SharpReader 0.9.7.0

SharpReader 0.9.7.0 is now available at sharpreader.net.

Changes since the last version are:

  • Run internal browser in restricted security zone in order to make IE responsible for blocking restricted content, instead of just doing so by parsing and stripping tags.
  • Allow embedded CSS styles in item descriptions (was previously disabled because of javascript exploits that are now caught because of the security zone).
  • Support both <commentRSS> as well as <commentRss> as there was some confusion as to the proper capitalization of this element.
  • Fixed linebreak handling for some feeds.
  • Improved handling of relative urls in atom feeds (like Sam Ruby's feed for instance).
  • Now displaying enclosure links at the bottom of the item description.
  • Fixed installer to no longer complain if only .NET 2.0 is installed.
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Comments

I love SharpReader. Thanks for continuing to improve it. Just curious: Is there a reason that the version number begins with a zero?

Posted by Shannon Whitley at August 3, 2006 2:04 AM

Hi Luke,

Great reader, the only thing I miss is the ability to export/import 'locked' items. This would be good when moving from machine to machine.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

John.

Posted by Morrijr at August 3, 2006 4:27 AM

Thanks for the update.
It's great to see that you're still improving it.

Two suggestions:

1) Compile it for .Net 2.0
I have been running it on 2.0 via an app.config file for a while now. I have not measured it or anything, but it seems to be significantly faster and more responsive.

2) Replace the COM interop to IE with the new WebBrowser control. I know, it's the same thing in the end for Windows systems. But it opens the possibility for other implementations, such as Mono, to one day run SharpReader (a common control, perhaps pointing internally to different browsers).

Posted by Dono at August 3, 2006 5:24 AM

Hi,

Thanks for a great tool :-). After I installed #Reader 0.9.7.0, I found that it starts hosting the page at 127.0.0.1. The problem is that I need to use HTTP proxy, but HTTP proxy rules are not smart enough to exclude 127.0.0.1 so http://127.0.0.1:12108 access will always fail as it still goes through HTTP proxy. Is there a way to mitigate that?

Posted by Nat at August 3, 2006 6:16 AM

Nat: Thank you for your comment. Unfortunately you didn't leave your email address so hopefully you'll read my response here instead. I created a new version that uses localhost instead of 127.0.0.1 - could you try that and let me know if it works better for you? You can either leave a comment here or email me at sharpreader(at)hutteman(dot)com. Thanks!

Posted by Luke Hutteman at August 3, 2006 9:09 AM

It works great. Thanks.

Posted by Nat at August 3, 2006 9:14 AM

I just wanted to leave you a quick note of appreciation for all the work you've done on SharpReader. Thank you Luke!

Posted by Don at August 3, 2006 9:33 AM

There is one feed that I have that uses Windows-based (NTLM) authentication layer which doesn't seem to be compatible with your RSS reader. Do you have any plans to fix this? When I try to get the feed to work, it just keeps asking me for my password. I enter the correct user name and password and then it pops up again with another user name and password window.

Thanks for your help!

Posted by Matt Smith at August 3, 2006 10:10 AM

Thank you for a great application. I have yet to find something that would match it productivity-wise.

Is there some repository where I could leave some suggestions, feature requests, etc? I'd love to see a wiki for that...

Posted by Omer van Kloeten at August 3, 2006 11:06 AM

Luke,

Thanks for the update. While never slow, it seems to be even quicker to bring up the full feed.

I have looked at several of the fancier programs, but always come back to SharpReader. It does everything I need, excellently, though sometimes I need to experiment to find some of the features.

Alan

Posted by Alan at August 3, 2006 11:06 AM

Thank you for the new upgrade!

May be possible a "Start minimized in the system tray" option in the future?

Posted by Vulcan at August 3, 2006 1:32 PM

some of the issues i have found.

1) application does not detect the latest .net installed on the system.
2) application config file is missing during fresh install.

thanks for upgrading the product.

Posted by sam at August 3, 2006 2:36 PM

Luke -- I think the world of SharpReader. I messed around with RSSBandit but it is so broken for pages with a lot of JavaScript in them! SSharpReader just works perfectly in ever way I have tried it. I'm just wrapping up a vBulletin PHP page for feeding RSS2.0 with threaded comments. Both multi-level (true) threading, and single-level (linear replies/comments) work like a charm! No problems expanding the tree.

I'm just about to do some testing with respect to SharpReader detecting added comments and popping up a "new news" alert... we'll see how that goes. I may be back with a question or so!

Posted by Bob Denny at August 3, 2006 5:20 PM

Hi Luke and thanks for a great program!

I was wondering if there is any chance that you could consider adding the feature of a configurable application data folder? I have Sharpreader installed on a USB-memory that I use both at home and at work so I need to have the cache folder in the same directory as the application (instead of C:\Document and Settings\..). As it is now I'm using a reverse engineered version that someone "enhanced" so that the application data folder can be moved. Unfortunately this "enhanced" version is based on 0.9.5.0 and I cannot use your upgrades since I need this feature.

So please consider adding this feature, I know that I'm not the only one that would like that!

Posted by Allan at August 3, 2006 7:24 PM

As suspected - How does SharpReader determine when an article should be alerted from the tray? Is it as simple as a new article (how does it know it's new? What would happen if a new article with the same title were posted?)? Can I fool SharpReader into alerting whenever a new comment is posted to an article? I am already setting the pubDate to the time of the last comment instead of the time the article was originally posted, and that didn't tickle SharpReader's alerter :-)

Posted by Bob Denny at August 3, 2006 7:27 PM

A couple of minor nits:

(1) I wish there were a 'back' arrow for the browser. I find myself using the right-click menu/back a lot.

(2) Right click on an article in the list (upper right window), you get a menu with Mark All Read and Mark All unread. Click on a comment (in the list, below the article in the tree) and the effect of these commands is applied to the articles, not the comments.

Thanks for listening -- Bob

Posted by Bob Denny at August 3, 2006 7:33 PM

Great tool! I love SharpReader.

One thing is bugging me since the last update: McAfee is complaining every time I click on a post. I guess that has to do with the content checking. Is there a way around that?

See also this screen shot of the McAfee window...

Regards, Arjen.

Posted by Arjen Hiemstra at August 4, 2006 6:48 AM

Small bug: In Atom 1.0 feeds with per-entry author elements, SR doesn't display the author. This has worked before with Atom 0.3. Example: http://weblog.philringnalda.com/feed/

Posted by sire at August 4, 2006 8:53 AM

I should probably go ahead and change my tagline to "Yes, I did just break your aggregator."

Posted by Phil Ringnalda at August 5, 2006 1:10 AM

Hi Luke, why is this version redirecting to www.cfauth.com when you click on an item? It seems that the internal web server will redirect to cfauth before displaying the content...

Cheers
Matt

Posted by Matt Ellis at August 7, 2006 3:45 AM

Ah, looks like it might be an ISP issue. Typical, you search around for information, only to find it 2 minutes after posting a whinge!

Cheers
Matt

Posted by Matt Ellis at August 7, 2006 3:54 AM

Hey thanks for the updated version. I hope that the next build of WinVista can display the messages in the preview window on the right hand side(same issues exists with Windows Live Messenger)

Cheers
- V

Posted by Volkan at August 8, 2006 8:53 PM

Hi, I just started an RSS Feed, and used SharpReader as one of my testing platforms. I really enjoy the interface. Reminds me of the old-school newsreader in Netscape circa 1996. Very good work on your part. Thanks for creating a quality product.

Posted by Ross J. Feickert at August 8, 2006 11:27 PM

He Luke, what is your reaction to my post about McAfee complaining about the registry changes every time I click a thread in SharpReader?

Are you really touching the registry everytime the focus changes to another thread?

Posted by Arjen Hiemstra at August 11, 2006 7:58 PM

It may be my imagination, but the latest windows (2000) patches seem to cause Sharpreader 0.9.7.0 to crash intermittently. Has anyone else suffered this?

Up to now it's been extremely useful though, thanks!

Posted by Phil McKerracher at August 13, 2006 6:49 PM

i love sharpreader.
yer a gem, thanks a whole bunch luke.

Posted by drew at August 17, 2006 8:55 AM

Thanks! It's working wonderfully, with one minor exception. (This may be the same thing Phil R. mentions above.) The vox neighborhood feeds (Ex., here) have per-entry author elements, but they don't show up in SharpReader.

Posted by David at August 17, 2006 2:04 PM

Luke,

any news on the issue where McAfee is complaining every time I click on a post in SharpReader? McAfee says there are InternetZones changes being made in the registry each time I change to another post. I guess that has to do with the content checking? Is there a way around that other than turning off this security feature in McAfee?

See also this screen shot of the McAfee window...

Regards, Arjen.

Posted by Arjen Hiemstra at August 18, 2006 6:05 AM

v. 0.9.7.0

I looked at the process tab in the task manager to note how much memory #Reader uses and discovered something I thought odd.

--10 am, 2440K not long after startup, #Reader minimized to icon tray
--11 am, 48,368K (!), #Reader minimized to icon tray
--but then I opened #Reader to a full window, and closed it back to icon tray, and it was back down to 1752K

What's up with that?

Posted by ALM at August 18, 2006 2:04 PM

I echo the thanks for the great app! I'm not even looking for something that could be better.

A back button might be nice, I too use (Alt)+(Back Arrow) pretty often.

My request has got to be for handling the Window's shutdown call better or something though. It takes minutes for Windows to shutdown, unless I exit out of Sharpreader first, whereupon it takes seconds.

Posted by Eric Pence at August 18, 2006 6:45 PM

Hey Luke, thanks for updating Sharpreader once again. It's my feedreader of choice because of it's plain simplicity. And it's the only one that lists the items in a way that fits my reading habit.

Some of the suggestions others made sound really cool, I escpecially like all the things that could make Sharpreader even faster. But I want to add some points, perhaps you are interested in hearing more suggestions:

- Thought about making it possible to use Firefox instead of IE as Browser? I use Firefox for my main surfing, so it contains all my cookies and passwords. Would be really nice if the user could decide which browser to use.
- A option to make the filter show up after start up every time with my saved selection would be really nice. I always filter for unread items and have to use Ctrl-Shift-F every time I start Sharpreader. That's only once in the morning, but anyway.

Posted by Jan at August 21, 2006 10:11 AM

I like that SharpReader minimizes to the System Tray. It would also be nice for the program, after being minimized to no longer show up on the Task Bar. I prefer that it only be on the System Tray when minimized. Possibly a switch/setting could be used to control this behavior.

Posted by C. Simmons at August 21, 2006 10:45 AM

Hi Luke. Sharpreader a great product and I want to say thanks for your continuing great work on it. If I might make one small suggestion, I would love to be able to have an option to convert the date/time column into my local timezone. What I am finding is that all local posts [GMT+10] are appearing at the top of the list and posts from the US west coast [GMT-8] are often missed as they are a few pages below the top of my feed list. Shouldn't take too much to be able to convert the date shown into a selected "local" timezone. It would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Anthony

Posted by Anthony Borton at August 21, 2006 5:54 PM

C. Simmons,

When you close the application, it goes strictly to the System Tray as requested.

Posted by Eric Pence at August 22, 2006 3:00 PM

Luke, please take a look at these vulnerabilites.

http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2006/08/feed_security_a_1.html

Posted by Greg Hand at August 24, 2006 10:38 AM

So far, I really like your reader. Thanks for your efforts.

I've built a web service that the applications I work on can send events into. The service generates rss 2.0 feeds to display the events. I've tried 4 or 5 different readers to display these and they ALL have at least one annoying problem. Admittedly, these could be caused by something in my feed XML, especially since the event descriptions have a lot of HTML. The one problem I have with SharpReader is that when I refresh the feeds, which I typically do after a test run to see the new events, it displays old items as unread even if I had already marked them as read. How does the reader determine what has been marked as read? Since I store my events in a SQL database, I always generate the same event time, URL and GUID. What else could it be comparing on? I can send you the XML from one of my feeds if you want to see it.

Thanks,
Scott

Posted by Scott Walters at August 24, 2006 3:23 PM

Scott,

FWIW, I'm going to guess "pubDate," or that the feed is getting refreshed between generations, while the item is not there.

Posted by Eric Pence at August 25, 2006 1:11 PM

Thanks for responding.

I've traced this to 4 feed items that all have an embedded XML document in their descriptions. These always show up as unread after a refresh. The descriptions for these also contains links to several other feed items from different feeds/applications that are all cross-linked because they are part of the same request. The linked items are also always shown as unread after a refresh.

This is probably happening because the XML I text I'm embedding in the description has something wrong with it. For one thing,the XML doesn't display correctly. I don't get any of the angle brackets or tag names. Once I figure out how to fix this, the unread problem may go away.

Posted by Scott Walters at August 25, 2006 1:36 PM

Can you put the embedded XML Text in a "![CDATA[ ]]" tag? That was a lifesaver for me.

Posted by Eric Pence at August 25, 2006 3:21 PM

Can you put the embedded XML Text in a "![CDATA[ ]]" tag? That was a lifesaver for me.

Thanks. I should have thought of that. I ended up "double escaping" the XML content, which fixed the XML display and the unread item problem, but your solution sounds better.

Posted by Scott Walters at August 28, 2006 9:57 AM


Thanks for a wonderful product.

I have a small issue with 0.9.7.0. Filtering, (far) more often than not, raises Error(TE), "An unexpected error occurred: Access is denied". Clicking OK button keeps SharpReader running and if I shift focus to a different folder or feed, the error goes away and the filter gets flawlessly applied. At some odd times, I get spared of this error and I can't quite find a pattern when it doesn't happen. I think I sent you one or two Error Reports on this.

Thanks again.

Posted by rajko at August 29, 2006 7:30 AM

Hey Luke,
Thanks for creating and supporting Sharpreader.
Just so you know to be on the lookout for it -- please find a $5 donation from me through Amazon.
Take care!
~LJ

Posted by Larry Johnson at August 29, 2006 10:06 AM

Thanks for posting the 097_localhost version. I was having the same problem as the previous poster and your updated version solved a very frustrating issue! I was dead set on being able to use Sharpreader instead of going to a different reader. Yours is the best! I use it in my IT Security job to stay abreast of current threats. Excellent alerting system...

Posted by TMG at August 31, 2006 4:08 PM

Hi Luke ,

Sharpreader is a great RSS Reader , i use it for a long time .

May be possible a "Open in Separate(alternative) Windows" option in the future?
I mean , first browser is IExplorer , second is Firefox or Opera or SeyMonkey .

Posted by Ze Us at September 3, 2006 7:50 AM

I am connected to our corporate network and access to internet is via a proxy server.
When I set the proxy settings in SharpReader as in IE and try to add an corporate RSS feed, it returns an error (Error reading URL: The remote server returned an error: (407) Proxy Authentication Required).

When I deselect the "Use a proxy server" option, I get a login popup when trying to add the same RSS feed. This I find strange since within corporate network I should not need to login anywhere, and login using the corporate id/password does not work.

In case useful, for the proxy server we use the same port for all protocols, port 81.

Result, I can not use SharpReader, nor corporate internal nor external. I know this proxy issue is common between several RSS readers and I am trying to find one that I can use at my Office. I did see in the release comments of SharpReader that this may have been resolved. Please advice.

Regards,
Jorgen

Posted by Jorgen at September 6, 2006 10:57 AM


Hi again,

Your reader is working beautifully. I've generated thousands of events from the apps I support and the filtering is very useful for searching through them. I also really like the drill down capability in the headline window, since most of the events are linked to other events.

Since my main use is application monitoring, I'd like to add a feature or two specifically related to that. Is the source available? I don't see anything about it on the site. I can send patches back if you want.

Scott


Posted by Scott at September 7, 2006 10:04 AM

Hi Luke :
if I load my Chinese-star program first then follow by sharpreader0.9.9.0 the following error occured.

How do I solve this problem?

Thank you.

---------------------------
csc.exe - Application Error
---------------------------
The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005). Click on OK to terminate the application.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------
---------------------------
Fatal Error
---------------------------
Unhandled Exception:

The type initializer for "SharpReader.Settings.AppSettings" threw an exception.

System.TypeInitializationException

Stack Trace:
at SharpReader.Settings.AppSettings.Load() at SharpReader.UI.SharpReaderForm..ctor() in c:\projects\sharpreader\ui\sharpreaderform.cs:line 286 at SharpReader.UI.SharpReaderForm.Main(String[] args) in c:\projects\sharpreader\ui\sharpreaderform.cs:line 1642
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

Posted by sim at September 9, 2006 4:38 AM

About the "Access is Denied" error with the filtering, I noticed that it seems to only happen when I try to use a numeric value for the filter text.

Posted by Scott at September 14, 2006 12:41 PM

Hello,
I love the sharpreader.
A few things I would like to see in the next version:

1) My sharpreader starts everytime not maximized. Is there a way to let it start maximized?
2) I would like a function, where I can link a seperate windows folder to each Feed. I have many podcasts and it would make it easier to save them to my harddisk, when the right folder is opened for the specific podcast.
3) I would like to have an additional option in the context menu when I right click on a post in the post-list of a feed: "Save to ..". Because some podcasts have the url to the mp3-file directly as the post-name (Right now i have to click on "Open in seperate window" and then click "Save to ..." in the browser)

But don't let us wait another year ;-)

By,
Madhunter

Posted by Madhunter at September 27, 2006 5:34 AM

Hey - this is a note to let you know you have another satisfied SharpReader customer here - I really like it.

But I still have suggestions :)

1) Add some basic browser control buttons to the preview pane (Back, Forward, Refresh)
2) maybe also add a "show in new browser window" button to the preview pane too.
3) an option to have 3-column view (like Outlook 2003 default view)

Thanks dude!

Posted by Sri at October 4, 2006 5:40 PM

Is there a way to make it work with protected LiveJournal feeds that use HTTP Digest auth ?

Posted by Tim at October 9, 2006 2:36 PM

Hi Luke !

First thing. I would just like to say that you made a great piece of software.

I have just one problem with it so far.... Data directory... Could you make this configurable? I mean one option in Configuration to where to put files? Problem is that I would like to run two instances of SharpReader, one that will be active and get all RSS feed, and another one, that is copy of data directory of one other computer, which won't be live (won't get any feeds but I will look through old ones).

I think that someone called Allan has already requested feature like this, but there was no reply so far (I think).

Thanks for all your good work...
Andy

Posted by Andy at October 13, 2006 5:04 AM

Wow! What a great product! This software is extremely accessible with my screen reader! One suggestion. It would be nice if you could choose a wav file to play upon an alert. This would come in handy because I can't see the alert when it comes up. This could also be used if someone is in another room near the computer and wants to be alerted to any RSS updates.

Posted by Blake at October 14, 2006 1:26 AM

Sorry. One more thing. Would it be possible to have a lower refresh rate?

Posted by Blake at October 14, 2006 1:31 AM

Hi Luke, any chance you can add an option to support auto proxy configuration urls?

Posted by jason at November 2, 2006 8:29 PM

Hi Luke,
many thanks for the perfect tool.
May I ask you? Is there the possibility to override 10 minutes refresh rate? Sometimes man need shorter response.
Thank you.

Posted by Tola at November 3, 2006 7:53 PM

Hi,

Sharpreader is really great tool. However, there is one feature that I'd like to see in the future versions: Please add support for feeds using Windows Authentication. We are having several internal blogs inside the company and those require authentication. Using basic authentication is not an option. So please add support for windows authentication. :-)

-J

Posted by J at November 20, 2006 8:49 AM

Thank you very much. I love SharpReader !

Posted by icewind at November 25, 2006 7:52 PM

Hi, Works as expected, very good.
Thing is i use a Internet Explorer Autoconfiguration file 'proxy.pac' it seems that the 'copy settings from internet explorer' function does noet uderstand these files?
Or am i doing something wrong?

Mike

Posted by Mike at November 26, 2006 6:30 AM
This discussion has been closed. If you wish to contact me about this post, you can do so by email.