Agreed, with new Dual- and Quardcore machines spreading through our dev dungeons and surely some optimizations by JetBrains Resharper got to a more usable speed level during the last years. It is also more stable than ever, what does not mean much, though. That's why I try to install it again from time to time, just to check if things got better.

Now, while it indeed got speedier and more stable, ReShaprer is more evil than ever: it's more intrusive, it's scareware like many of the "security suites" out there that frequently bombard you with warnings and "informations" that should show you how important it is that you have this software installed and how screwed you are if you don't use it.

Even worse, it very often makes catastrophic refactoring recommendations that, unfortunately, many of the ReSharper users out there gladly adopt without thinking about consequences because they trust in a tool they really shouldn't trust in.

Of course I have examples for you. Because just after installing ReShaprer, it flooded my project with hundreds of warnings like every scareware would do to make itself important. "Gosh! I'm such a bad programmer!" you might think when looking at the mess and you will be glad that this tool will at least camouflage this by fixing your bad code. No, trust me, you're a good programmer. ReSharper just want you to believe you are bad and only ReShaprer can help you out.

Now … why ReSharper is evil:

ReSharper is evil because it urges you to remove used code

Here you see a standard XAML file on a Windows Phone project. ReSharper urges me to remove the ApplicationBar's from the XAML because they aren't used. If I would do this now, my project will build fine, but will crash like a flying penguin at runtime because this XAML markup IS used. Not in the XAML, but in code behind:

ReSharper doesn't check this, but nevertheless urges you to remove code. This is marked as a Warning by ReSharper, so it's clear a developer coming by this will remove it in good belief. That's catastrophic because this, in worst case, is an error that might come up no earlier than in customer's hands as it won't break your Build and it might be hidden deep inside your application.

You really want to trust a tool that comes up with such horrible, bad checked recommendations?

ReSharper is evil because it will tell you that your perfectly fine code is wrong

ReSharper thinks here is somewhere a redundant check. No there isn't. It will just cost you time to think about an error where there isn't any.

ReSharper is evil because it enforces inconsistent formatting guidelines

Just as ReSharper is evil, underscores in modern C# code are evil. Or at least a relict, to be fair. So it's fine that ReSharper wants you to remove underscores from event handler methods:

But then, ReShaprer wants you to use the saved underscores for instance fields:

No, C# coding guidelines suggest to just use camelCase and no Hungarian-like notations.

ReSharper is evil because it forces you to castrate your fine self-describing code

ReSharper thinks that the "var" keyword should be used instead of a complete type name left-side of the declaration:

JetBrains sais that the use of the var-keyword is well-argued here but: the left side is where you would normally look for the type in this declaration. It makes your code more readable than to have to search for the type on the initializer side. I understand that you have to write a lot of extra-chars for this benefit and using var on the left side would be easier. And that's understandable … but there's no reason that you have to refactor it later on if you have this already written like that. Don't make code less readable than it was just because ReSharper makes you believe that's better coding.

That's one of many examples where ReShaprer bombards you with unnecessary recommendations just to make itself more important. It would be OK if this recommendations were more subtle, but with all those curly underlining of such unimportant "errors", ReSharper is much too intrusive and distracts developers from really important things.

This is called advertising.

ReSharper is evil because it thinks it knows better what you want to do than you

If you assign a value to your variable only in the constructor of a class, ReSharper wants you to make this field read only. Seriously, wtf? I know when I want a field to be readonly. I have good reasons when I do that. And even if I don't use this field currently anywhere else than in the constructor, I or someone else might in the future. If it's not ok to write to this field I will make it readonly.

It's just another example of the flood of self-advertising of ReSharper. Same functionality more hidden or just on demand - ok, why not. But offensive like that including curly underlining? Oh my.

So, finally …

… these are just the things that came to my eye in the first 15 minutes after I installed ReSharper. There will be a lot more and I might add more examples in this post in the future. From destructive code refactorings that kill your app to all those unnecessary and over-prominent suggestions to change your code - ReSharper remains a very problematic tool.

If you want to use all the (many) good features of ReSharper, you will have to spend a lot of time in fine-tuning it and turning off all the crap it does to advertise itself. Very often you also have to disable good functionality to "fix" bad things ReSharper does, like the suggested XAML removal above - it's useful that ReSharper shows you code that is deprecated / unused - but you have to turn it of because you can't trust it.

If you use ReSharper anyhow, use it wisely and don't put ReSharper over your own coding skills. While it is very helpful, not to say essential,  in many on-demand refactoring scenarios, most of the "live" checks should be used with extreme caution or even turned off. For coding and styling guidelines better go with tools like FXCop.

Update 1: Even more examples

ReSharper tells me about a possible null reference exception where I just checked just for that one line earlier. Unnecessary curly lines everywhere distracting me from more important things. Don't like.

Also, the only way to get rid of this curly underlining in this case is to make the LINQ query more complicated and unreadable or to disable null reference checks in general.

If you are still using this feature within the app, feed7 won't crash and it won't do any harm. But it will be useless now as Google Reader doesn't support this feature anymore.

We will remove the possibility to share items over Google Reader with our next (bigger) update that most likely will see the light of day in December.

Google promotes to use Google+ and it's +1 feature to share articles with friends now but it's rather unlikely we will support this in feed7, at least in the near future. It of course also depends on your feedback if you need this feature integrated in feed7, so let us know what you think.

Besides that, we will have another small bugfix update on Marketplace this week that fixes issues with sharing items over Instapaper and Read It Later. No new features will be introduced with this update and it is not related to the changes in Google Reader.

Version 2.1.0.225 Release Notes:

Fix: Migration from v1.x to v2.0 can cause drop of 1.x settings
Fix: Wrong description for feed multiselect view star button

Version 2.2.0.227 Release Notes:

Fix: When resuming from tombstoned state, UriMappings were not initialized which results in crash
Fix: Resuming the app from a tombstoned state does not show contents of folders list
Fix: Sync client changes were not saved for background agent settings
Fix: Article duplicates can appear when syncing multiple times in the same session
Fix: Due to DNS problems after a DNS server change, live tiles for web sync stopped working
Fix: Race condition during update of live tiles in web sync mode
New: Support for YouTube short URI format youtu.be

Updated assemblies:
TileUpdateAgent.dll v1.1.0.2 -> v1.2.0.3

Update 2.2 is just going live on Marketplace and should appear on your devices in the next couple of hours.

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!

Besides supporting Mango goodness like fast app switching aka multitasking there are also some other new features: image caching, search, pinnable feeds and folders on your home screen and more. So - this is more than just an update for Mango. It's a real big update and it requires some preparation:

• Beginning in the next 24 hours, we are rolling out a public beta to Marketplace. feed7 2.0 was in a friendly user test for a while now but now everyone can try it out. If you want to participate, let us know your Live Id (send it to support@feed7app.com) - we will send you a direct download link. You don't have to be a Developer to participate - everyone with a Mango-enabled device can!
• feed7 will be in public beta for 1 to 3 weeks - depending on your feedback.
• During this time, we will be disabling the current Live Tile service. Live Tiles will stop working for V1.0 users! Live Tiles will behave completely differently in V2.0 and there is no easy migration scenario. Please mind that this Live Tile service was in Beta until now anyhow, so we ask for your understanding we won't have a soft migration this time. For users that won't have the ability to upgrade to Mango anytime soon, this will mean that they won't have a Live Tile for a longer time. But we're looking into this to find a solution for those users.
• feed7 2.0 final will launch some time in October, depending on Beta feedback.

That's it for now - please take your chance to join the beta and give feedback!

Now back to this update. Here are the most important new features and fixes you will find in this release:

Application Bar color now changeable

Some people loved the orange color of feed7's AppBar … but also some didn't. And most of them were using AMOLED devices with very colorful screens. On such devices, the orange was a too strong contrast to the else very color-reduced and dark interface when using the dark Windows Phone 7 theme.

Anyhow, in a very theme-aware application like feed7, it was time to make also the AppBar respect the user-selected theme. But for everybody who loved the orange - or just wants another color for the AppBar - you can change this color now in settings. The theme color will be default (and is recommended - if you change your theme, of course feed7 will also change its AppBar color).

Auto-Sync on startup

A very frequent and legitimate wish: why do I always have to press "sync" manually on every app startup? The long answer is: because a sync impacts performance and also limits your options until it is finished. You won't be able to add new feeds or change settings, for example. So having auto-sync on every startup can also be annoying.

But of course there is no reason to not offer a setting for that. feed7 1.8 has just that. But by default, it's deactivated.

Unstar all

Already noticed that since the last update (version 1.7) feed7 changes the AppBar buttons while swiping through the different lists (folders, unread items, …)? You got an "unstar all" on top level that way, but only if you are in the unread items list.

This has been extended in this version and you now also have an option for "unstar all" when you are in any starred items list. Useful if you are using starring heavily for temporarily marking interesting articles (for later reading for example).

It looks like this:

A fix for Mango users

Many of you are already using the Mango Beta on your devices. Due to some breaking changes, feed7 wasn't able to authenticate if you changed your password since your Mango update (or freshly installed feed7 and had to enter the password for the first time). This is fixed in this release … kind of a mini Mango update.

Release notes

For all other changes, please read the following release notes for this update:

feed7 1.8 Release Notes:

Fix: Due to incorrect handling of some article unique IDs, some feed's articles could not be opened
Fix: When using web sync mode, some older/special feed formats weren't supported
Fix: Users that already used WP7 7.1 (Mango) Beta couldn't store the password correctly anymore
Fix: Last sync info gets persisted earlier now so sync skipping is now more effective when enabled
Fix: Backward out animations are now always working
Fix: Opening a context menu always caused erroneously a navigation afterwards
Added: Unstar all in starred lists
Added: Custom color settings for AppBar
Added: Setting to automatically start a sync on app startup
Changed: Updated 3rd party components and changed parts of the app to benefit from their new features
Changed: Some preparations for Mango/feed7 2.0 update later this year

But feed7 is gearing up and over the next couple of weeks there will be a lot of new stuff coming out that will include all the work that has been done since the last update, and that was mainly targeted on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Mango release.

But step by step, let's start with the missing release information for feed7 1.7:

feed7 1.7 April 2011 feature update

I'm sure everyone already uses this version in the meantime. While not obviously visible, this was a rather large update containing a complete redone UI for (much) better scrolling performance, (much) better performing and Metro-like animations/page transitions, landscape support, a complete localizable UI (with one additional language, German, included) and much more. Here are the details:

feed7 1.7 Release Notes:

Added: Full localization support for complete UI implemented
Added: Localization to German added. More languages will be added depending on customer demand
Added: Links in articles can now be opened directly in WP7 browser, can be limited to YouTube video links only
Added: Mark all read on top level
Added: Full landscape support added
Enhanced: Improved scroll performance in feed lists to offer native-like WP7 experience
Enhanced: New page transitions that offer native-like WP7 experience and faster, less diversionary animations
Enhanced: Optimized startup time by reducing amount of cached data
Fix: Due to some Google Reader API bugs, duplicate articles were returned occasionally. feed7 handles them now.
Fix: Opening articles from "all" lists caused sometimes automatic re-opening of those items later
Fix: Some small UI glitches fixed that were not compliant to WP7 design guidelines
Fix: Exception on startup when push notification server is temporary unavailable
Fix: Under some circumstances saving tombstoning data could cause a null reference exception

feed7 1.8 update for NoDo coming

While Mango is just around the corner, there will be one more update for NoDo devices coming in the next couple of days. It will add some requested features and some bug fixes that were reported since the last update in April. Included are customizable Application Bar colors, auto-sync on startup and some more UI enhancements.

It was a long time since the last update - the reason is that we needed to move some of the planned features to the feed7 2.0 release as we need the new Mango features for them.

There is also one bugfix in this release that already targets Mango (for everyone that already uses feed7 on a Mango beta device): when changing your password, it is currently stored incorrectly on Mango devices. This update will fix this problem. You won't have noticed this problem if you haven't changed your password since your update to Mango on your device.

feed7 2.0, the update for "Mango" - join the Beta!

feed7 2.0 is in the making for months now and had been delayed again and again because the planned new features weren't realizable with the current-generation WP7 OS. It was impossible to work around the limitations without having serious performance impacts. But with the new Mango update everything is on track now, mainly the "heart of the update", a new caching engine.

Shortly after the 1.8 update there will be a Beta for 2.0 available to everyone who already has the Mango Beta running on a real device. Everyone who is interested in joining the Beta, please contact feed7 support. While the first Beta release won't be feature complete and you might not even notice huge differences, there will be some key features of Mango implemented, like support for fast app switching ("Multitasking").

ASP.NET 4 comes with a new feature that makes extensionless URLs work out of the box in Internet Information Services 6. This feature can be enabled in the registry. It should be enabled by default, but in my case, it was not for some reason.

So, make sure that in:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ASP.NET\4.0.30319.0

the EnableExtensionlessUrls key is set to 1.

For instance, feed7 handles text input now better and sets actions if you press enter during some text input in forms (like setting the focus on the next relevant input element or closing the SIP (keyboard) automatically.

The biggest part of the update was support for the new Live Tile Push Service 2.0 that will improve accuracy of your notifications and also has a much nicer and upgrade-friendlier architecture. While you won't notice much difference, a lot of work has gone into that and it will be a lot easier and faster in the future to add new features or changes to the service without loosing to much time on backwards compatibility issues.

Speaking of backwards compatibility, the Live Tile Push Service 1.x for feed7 1.5 will be running side-by-side with the new version until end of March so you don't have to upgrade to feed7 1.6 immediately to keep your live tile notifications working.

This client & push service update is also a preparation for feed7 2.0 that will arrive soon. Most of the changes in feed7 1.6 are actual changes in feed7 2.0 that were integrated into the 1.6 release.

Another important part of this update are changes that will allow you to report app crashes directly to support. This will help to react faster to issues that appear "in the wild". If an unexpected error happens, you will be asked if you want so open a ready to send E-Mail-message. Although I hope you will never see this message, please make use of it. Another part is that feed7 now integrates PreEmptive's Runtime Intelligence service that will also help monitor the application in the wild.

So you see - this update focuses on improvements now and in the future. While it brings no new features, it is a very important update that caused a lot of work. Thus, the time since the last update was longer than expected, but rest assured that work on feed7 2.0 has run parallel to this release - so you should see the new major release in mid-April.

As always, find the complete release notes below.

Release notes feed7 1.6

Fix: Some fixes and enhancements to web sync parsers for Atom, RSS and RDF feeds
Fix: In some scenarios, feed7 stopped syncing unstarred items with Google Reader
Fix: More pessimistic unread/starred management to prevent duplicates in unread or starred lists
Fix: Problems during opening a push notification channel could crash the app
Changed: Integrated new February 2011 Silverlight Toolkit and replaced some custom code by toolkit functionality
Changed: General code maintenance, mainly removing deprecated code/functionality
Changed: Subtle indentation for Google Reader credentials on settings screen removed as this confused some users
Changed: Better text input (SIP) handling
Changed: Integrated new push service features for more accurate notifications
Enhanced: Trial mode is now less restrictive, app can be used without restrictions besides a trial info on main page.
Changed: In trial mode, push notifications are now limited to a 5 day trial license starting from the first time of use.
Added: Global error handler for unexpected exceptions that allows sending the error details to support by mail
Added: Added PreEmptive runtime intelligence to report and analyze app usage

First of all, my decision to mark this service as "Beta" was right - until now, the service didn't delivered the quality a final software should have. I had some outages because of nasty bugs and some conceptual flaws that caused some inaccurate data for some of you. I fixed and updated the service frequently but as it turns out, this was not good enough to deliver quality data to your devices.

The reason is I underestimated the really bad data quality really many of the feeds out there offer. Only very few feeds deliver accurate published timestamps for their articles. Many of them fail on correct time zone settings, others seem to have only day-based timestamps without any time information and my absolutely favorite feeds have article timestamps from far in the future (months to years!).

While I tried to fix those inaccurate information on my side, it was a never-ending story. So I decided to only rely on my very own data now, and this is what the current update brings. Instead of the published date, I now look at my own timestamp that I set when my crawler finds a a new article. This is one way to optimize this behavior, but because crawling is not real-time and we will always have some gaps between what's on your devices and what's on my server, I have implemented some additional data processing where I need a little more information from the data cache state on your devices. Unfortunately, this cannot be fixed server-side immediately but requires a software update on your devices.

In the next one or two weeks, I plan to publish another small feed7 update that will integrate the necessary features that are now already available over the server side interface. Until then, the new way I manage article timestamps should already improve the live tile accuracy.

feed7 2.0

While I'm at it, the next feed7 update will not be a feature update like the last one, it' will just be a small maintenance update with some fixes and smaller changes. This is because I'm already working on feed7 2.0 that will bring major changes to the UI and to the caching engine, as well as some other long-awaited features. There will be dramatic changes while the general way how feed7 works (and looks) will not change (much), but I'm sure you will love how fast and fluid feed7 will be.

Currently I'm having some issues with some 3rd party code but they're working with me to resolve the issues. Anyhow, it will be a couple of months until feed7 2.0 will be available as a final release. Until then, feed7 1.x will of course be maintained and will get some smaller updates.

But would this decision bring anything good for Nokia? Would it make any sense? Personally, I don't think so. And I also don't think this will happen. Stephen Elop might have spent a couple of years of his (much longer) IT career at Microsoft, but after reading his internal memo, I'm sure he isn't stupid. And switching from Symbian to Windows Phone 7 would be a very stupid move.

Let me explain …

There's absolutely nothing wrong with Windows Phone 7. It's a great OS, even in version 1, with a bright future and tons of chances to finally bring mobile mojo to Redmond. But it's also a very closed system. OEMs can't change anything more than the default live tile color and decide to ship a few bundled apps. Such a closed system works good when you are also shipping it on a closed hardware platform, like we see it with iOS and iPhone. When your mobile OS ships with many different phones from many different manufactures, I believe this isn't so sexy anymore.

But you get some benefits, like the possibility to easily update all devices out there very frequently with new features (do you read me, Redmond?) and if you get this right, this still can attract customers.

The real trouble starts if you want to switch the whole product portfolio of a OEM to such a system. It becomes even worse if the name of this OEM is Nokia, also known as the world leader in the mobile phone business. Currently. Thus, Nokia has a somewhat large product portfolio targeting everything from the ultra low cost markets up to the high end multimedia and business smartphone space. One thing they've always done is releasing new models like crazy.

Symbian, as much as I always hated this OS, did a good job in offering a platform that scaled well to all kinds of phones. Nokia had some very different UIs sitting on top of Symbian. Much more important, most of Nokia's customers even didn't know that there is something called "Symbian" on their device. It was just "a Nokia". Or "a Communicator".

Windows Phone 7 can't do all that for Nokia. It's to offensively branded to Windows Phone, and it just can't scale down to lower cost devices in the $ 100 area. Nokia would have a hard time even differentiating top level devices enough from each other.

But then you say: of course! Elop is jumping from their burning platform. 100 models in every flavor in the market isn't the right way for doing mobile phone business anymore! They will change that too! Probably. Hopefully. But you won't see a Nokia with 5 different Windows Phone 7 devices on the market. That way, they could even stay on their burning platform.

Nokia has still a very loyal customer base. They're buying Nokia because it's Nokia. Not because it's Symbian. Nokia should really try everything to keep those customers happy.

So, what I actually think will happen is that Nokia will announce that they are going to release some Windows Phone 7 devices that will be used for covering the high end smartphone market. With Nokia's first class hardware, this could be a success indeed. It will be also a chance to gain ground in the US where Nokia never was very strong. But they sure will not switch to Windows Phone 7.

The most interesting part of tomorrows event will be the question what's Nokia going to do about Symbian and MeeGo. Personally, I think Symbian will survive in the low cost and mid range portfolios. Windows Phone 7 can't replace Symbian there currently, but maybe in the future - if Microsoft decides to make Windows Phone 7 more adaptable to OEM's needs. MeeGo is also no option for the low cost market and even not for mid-range so I expect it to be dropped.

Android would be the best choice for Nokia as their future main OS slowly replacing Symbian. Nokia could even adapt it to behave a lot like Symbian to slowly guide longtime customers to the new platform. But by all we know now, Android will not be an option for Nokia.

To sum it up:

My recommendation for Nokia:

Use Android and Windows Phone 7 in a 2:1 ratio

What most likely will happen:

Nokia will stick to Symbian for mid- and low range devices, at least for now, and will introduce some WP7 high end smartphones.

What definitely NOT will happen:

Nokia replaces Symbian by Windows Phone 7.

Weak point in my theory:

Stephen Elop has discredited Symbian so much in his memo that it's hard to believe he want to release even one more handset with this OS. But on the other hand, if they're not switching to Android, there's no other reasonable way to defend market share in low- to midrange portfolios.

I'm exited about what will happen tomorrow.

As with the December update, I'd like to walk you through the most important changes.

Live Tile support (and the "Beta" story)

Having a "real", updating live tile was the most requested feature for feed7. While this request is absolutely valid, it is a hard task to accomplish on Windows Phone 7 due to the lack of multitasking support for 3rd party apps.

Knowing how important this feature is for many of you, I decided to develop a cloud service (buzzwords to the rescue, right?) to collect the required information's from all over the web and push this info to your devices.

As this service will acquire a lot of resources, I currently don't know how it performs with hundreds or even thousands of users on it and how I will be able to fund this service with a one-time $ 1,99 app. For a individual developer like me, this is a hard task so I decided to put the "Beta" tag on this service for now. I will tell you more about my plans for the future of this service in a separate post soon.

In the meantime, all you need to know is that this service is "beta" - so it might fail sometimes, it might change how it works in the future or - in worst case - also might be removed from the app again if I'm unable to handle the required load with my financial resources.

And of course you need to know how it works: First of all, you can enable it (opt-in) in the settings screen. After this the live tile will always show you the amount of new articles of all your feeds since your last sync. So the counter will also be reset to 0 after every sync. The maximum value is 99.

Other important things to know:

• The live tile count does not take your already read items in Google Reader into account. Of course, this service works with anonymous user data so it just can't know about your read or unread items within Google Reader. It just knows about all articles of your feeds that weren't synced to your device already.
• Of course, it works for both, Google Reader users and also all users that sync directly with feeds. It works completely identical!
• Currently, the live tile updates every 15 minutes. Most likely, this will be changed to 30 minutes soon.
• Please don't expect exact numbers. Don't wonder when the actual count of new items is a little bit higher than the count on the live tile suggested. You don't get instant notifications for every new item. If the difference is high, please contact support, though.

New sharing options

Additionally to Instapaper and ReadItLater, you can now share feed articles by:

• E-Mail
• Text Message (aka short message/SMS)
• Google Reader

Support for sharing when offline

Every sharing option works also while you are offline. For Instapaper, ReadItLater and Google Reader this means that when you share your item over one of this services and you don't have a network connection, feed7 will cache this sharing request and sends it to the service after your next sync.

For E-Mail and text message, this is handled by the phone.

Use always a white theme for article view

Reading black text on white background is easier for your eyes than white text on black background. So even if you use the dark Windows Phone 7 theme, you can now enable using always a white background on the article view over settings.

What else?

There is now a direct link to rate feed7 on the marketplace in the AppBar of the main screen. Please make use of it!

Also, there are a lot of other changes & fixes in this release. Please see the following complete release notes to get the big picture!

Fix: RSS feeds without post unique IDs caused feed7 to open wrong posts in those feeds when using web sync mode
Fix: Sometimes feed7 downloaded already cached articles when using Google Reader
Fix: Fixed issues with UI thread dispatching after tombstoning (sending app to background)
Fix: Since read/starred state changes in v1.4, sometimes server states could override local changed states in feed7
Fix: Stability enhancements on HTTP client calls in Reader Sync client
Fix: When adding/editing/removing feeds or folders, status message shows now correct status information
Fix: Parsing of RSS RFC dates failed for some RSS feeds in web sync mode
Fix: When immideately going back to the app after sending it to the background, feeds could get duplicated in UI
Added: Sharing of feed articles by E-Mail
Added: Sharing of feed articles over Google Reader
Added: Sharing of feed articles by text message
Added: Sharing now has an offline queue for Instapaper, ReadItLater and Google Reader sharing to
Added: feed7 now supports showing new feed articles since last sync on its live tile (Beta, opt-in)
Added: Possibility to switch between theme aware and white theme colors in posts viewer
Added: Animations when going through items in posts viewer
Added: Possibility to start marketplace rating task from main view AppBar to rate feed7
Added: Mark all read/unread on folder level now possible
Added: Feed article view supports now opening article's URL in external browser
Changed: Better handling of read state so that just opened posts aren't removed from lists during animations
Changed: feed7 icon on home screen ("live tile") is now theme aware
Changed: Cache duration allows now up to be set up to 1 year
Changed: Better handling of missing network connections with clearer error messages for the users
Changed: Star app bar button now changes appearance based on if an article is marked as star or not

I got a lot of feedback on the first version and I tried to implement the most requested into this first, large update. Also, many changes or features that just didn't made it into V1 - because there was not enough time - are now included.

I'd like to walk you through the most important new features so you won't miss anything!

Context menus

feed7 now offers context menus in all feed lists so you have easy access to the most common tasks for feeds and folders. Just tap and hold on an item to bring it up - like in native Windows Phone applications.

Edit feeds & folders

You now finally can edit feeds and folders. This was often requested by users that use direct web sync instead of Google Reader as they were not able to change a feed name or address server side.

Move feeds

Also something that will really help web sync users - you now can move your feeds anytime to other folders and not only during folder creation.

Much improved Google Reader sync speed

Google Reader sync is now much faster! The complete sync process was revised and optimized for more speed and a more bandwidth friendlier behavior. You should notice up to 5 times faster sync speeds after the initial sync. Speed will benefit if you sync often and keep your unread states low!

Share your feeds

feed7 now supports sharing feeds. Initially, you can send your feeds to Instapaper and Read It Later, but more services are coming soon. Stay tuned!

Run & sync under lock screen

In settings, you can now opt-in to let feed7 run when your screen is locked. Press sync, lock your phone & come back later when sync is finished!

Import feeds from OPML files (web sync mode only)

When you do not sync with Google Reader, OPML is ideal to import larger feed lists into feed7. Who wants to type in 50 feed addresses manually? Go to add new feeds and fill in a web address where you have uploaded your OPML file and let feed7 do the rest.

OPML import is currently straightforward but we will extend it with more options (like selective import or support for folders) in the future.

What else?

Another new setting is now available: you can decide to omit sync for feeds that have been synced already within a given timespan. It helps to save bandwidth and speeds up sync if you update your feeds very often. When you are using Google Reader sync, I recommend do leave this setting disabled as Reader sync is optimized to skip feeds that have no new items. Also, Reader sync speed benefits if you sync more often. In web sync mode, such optimizations are not possible and this setting can be very helpful.

An often requested change was to have the post view also respect your phone's theme colors (currently, this view uses a white background for better readability). This is now changed, although I plan to give the user the choice how to display this view with a future release. Please let me know what you think about this change in comments or by sending in an E-Mail to the support E-Mail address.

In addition, feed7 1.4 comes with a lot of important fixes and optimizations. Please look at the following, complete release notes to see everything that's changed.

Thanks to everyone who sent in feedback and I hope you like this update.

Fix: Another sync crashing issue with a few Google Reader accounts fixed
Fix: Feeds list in Add Folder view is now sorted
Fix: Adding feeds directly into folders failed in some scenarios
Fix: Better support for some Atom feeds in direct web sync mode
Fix: When navigating through items in feed item view, items are now marked as read
Fix: Navigating through items in feed item view will now be in correct date order
Fix: Feed & Folder list now persists earlier in the sync process to prevent data loss when disrupting first sync process
Fix: During moving feeds, they sometimes lost their folder association which led to display problems
Fix: Deleting feeds from subfolders did not work in some scenarios
Fix: When using more than one Atom feed in direct web sync mode, Atom feeds could get mixed up
Fix: Better support for ISO-8859-1 encoded feeds in direct web sync mode
Added: Context menus
Added: Moving feeds to other folders now possible
Added: Editing feeds and folders now possible
Added: New setting to sync only feeds that haven't been synced within a given timespan
Added: feed7 runs & syncs now under the lock screen, disableable in settings
Added: Import feeds from OPML file (direct web sync mode only)
Added: Social Network Services, currently supporting Instapaper and Read It Later
Added: Support for older RDF format in web sync mode
Enhanced: Much faster, bandwidth-friendlier Google Reader sync
Enhanced: Direct web sync now shows more detailed sync status like in Google Reader sync mode
Enhanced: Some UI optimizations & fixes, for example: feed item view now also matches app/phone theme
Enhanced: Item/post view shows now the web link of an item that has no content

It will update your current version 1.5 to version 1.6, but despite the rather large version step (for compactRSS versioning), it's a rather small update with two fixes. In fact, the 6 is only there because you can't publish an upgrade to marketplace without increasing that number at least by 1.

Here's what's in it:

• Due to the limited encoding support on Windows Mobile devices, some feeds with rather uncommon encodings could not be added to compactRSS. With this update, compactRSS will be able to handle most of them.
• A user reported he had problems with HTTPS feeds. I looked at it and as is the story with encodings, also certificates are not very widely supported on Windows Mobile devices. Thus, untrusted certificates were declined by compactRSS. I changed the behavior of compactRSS to accept also certificates that were issued by untrusted authorities, so there should be no issues with HTTPS feeds anymore. Regarding security concerns that may arise - I think they are negligible in this case.

These fixes will not be incorporated to compactRSS 1.0! If you are still using the free edition, please purchase compactRSS 1.6 from marketplace if you need them.

In any case, please just update feed7 to the latest version (on marketplace this is version 1.3.0.0).

If your phone doesn't offer this update automatically, just search for feed7 on the marketplace and select "Update" from there. This update will correct any category issues.

After that, please restart your phone once. Now feed7 should appear in your applications list as expected.

Please be aware that the version information in feed7's about box will be still 1.2.0.14 - only the marketplace version will display 1.3 currently. When publishing the first feature update soon, I will also bring those version numbers in sync again.

If you still have problems, please don't hesitate to contact support by E-Mail or just leave a comment here.

What's next?

After fixing all initial issues, I'm now working on the first feature update. It should be available in 1-2 weeks and will contain the most requested features like moving feeds, renaming feeds & folders, context menus in addition to the AppBar menus, and of course some fixes for bugs that were reported to me.

Please keep sending in feedback, it helps a lot to focus on features you most care about.

Thanks to some very helpful users that sent in their feed lists, I was able to reproduce the bug and fix it. The update was already submitted to the Marketplace. Depending on how long certification will take at Microsoft, I expect the update to be available within the next couple of days.

Again, thanks to everyone who sent this in, provided their feed lists and took the time to discuss the problem with me. Without that, it won't have been possible to track down the source of the error so fast.

And to everyone who is affected by this bug: please accept my apologies, I'm really sorry your first experience was an unfortunate one.

It was very important for me to support Google Reader in feed7 as many use this service to organize their feeds on a central account. By using feed7, you will benefit from that as it will sync two-way with Google Reader and, for example, keeps your read states or starred items in sync.

Anyhow, many of you don't want to use Google Reader or any other online service. feed7 is for you too - in fact, the experience of feed7 is exactly the same. You can use Folders to organize your feeds even when you are not using Google Reader. You can mark items as starred. Everything's there too. And you will benefit from a much faster sync speed without a connected online service.

In feed7, the decision is up to you.

Of course, feed7 caches your feed items on the device for offline reading. It downloads the favicons for your feeds (where available) for a better distinction between your feeds and feed items. Everything is organized in all, unread and starred item views, no matter in which view you are.

Of course, there are some missing features in V1 which will be added over the coming weeks. Moving feeds to other folders is not possible on the device just now (but is supported when you move them in Google Reader). No social sharing features are currently available. And I'm sure there will be bugs. Windows Phone 7 is new and it was impossible to find a serious amount of beta testers.

So please: If you try feed7 (a fee trial is available) and experience any issues, or you miss any features, you have any suggestions - send them in! The support mail address is listed everywhere (on Marketplace or in the About page of the app, accessible from the main screen app bar) or just leave a comment below. We appreciate your feedback and we need it!

I already noticed some ratings and comments on the Marketplace reporting issues with crashes when syncing with Google Reader. If you're one of them, first of all, I'm sorry - and: please contact me! There are millions of Google Reader accounts out there and we were just able to test with a handful of them.

In the upcoming days, I will share more info's here and hope to bring up the app's site on http://www.feed7app.com soon. In the meantime, just follow this blog to be up do date with the latest & greatest about feed7.

Thank you very much!

Soon more detais on http://www.feed7app.com!

It has been released to most English and German-speaking markets and is already available in the United States, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Within the next few days it should also pop up in the UK, Canada and Australia while others will follow in the next weeks.

If you do not live in one of those countries, you can still switch to any of the above markets on your phone (go to Settings in your Marketplace app) and buy it there.

As always, your feedback is very welcome. Please use the support E-Mail address shown on marketplace or use the contact form on this website (or leave a comment). There will be frequent updates for compactRSS and your feedback will absolutely be taken into account when developing bug fixes or new features.

As mentioned in my previous post, compactRSS will be soon available on Windows Marketplace for Mobile and will come with some nice new features.

One big part is localization. compactRSS 1.5 will come with 2 available languages, English and German. Also, some major code refactoring has happened and the performance should be noticeably better already now.

If you want to try it out, please feel free to download the 1.5 Beta from the product page. Please be aware that the localization to German is still in the works and therefore not complete.

Feedback is very welcome - please use the contact form on this website to send it to me.

compactRSS, as you know it by now, won't run on Windows Phone 7 devices and I'm currently working on its successor for Windows Phone 7 (currently named "Vanilla" or "Feed Vanilla", but that is just a working title), of course completely written from scratch. It looks great but there's still a long road ahead … but I hope to have this little tool up on the Marketplace already when the first customers get their hands on WP7 devices.

Talking about Marketplace, you might also know that Microsoft changes the game even here. On Windows Phone 7, you can't buy or download your applications from anywhere else than the Marketplace. This also means: no more free downloading and installing compactRSS from this website.

I'm preparing now for all those changes. This includes that I will also switch the current compactRSS for Windows Mobile 6.0, 6.1 and 6.5 to the Marketplace and remove the download from this website within the next couple of days. If you want to get a free copy, get it now :) …

Windows Marketplace for Mobile isn't free for me or any other developer. There are annual membership fees as well as fees for each and every application I want to publish. Thus, I can't offer you my software for mobile devices for free anymore. Of course, the price will be fair and I also hope everybody who likes compactRSS will be fair to purchase it from there to support the ongoing development of this software. "Fair price" means no more than € 5,- - but you can expect it to be even lower than that.

Purchasing compactRSS will upgrade your compactRSS 1.0 installation to compactRSS 1.5 - so you will also get some additional reward with a few additional features and changes that I have implemented to prepare for a launch on the official Windows Marketplace for Mobile. This includes:

• Support for localization. Version 1.5 will include two initial languages: English and German (currently only English). Other languages may follow depending on customer needs.
• Removed currently implemented update functionality (wasn't online for some time now anyhow) because the automatic update process will be handled by the Marketplace in the future.
• Removed most of the tracing code from the standard release binaries for performance and memory footprint improvements. When launching to a broader audience, it makes no sense to deploy tracing features to all users.
• Additional performance and stability improvements.
• Implemented required features to support hosting this application on Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

FAQs (I will extend this section if additional FAQs pop up):

• I don't want to purchase version 1.5 … will there be updates and/or fixes for version 1.0?
  I will continue to support version 1.0 and fix any serious bugs that might be encountered in the future. On the other hand, new features are rather unlikely.
• How much will compactRSS cost on the Windows Marketplace for Mobile?
  I am planning a fair price point of US-$ 3,95 - please notice that this is subject to change until launch.
• When will it be available?
  Within the next weeks.

WCF Error: An error occurred while loading attribute 'XmlSerializerFormatAttribute' on method x in type y

I have a very simple solution for you: make sure you have installed .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 on all your machines.

I have searched for hours for a solution to this error. It appeared just on one single WCF call whereas all others were working fine.

Finally I came across this MSDN forums post that pointed me in the right direction.

So If you develop your software on 3.5 SP1 systems and then deploying it to 3.5 systems without SP1, it's very likely you will fix your problem by installing SP1.

Needless to say, the user of the application should not even notice that there is a website in the background.

I needed to use the webbrowser control as the website is a really fantastic example of how to NOT implement a web site. Everything the user does causes JavaScripts to execute and it's a nightmare (if not impossible) to solve this by sending custom POST requests to the webserver.

So I went with the webbrowser control which works really fine when used to fill out forms and invoke buttons in context of the website. It's still a lot of spaghetti code that comes together but it actually works.

For V2 of the application, i switchted from WinForms to WPF. The first thing I've learned was that it is really no good idea to use the WPF webbrowser control as it lacks some features of the WinForms control. One of them was the ScriptErrorsSuppressed-Property that prevents webpages from displaying MessageBoxes (not only caused by ScriptErros).

The solution is of course to use a WinFormsHost inside your WPF window and place a WinForms webbrowser control inside of it. But while you now have access to a much more complete API and can SET the ScriptErrorsSuppressed property, this property has actually no effect.

No matter what you are told in some dev forums (for example: it only works when the application runs in full trust) - it never works. Never ever. Don't waste your time. I spent hours trying dozens of different "solutions" to get this working, still each and every MessageBox popped up and remindet the user that there is some browser automation happening in the background.

As there is no clean solution on this and everything looks like Microsoft is not interested in changing this situation, I decided to go the ugly way with a dirty hack - I use COM Interop to the Win32 API call GetLastActivePopup that returns the window handle of the last popup a given window has created. This also works for MessageBoxes that are created by webbrowser control.

The trick now is to launch a worker thread every time you do some browsing and let this thread check frequently if your browser window raises any popups. If so, use another COM call to destroy this popup immediately.

I have very good results using this technique. That means: it works reliable and the end-user doesn't even notice that there's something going one most of the time as the check happens every 10 ms in my configuration. This short interval does not cause any performance issues or more than regular CPU load during execution.

Everything you need is here

The good news is: it is possible to use this out-of-the-box and you can use my code 1:1 in your project.

Firstly, here's the class that contains all the logic. Include it just like below in your project:

private class PopupHandler
{
    #region Interop

    [DllImport("user32.dll")]
    static extern IntPtr GetLastActivePopup(IntPtr hWnd);

    [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
    static extern IntPtr SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd, UInt32 Msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam);

    static uint WM_CLOSE = 0x10;

    #endregion

    public IntPtr OriginalWindowHandle { get; private set; }

    private bool isCanceled = false;

    public PopupHandler(IntPtr originalWindowHandle)
    {
        this.OriginalWindowHandle = originalWindowHandle;
    }

    public void Cancel()
    {
        isCanceled = true;
    }

    public void Execute(object windowHandle)
    {
        while (!isCanceled)
        {
            // Find a possible open IE popups/alert and close it
            IntPtr lastPopupHandle = GetLastActivePopup(OriginalWindowHandle);
            
            if (lastPopupHandle.ToString() != "0" & OriginalWindowHandle != lastPopupHandle)
                SendMessage(lastPopupHandle, WM_CLOSE, IntPtr.Zero, IntPtr.Zero);   // Sends close Message to popup

            // Sleep a little to prevent full CPU load
            Thread.Sleep(10);
        }
    }
}

Next, here is an example how to call this class in a multithreaded way:

// Launch Popup Handler Thread
WindowInteropHelper wih = new WindowInteropHelper(this);

PopupHandler popupHandler = new PopupHandler(wih.Handle);
Thread popupHandlerThread = new Thread(popupHandler.Execute);
popupHandlerThread.Start();

// Now do your navigation
// this.browser.Navigate(@"http://www.google.at");

And that's it. This will do all the work.

Short explanation: this in the above context is the WPF window. To get the window handle of a WPF window, we need to use the WindowInteropHelper class. And with wih.Handle we pass the window handle to the PopupHandler class, and actually this information is all the PopupHandler class needs to do its job.

Just one important notice: a WPF window does not get a window handle until it was showed at least one time. So you *will* have to call myWindow.Show() at least once before using this class. It's ok if you call myWindow.Hide() immediately after that. Consider setting the default window state to minimized to prevent the user seeing some flickering on the screen.

What is left for you to do? Of course, you want to stop this thread after you have completed browsing. The PopupHandler class has a handy Cancel-Method for that. Just call it when you are finished.

I hope this helps some fellow developers to save many valuable hours of their lives :)

Of course if anyone out there can come up with a cleaner solution, please let me know!

But as bpk.cc is now up and alive again, it's also time to push out a new release of compactRSS with a few bugfixes.

The most important fix of course is that Live Search works again now (and is now rebranded to the new "Bing" brand). While Microsoft seemed to have fixed the issue with empty results for a couple of months, the problem popped up again (and was never fixed).

Now I digged deeper into the Bing API and found a solution that brings you a permanent fix. At least I hope so (seriously, Redmond!).

Here's the complete list what have been fixed in release 1.0.12.26:

• Web search for feeds is now working again
  Searching by using Live Search returned no result over the last couple of months
• Rebranded "Live Search" to "Bing"
• Dropped support for Live Search 1.x API
  You cannot fallback to the 1.x API in compactRSS now by setting the relevant flag in the config file. Live Search / Bing API 2.0 is now the only supported version.
• "Trace" menu entry is now removed completely if tracing is not enabled
  Until now, it was just disabled ("grayed out"). In fact, this menu entry was never meant to be seen by the end-user.
• Fixed wrong header text in OPML Import explorer window
• A few other small fixes or optimizations

As the update service is currently still not available, you will have to manually download the setup (cab) file to your phone from this website and execute it. It will update the old version automatically so you won't have to remove your current installation of compactRSS at least.

Version 1.0.12.26 will be available shortly for download from the product page and the download section of this website.

LINQ queries always return an IEnumerable which can be very easily "converted" to a generic List:

var result = from x in y
             select x;

return result.ToList();

Sadly, there isn't anything like ToList() for an generic Observable Collection - something like ToObservableCollection() as you might expect.

Luckily, there is such cool stuff like Extension Methods in .NET and it is very easy for us to extend the type IEnumerable with an ToObservableCollection() method that just works as simple as ToList():

public static ObservableCollection<TSource> ToObservableCollection<TSource>
    (this IEnumerable<TSource> source)
{
    ObservableCollection<TSource> collection = 
        new ObservableCollection<TSource>();

    if (source != null)
    {
        foreach (var item in source)
            collection.Add(item);
    }
    else
        collection = null;

    return collection;
}

Just put this class into your project and IEnumerable will be extended with this method immediately. Now we can write:

var result = from x in y
             select x;

return result.ToObservableCollection();

If this doesn't work for you, just make sure that you put this class in the same namespace where you want to use this extension method (or that you import this namespace).

It's the same version as on the old website, so nothing has changed since then.

The product/info page to compactRSS will also return soon. In the meantime, this should keep you served, no matter if you're new to compactRSS or if you used it already and just need the latest update (as unfortunately the bpk Update Service went down with the shutdown of the old website, too, and won't return in the near future).

To install or update, just download the file from the download page directly with your phone.

The reason for this was that the formerly used software to run this site, BlogEngine.NET, didn't satisfy all my needs. While this .NET based blogging platform was absolutely fine for blogging, it lacked the power of a fully-featured CMS.

But besides blogging, bpk.cc should also serve its visitors with information's and download possibilities to products (or services) that I want to offer here, like compactRSS that some of you might still use on their good old Windows Mobile devices (although Windows Phone is now the next best thing out there, served as 7 series, please).

So for all those pretty things (and more) I searched for something more suitable out there. Namely a fully-featured CMS.

As it turned out, that is pretty hard in .NET land. There are great products available, but most of them cost a ton of money which I just can't afford. Even the lower-priced ones are not really an option for a private, non-commercial site.

For sure, there are also a ton of .NET-based, free or/and open source CMS out there. While some were never an option (I never liked DotNetNuke and its sisters which are powerful but somehow old-fashioned and over-modularized), some looked really interesting - like Umbraco.

Umbraco really shines with a fresh approach to content management. Mainly, it appealed to my because there just aren't any modules like in probably 99 % of each and every other CMS out there. It gives you a nice framework, some out-of-the-box functionality ... but at the end ... its completely up to the developer and/or designer what you pull out of it.

The flexibility is just unbelievable, but for sure you cant just click a website together in 1 or 2 hours like you might know this from hyped CMS software like Joomla.

Anyhow, as a .NET developer the decision to switch to Umbraco is hard. Because you will mainly use XSLT to inject functionality into your site. You can use ASP.NET user controls too, but it's not the best practice for most of the tasks.

While XSLT is something that you will starting to love while learning it, the tool support for writing XSLT is inferior compared to core code development. Stepping away from most of the ASP.NET concepts is also a tough step to take.

Anyhow, I'm glad my decision was Umbraco. It really redefines the way I look at CMS systems.

Modules for a CMS is just the same thing as Apps for a phone: it looks so good when you first see it, but you just can't stand that stuff anymore in a very short amount of time.

That said, I will fill up this site with content over the next weeks. Everyone who missed a download link for compactRSS over the last months will be pleased to know that also this little, free feed reader tool for your Windows Smartphone will return. And of course there are exciting announcements to make regarding the future of Windows Mobile (Phone) and the future of compactRSS.

Windows Phone 7 Series along with Silverlight and MVVM will be a big topic here even beside compactRSS. I have written a lot of code already for this toy and will share some of my code and earned knowledge here.

So stay tuned, glad to be back online in blogosphere.