SharpReader 0.9.6.0

SharpReader 0.9.6.0 is now available at sharpreader.net.

Changes since the last version are:

  • Support for Atom 1.0.
  • Listening on port 5335 is now done on localhost only. This should prevent your firewall from showing this alert message.
  • You can now change the url of a feed through the feed properties pane.
  • If your subscriptions.xml file got corrupted somehow, sharpreader now reads the previous version upon startup (this would previously crash SharpReader on startup).
  • Fixed "The server committed an HTTP protocol violation." errors that are often thrown by wordpress feeds because of an invalid header. SharpReader now ignores these bad headers instead of throwing an exception.
  • Fixed a bug in the feed-discovery code.
  • Improved http redirect handling.
  • Uninstaller now asks whether to remove all settings and cache files.

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.hutteman.com/scgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/193
Comments

BUG REPORT:

"DEL" key no longer works to delete rss posts although it does work to delete the rss feeds in the "Subscribed Feeds" window. Pressing "del" does not delete the posts although right-clicking on them and selecting "delete item" does.

Posted by dil.b.ert at July 28, 2005 11:47 PM

Anybody else seeing this behaviour? DEL works fine for me to delete posts.

Posted by Luke Hutteman at July 29, 2005 12:20 AM

Del works for me, too (once I figured out that "System.Net.WebHttpRequest threw its spoon off its highchair" (a rough translation) meant "time to download a fresher .Net").

Posted by Phil Ringnalda at July 29, 2005 1:38 AM

I'm getting the "WebHttpRequest is dying a nasty death" problem also.. even tho I do believe I'm running the latest .net image. Luke, what is the specific version of .net you tested this with so I can verify my set up?

Posted by James snell at July 29, 2005 4:11 AM

Do we just install new releases straight over the top?

Posted by Bill Hely at July 29, 2005 5:53 AM

SharpReader 0.9.6.0

Trackback from Anatoly Lubarsky: Weblog at July 29, 2005 6:04 AM

regarding the HttpWebRequest error: #R has been tested on .NET 1.1 SP1. If you for some reason are unable to install SP1, delete the SharpReader.exe.config file from the SharpReader directory, and you should be able to run fine without it (though some wordpress feeds may cause you some issues)

See http://sharpreader.net/faq.html#nosp1

Posted by Luke Hutteman at July 29, 2005 8:13 AM

Re: the WordPress problem... Are you talking about this:

http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/537

(Fixed in WP 1.5)

Posted by Dougal Campbell at July 29, 2005 10:13 AM

Dougal: Yes.

I was unaware this was fixed by WP. I'm still receiving bug-reports from people accessing what must be old WordPress installs though, and since .NET SP1 has been out for almost a year now (which is about twice as long as WP1.5 I believe), I felt that adding the SP1 specific config option that fixes this issue was the right thing to do.

Posted by Luke Hutteman at July 29, 2005 12:52 PM

Since I've installed the updated version (was using the 0.9.5.1(?) version), none of my feeds are updating even though I know a couple have since posted new items (and the feeds reflect them when I view the XML directly.

Any ideas?

Posted by Dave at July 29, 2005 2:06 PM

I'm seeing the same behavior as Dave.

Posted by datarat at July 29, 2005 2:53 PM

Ditto on the non-updating. I get:

An unexpected error occured:

The type initializer for "System.Net.HttpWebRequest" threw an exception.

I am running XP with SP2, .NET 2.0b2

Posted by k-lo at July 29, 2005 3:01 PM

The new ATOM 1.0 feed from MoreLikeThis (http://whump.com/moreLikeThis/) causes #R to show the error dialog, though Send Error Report doesn't work when I click it, though the program seems to function fine otherwise if I click OK rather than Close Program.

Posted by BillSaysThis at July 29, 2005 11:06 PM

main site seems to be down (sharpreader.net)

Posted by William Stewart at July 30, 2005 7:35 PM

Can someone post the new version somewhere other than http://www.sharpreader.net.

Blocking ISP's is kind of silly if you want to propagate your works, Luke. I have been trying to get updates for ages, and I try to get them from a "reliable" source. For sharp reader, I end up having to resort to less trustworthy locations...

Thanks for a great program, though.
Cheers!
Mark

Posted by MadMark at July 30, 2005 8:51 PM

Deep Thinking about Weblogs
Deep Thinking about Weblogs [Being a newbie to blogging, I still appreciate a great essay on blogging.  Andrew Grumet wrote this essay in May 2003 and it’s the best overview on blogging I’ve seen to date.  Not only is it...

Trackback from Sacred Cow Dung at July 31, 2005 11:43 AM

It's not updating for me, either!

HELP!!!!!!!!

Posted by Joe Craig at July 31, 2005 5:21 PM

Not updating for me, too. I wish I saved the previous version of the installer file.

Posted by Yury at August 1, 2005 9:12 AM

Waaaay up there in the comments was a note about .Net sp1. Try renaming or deleting the Sharpreader.exe.config file. It's got me updating aging.

Posted by datarat at August 1, 2005 1:28 PM

Strangest thing....installed 9.6.0...kept crashing. When it did run, the article thread feature didn't work...instead of uninstalling I deleted the directory and copied 9.5.1 there...now everything, including the article thread (whatever)...are working....

I can't say I like the thread feature. I assume that's something in rss 2.0? Perhaps an option to not use that?

Great product. Thanks!

Posted by Khepri at August 1, 2005 10:55 PM

datarat said:

> Waaaay up there in the comments was a note about .Net sp1.
> Try renaming or deleting the Sharpreader.exe.config file.
> It's got me updating aging.

Thanks for the hint. Now my subsciptions are updating, too.

I believe this case is worth adding to the FAQ.

Posted by Yury at August 2, 2005 1:33 AM

Follow up to my previous comment: the subscriptions have been updated only once after I renamed the config file. In order to get new ones, I have to click refresh manually.

I run SharpReader on Win XP Pro ver 2002 SP2. Feel free to ask me for more details (my e-mail address is stored somewhere on this site).

Posted by Yury at August 2, 2005 5:18 AM

> > Waaaay up there in the comments was a note about .Net sp1.
> > Try renaming or deleting the Sharpreader.exe.config file.
> > It's got me updating aging.

> Thanks for the hint. Now my subsciptions are updating, too.
>
> I believe this case is worth adding to the FAQ.

Waaaay up there was also a link to where this is already mentioned in the FAQ.

Posted by Luke Hutteman at August 2, 2005 12:35 PM

You won't load anymore! a day or so ago I went to launch Sharpreader, got some crazy error message and the damn thing won't fire up anymore. I've even tried removing it and then re-installing--still nothing. No feed updates (although all my feeds were still in the re-installed version), no polling, etc. What's up with this? I'm used to Sharpreader and want it back.

Joel

Posted by Joel Richman at August 3, 2005 4:18 PM

> Waaaay up there was also a link to where this is
> already mentioned in the FAQ.

W.r.t. the item in the FAQ about the need for installing
.NET SP1, it refers to an error message in effect to
"The type initializer... threw an exception".

I didn't have any error messages in my case.

Anyway, now after I installed that SP1 from Microsoft's
site and restored the config file, it refreshes OK.

All in all, I am a newby to SharpReader and had honestly
looked through the FAQ before posting my question.
BTW, I like SharpReader very much.
--
Regards,
Yury

Posted by Yury at August 7, 2005 4:41 AM

Bug Report

1. The name field of the blog still shows the rss feed URL instead of the full descriptive name such as "My blog name". This happens to several manually added blog URLs in SharpReader v0.9.6.0 (previously this was not a problem under the old version).

2. Upgraded recently to SharpReader v0.9.6.0 (from previous version) caused a lot of comments tagged to a blog (when clicked to view) to fail with error message as shown. Must manually remove RSS feed and re-open (and subscribe) to fix; however problem may reappear again at random.


Error(TE)
An unexpected error occured:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.


Clicking on "Send Error Report" will result in the following:

An unexpected error occurred in SharpReader when I was doing the following:

>

SharpReader v0.9.6.0

OS = Microsoft Windows NT 5.1.2600.0

.NET CLR 1.1.4322.2032

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at SharpReader.Util.MLHelper.DeactivateTags(String html) in c:\projects\sharpreader\util\mlhelper.cs:line 142
at SharpReader.UI.SharpReaderForm.SetBrowserHtml(RssItem rssItem) in c:\projects\sharpreader\ui\sharpreaderform.cs:line 3214
at SharpReader.UI.SharpReaderForm.tmrShowPage_Tick(Object sender, EventArgs e) in c:\projects\sharpreader\ui\sharpreaderform.cs:line 5237
at System.Windows.Forms.Timer.OnTick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Timer.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr idEvent, IntPtr dwTime)

Posted by Sharpuser-v0.9.6.0 at August 8, 2005 5:43 AM

I am trying to add a site that uses Digest Authentication and a cookie to authenticate me. SharpReader isn't reading the cookie IE has, and so the site tries to authenticate using digest. I look at a sniffer trace and see that SharpReader is trying basic authentication, even though the site is requesting only digest. I'm not sure what would be the better solution, either reading the cookie or fixing the authentication, but I thought it worth mentioning.

Also, have you considered open-sourcing this, or working with other developers. I code quite frequently in C#, and wouldn't mind spending time improving a great product that I use. Plus I have a vested interest in improving SharpReader as it is the only RSS aggregator that is on my company's approved software list, and they are very strick. Seriously, if you are interested in some help, let me know at "benjamin carleski [one word not two] at msn dot com".

Posted by BCDesign at August 11, 2005 3:26 AM

Active Webreader got this nice feature : Auto-discover feeds while browsing the web in Internet Explorer.

Possible to get this also into SharpReader?

Posted by Eric at August 13, 2005 7:05 PM

Thanks for the killer app, one of the best in my book. I have a feature suggestion/request though

1 Option for each feeds properties to ignore 'updates'

Thanks again!

Posted by Richard Ahlquist at August 16, 2005 12:30 PM

Quite nice application, congrats! I tried a bunch off RSS readers, but I liked yours best.

One little wish: I want to put SharpReader on an USB stick to have it with me everywhere I go. Obviously I need all data to be stored on the USB stick. Can you add a special parameter to force SharpReader to store all data in a subfolder instead of in "c:\documents and settings"? I'd be happy with a command line parameter, good enough for me. Thanks so much!

Posted by Mathias Rauen at August 16, 2005 12:57 PM

Somewhat off-topic: Is there a chance that the proxy auto-configuration scripts will be supported? The "copy IE proxy settings" ignores the PAC url and just assumes that no proxy is available.

Alternatively, is there a way to disable proxy for certain domains (I mean the intranet domain, not localhost)?

Thanks!

Posted by Yelena at August 18, 2005 11:11 AM

Hi Luke, thanks for the update to SharpReader.

Question: Should the Tools|Filter options persist when the app is shut down? The only quibble I have (also happened with previous version) is that every time I start SharpReader I have to go into Tools|Filter to set the "Unread only" option.

What would also be nice is if when starting up it remembered its previous display status. Although it remembers the window position it does not remember if it was minimised/maximised, or just in the system tray.

Thanks for SharpReader.

Posted by Steve at August 18, 2005 1:14 PM

I have two feature suggestions:
1. Support "snapshot" feeds: There are feeds (like stock tickers) that give a full snapshot each time you get the info. If I had a flag to indicate this, the reader can delete all current messages and replace them with the new snapshot.
2. Standing Filter on a feed: In addition to the system wide filter, there is a need for a "per feed" filter that will make sure I only see messages I am interested in (example: on a gaming site I just want those that have "PC" in them). If this were a regular expression mechanism, even better!

Posted by Yuval at August 25, 2005 9:23 AM

Hi :

ive got a question, is there any way i can export the .xml file sharpeader generates so it can be imported by any other rss aggregator? it seems the xml file is parsed in a way other aggregators i checked failed to recognize... maybe i didn't try enough. I mean, i would like to be able to swtich the articles on my feeds between aggregators because atm sharpeader eats up to 512mb of ram which is a lot and it gets slowed down.

Thanks in advance

Posted by Adrian at August 28, 2005 12:36 PM

Not sure why, but I have not recieved ANY replies from e-mails sent to you regarding SharpReader. I was enjoying using SR, now it opens CONSTANTLY to one feed, will not let me read any other feed, and it is frustrating. I enjoy SharpReader, and we were going to be reviewing it for an upcoming article on a very visable site.

PLEASE let me know what we can do to fix this issue. We have all windows updates installed on my machine, we have also uninstalled, and reinstalled SR three times.

Any ideas would be great!!

Posted by Christian Connett at August 30, 2005 10:44 AM

I'm experiencing 2 problems since upgrading to 0.9.6.0.

One is that occasionally, already read items from one feed show up in a different feed, all pretending to be unread again. Confusing!

The other is that 0.9.6.0.has had a huge impact on the general performance of my machine. It's much more crash-prone, and when the feeds are updating and flashing up those little alerts, everything grinds to an almost standstill...

Can you shed any light on the situtation?

Cheers,

Ben

Posted by Ben at August 30, 2005 11:50 AM

well..finally, it updated..
i'd rather say SharpReader is the best rss reader for me, as it's simpleness and great operate feeling.
eh..i'd say, can it have the function of minimize to systemtray? Thought it does have systemtray icon at present, but the taskbar button remains there...as to me(and maybe to most of us..), a rss reader needs attention only when the news balloon tips show up, so there is no need for it to take a place in taskbar. Of cource, it would be better to have a choice in option~

Posted by adamhj at September 4, 2005 7:56 AM

Hello,

I'm trying to download the new version of SharpReader, but am unable to resolve www.sharpreader.net. DNSstuff.com tells me that there are no A records for that domain name.

Does anyone know of a mirror anywhere? I'm itching for the new version, and unfortunately was slow to learn about it. Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Kevin

Posted by Kevin at September 8, 2005 9:42 AM

Have just started using Sharpreader and am using v0.9.6.0

I'd like to know what the autopurge does with items after they have been marked true. I am using SharpReader to monitor a "live feed", where all items in the feed need to be kept updated and items no longer in the feed can be auto-purged. Also, items no longer in the feed might re-activate from time to time. Is there any way to do this? Right now the autopurge flags the items regardless of whether they are still in the feed or not as "IsDeleted", and then even if that item is updated, it will never re-appear again.

Summary of my request:
1) If item is still in the feed it isn't purged.
2) If item is no longer in the feed it can be purged, but it isn't marked IsDeleted, it is simply removed from the cache. (which is probably what needs to be done anyway or those cache files are going to get huge)
3) Because of the two above if an item is re-issed into the feed it will show up as a new item.

This will allow SharpReader to be used for monitoring bug and task feeds such as those issued by Mantis. (www.mantisbt.org)

Posted by dylan at September 9, 2005 2:41 AM

Sorry.. some tags were removed from that comment - should read "after they have been marked IsDeleted=true"

Posted by dylan at September 9, 2005 3:36 AM

Are you planning to add support for podcasting and the new (controversial) iTunes DTD? I was going to write my own podding handler, but if SharpReader would do it for me, well, that's the best of both worlds. The real UI issue would be handling multiple simultaneous LONG downloads. I'm only interested in getting the bits to my hard drive; after that, it's up to me. However, it would be very cool if SR managed a pool disk space like Tivo; i.e., by automatically deleting the oldest items to make room for the new if necessary.

I love SharpReader; thanks for such a contribution to us all.

Posted by David Hovel at October 26, 2005 10:53 AM

I'll try and email as well, but web only access at present and may forget.

Discovered a nasty bug - you need to be a System Admin to run SharpReader or it crashes horribly with a security exception due to not being able to write to the registry where it expects.

This one rules it out for me for now (until it is fixed), which is a pity because I like it the best out of all that I have tried.

Sadly for me as well, my hope to be able to get RSS updates from Trac bug-tracking wikis on the intranet is thawted - for some mysterious reason RSS readers in general are not catering for secure intranet usage (Windows authentication) and, worse yet, I suspect Trac will be another kettle of fish altogether. Pity, because this is a really obvious idea begging to be done - who wants e-mail notifications when you can have threaded RSS? I'd try an IIS-based wiki, such as FogBugz, but I don't want to have to pay for it and discover RSS does not work there either.

Posted by Paul Coddington at October 31, 2005 8:53 AM

Sharpreader revisted
I'm looking at SharpReader again. Luke Hutteman released a new version (0.9.6.0) this summer, and I am using it again this week. Here are some thoughts about what works well and what doesn't.

Trackback from Knowledge Jolt with Jack at November 2, 2005 1:29 AM

I've installed this version with no problem at all :)

Feature Request: I'd like the alert pop-ups to remain on screen until clicked. They often appear when I'm away from my machine, and I don't notice the yellow icon in the tray (maybe that could flash?).
Currently the display time is limited to 30 seconds.

Posted by jazzle at November 2, 2005 4:10 AM

httpWebRequest useUnsafeHeaderParsing="true"

This line is in the SR config file.
Is this something I should be concerned about?
What does it mean, I wonder.

Posted by Nebbly at November 15, 2005 7:31 PM

BUG REPORT

0.9.6.0 cannot navigate any url.

System:
WinXP+SP2 (firewall OFF)
.NET Framework v1.1.4322

Proxy requires autorisation

Posted by j0ker at December 1, 2005 3:41 AM

SharpReader after a month
I've been using SharpReader for the last month of so, primarily because I really like the threading capability. Of course, in that time I have accumulated some thoughts about what could be better / different in the application. This also hints at fea...

Trackback from Knowledge Jolt with Jack at December 12, 2005 2:22 PM

Another feature just occured to me: Enhance threading by examining the categories in the feed. A thread is already built if two people link to the same location in a tagspace, such as http://www.technorati.com/tag/sharpreader. But many feeds don't add these links to their content because Technorati is supposed to pick up these tags automagically. Why not examine the category or dc:subject elements in the feed and build threads on common categories? This way I might be able to read most of those "Google's latest feature" articles at one go.

Posted by Jack Vinson at December 14, 2005 10:52 AM

Nice tool!


I have an enhancement request. Most tools that put an icon in the systray also provde the capability to hide themselves from the taskbar when minimized. I think this would be a good improvement to the interface.

Posted by Joe Sytniak at March 6, 2006 2:53 PM

Hi,

I get an unhandled exception thrown from the reader when accessing slashdot articles (as well as some others) which turns out to be JScript errors in the page being displayed.

This is probably down to my companies restrictions on the browser settings, but as I have Visual Studio installed, I get an irritating Debug App selection dialog pop-up.

Any idea how I can stop this occuring without having to change the browser settings.

Let me know if I can supply any more detailed information.

Regards

D.

Posted by Dave at March 21, 2006 10:16 AM

Just google Sharpreader hide tray, I found this page and another page
http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2005/12/12/sharpreader_after_a_month.html

Quote from the above site:
It doesn't "minimize to system tray" when I hit the minimize button. But it does when I hit the "x" to close. To exit completely, I need to File->Exit.

Hope it helps

Posted by Matthew Kwong at May 20, 2006 8:33 AM
This discussion has been closed. If you wish to contact me about this post, you can do so by email.