR date/time stamp column along with tag, status, etc.
2. When displaying the time, if it's 00:00, display FR's time received instead.

Thank you

E-mail client

A good addition to Feedreader it will be: e-mail client !

Download Manager

Adding a download manager feature should come in handy especially when the feeds contain links to downloads !

Vista Sidebar Gadget

I think adding an option for feedreader to act as a vista sidebar gadget it will be very useful and nice!

Single-key read

I'm using the classic three-pane view.

The 'shortcut' allows to read unread messages sequentially, but there are two problems with it:

When the list is sorted by reverse date (most recent item on top), using the space bar reads from newest to oldest which is the wrong way around if you ask me. I'd like FeedReader to jump to the oldest unread item and go to newer items from there.

Secondly, if the message exceeds what can be displayed in the message pane, I'd like FeedReader to scroll this pane before skipping to the next unread.

These two things combined are known as 'single-key read' in many newsreader and e-mail programs and would be great to have in FeedReader as well. It would especially be a welcome addition when going through everything that came in during the night as part of my morning 'get up-to-date' ritual.

database chop

i am folowing 300 feeds and my database keeps growing.
i would love to see it chopped in a way that makes the program faster. in days or sizes.

A bigger "Mark as Read" Spot

The button to the right of news items is too small. At least give us something that can be hit without pin-point accuracy.

Disable feed based on time

For example, I'd like to have the feed reader turned on constantly, but I don't want to get back to work on Monday and find tons of old unread news that doesn't interest me. Other feeds I'd want to work during weekend.

Mike5

my requests

request 1
There is a function in feedreader that automatically combine selected feeds to a smartfeed, but it only picks "one by one" feed, so you can not make any more advanced stuff with that smartfeed...is it possible to have feedreader to use the selection "is one "of the following" instead of the following

Feedname is "feed 1"
Feedname is "feed 2"
Feedname is "feed 3" etc...

this would be very handy when you have a lot of feeds and you would like to create a smartfeed including several feeds in the database, today i have to "sit and click" and if you have 1000 feeds its not really funny..to choose the right ones..

request 2
"a stop button", possibility to prevent feeds from updating when managing feeds or the database

request 3
a possibility to include or not include articles from the archive when you do search in the search box

request 4
a possibility to choose if you want to use the time and date in the feed or when it's updated in the database...so i can get all the feeds in "my timezone", also this prevent a lot of feeds that has bad time data

thanks for listening and for a great product // vidar

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