feed7 2.0 was in development since early this year and a lot of
work and time went into this release. I'm very happy that this
project is finally done and now available as a free update on
Marketplace.
Here's the direct link to feed7 on Marketplace:
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/99aa9113-47f4-df11-9264-00237de2db9e
The main target of the 2.0 release was to replace the existing,
XML-file based local caching engine by something faster and more
flexible that scales good for users that want to cache several
thousand articles offline on their device. The development started
when Mango was far in the future and I tried to replace the caching
engine by some technology that already existed at this time - for
example SQLite for Windows Phone 7 or some of the object-based
databases that were available at this time.
A lot of work went into it and the result was unfortunately
nothing. The database solutions available early this year performed
so bad that each and everyone was a lot more worse than my own
custom-developed solution. Finally, when SQL Server CE support was
confirmed for the "Mango" release, I stopped development on version
2.0 and decided to delay feed7 2.0 until Mango is out.
It was the right decision. SQL Server CE outperforms any other
solution by far. It is not as fast at runtime as my
implementation was , but it greatly improves startup performance
and also scales well with larger local caches and also makes sync
faster. It required a nearly complete rewrite of the whole app as I
wanted to behave feed7 just like in the 1.x version, just like as
"nothing's happened" … but because the approach with a database is
so different to what I have done, everything's changed under the
hood now while the UI should feel just the same for you as always.
Just faster. And packed with Mango features.
So here's what's new beside the new caching engine:
New feature: Image caching
Also something I had to delay in favor of overall application
performance: you can now enable image caching in settings and feed7
will download all images it finds within feed articles. So now you
can read your articles offline, but this time also with all images
displayed. Of course this feature will slow down sync as analyzing
articles for images takes some time, and of course image
downloading will also cost time and bandwidth at least on the
initial sync - and yes it also will take some serious amount of
space on your device - but it's worth it if you're often reading
your articles while out of coverage, for example on a plane. You'll
see, after the initial sync and download is done, image sync works
pretty well and fast. And as it's completely disconnected from your
reading or sync experience, it also won't come into your way.
New feature: Multiselect
It's always helpful if you can perform bulk operations on your
articles. Just want to mark some of them starred for later
reference? Until now, you had to open each article and add a star
in article view.
Now, you can multiselect items (see image on the left)
just like in the official mail client of Windows Phone 7: Tap on
the left side of an item to open Checkbox mode, check all items you
want to change and select your operation from the AppBar - like
mark read, star and unstar. The options change depending on the
view you are in.
It's a great feature and we will improve it even more in future
release.
Performance, performance, performance
feed7 improves performance in many areas:
It starts in just 1/3 of the time while not
slowing down as your local cache grows. It's memory usage
is just about 50 % of version 1.x or even less.
Google Reader sync performance is also greatly
improved and also uses a lot less
bandwidth during sync.
We also optimized some workflows like when adding feeds.
Full "Mango" support
feed7 2.0 supports everything that's great about Windows Phone
7.5 "Mango":
- Multitasking (fast app switching)
- Greatly improved scrolling performance in
lists
- Pinnable feeds & folders - pin your
favorite feeds or even folders to your homescreen - with full Live
Tile support that shows the count of new items within those
folders!
New article view
Article view was completely overhauled and displays your
articles now in a more readable way. Images use as much space as
possible on screen so you won't have to resize them to better see
their contents. The font is a bit larger. We added some structuring
to the text so important parts stand out more. It's a great
improvement over version 1.x!
And many more …
As always when an app is nearly completely rewritten, there's so
much more in it than you can ever write down. Fixes, improvements,
optimizations, … you'll find plenty of them.
One word on Live Tiles
They also work completely different now. If you are using Google
Reader, your unread counts on your live tiles are now queried from
Google Reader directly over a new Background Agent that is executed
by Windows Phone every 30 minutes. You don't need help from my
server anymore for this.
For all users that don't use Google Reader but web (direct) sync
with feeds, my server is still required. But it also works
differently: until now, my server sent push messages to your device
with the unread count for your live tile. Now also the Background
Agent is pulling this data every 30 minutes from my server.
Go download now!
It's already live for a couple of days - if you don't have it
yet, get it … and let me know how you like it!
Have fun!