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 Posted 10/3/2009 7:08:45 AM |
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Forum Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 10/3/2009 6:54:41 AM
Posts: 9,
Visits: 10
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Now that NNW is available on the App Store and I've had a chance to play with it for a couple of days, here's my initial feedback. Many thanks for all of the hard work you've put into the Mac and iPhone apps!
Here are the things I love about the new version...
+ Great speed and performance improvements when reading and syncing
+ Landscape support in both feed detail and article views!
+ In-app email support
+ Google Reader syncing support (of course!)
+ Instapaper support
+ Twitter support (I love the way the screen flips over to reveal the Twitter entry form)
+ Fantastic new icon
Here are things that I feel need to be improved in the new version or modified to include user preferences to enable/disable the new behaviour:
- Read articles continue to appear in the 'Main Screen' and 'News Items List' views even after they have been read. There's no option to change how long articles appear in these views as there was in NNW v1. For me this is a deal breaker. I really don't like to see articles in the feed views unless they are unread. Please reinstate the option to change how long read articles appear in the views and/or please include an option to stop displaying articles as soon as they have been read.
- There's no unread counter / icon badge as there was in NNW v1. Please reinstate this functionality.
- The website icons for some of my Feeds are wrong or seem to duplicate the icons from the Feed above or below.
- There's no graphical divider between feeds in the 'Main Screen' view. Please re-instate the divider line as per NNW v1 so that it is easier to differentiate between specific Feeds.
- I would like the option to switch off the "Latest News" section that appears at the top of the 'Main Screen' view as I don't use it and it just utilises valuable screen space that could be used for actual Feeds. Alternatively maybe 'Latest News' can be moved to an entirely different view, perhaps accessible from a tab at the top or bottom of user interface (like the iTunes and AppStore apps).
- I think you should add a user preference to switch off / hide the "Starred" section that appears at the top of the 'Main Screen' view. I'm sure some users don't use it and it just utilises valuable screen space that could be used for actual Feeds. I'd quite like to see the 'Starred Items' section switched to an entirely different view, perhaps accessible from a tab at the top or bottom of user interface (like the iTunes and AppStore apps).
- Starred Items appear in the 'News Item List' view. I can appreciate how some people might like this but to me they are 'starred' not 'unread' items and therefore shouldn't appear in this view. If I want to read a starred item, I'll go to the starred items section. Please add a user preference to enable/disable this functionality.
- 'Starring' an item doesn't provide any obvious UI feedback that the item has been successfully starred. It would be good if the star changed colour to indicate that it is now 'starred'.
- The 'Show/Hide Feeds' option to hide specific feeds on the iPhone NNW app is great but i think it should be listed as an option in the Settings app or accessible via a 'settings' button on the bottom of the 'Main Screen' bar (maybe next to the 'refresh / sync' button) instead of as an entry in the actual view list. I don't see why it's included in the view as it is a preference/setting not an actual Feed or Section?
- In the 'News Items List' view, the read articles (which appear in bold black text) seem more like they are unread articles to me! Whereas the unread articles (which appear in Bold light blue text) seem like they should be read articles. What I'm trying to say is that you should reverse the colour scheme so that unread articles appear in Bold Black and read articles appear in Bold Light Blue.... or even not bold at all for read articles.
- I don't think that the 'Main Screen' view should include the title of the newest article (along with the article date and time) underneath the Feed name. The title text is always cut-off and just looks messy. It doesn't provide any valuable information as there isn't enough room to provide the full text of the title and instead it just makes the Main Screen view look untidy and more difficult to navigate. I guess some people might like this addition but if it can't be changed then please make it a preference that can be enabled/disabled on a per user basis. For me the layout of the 'Main Screen' view in v1 of the iPhone NNW app was perfect.
- I don't understand the need to list the Feed Name underneath each individual article title in the 'News Items List' view. It's redundant information because the Feed Name is already provided at the top of the view and is the same for each article in the list (each of my Feeds is a separate entry in the MainScreen view, I do not categorise my feeds in Folders, I guess this maybe different for people that use folders?). Providing the Feed Name only seems relevant to the 'river of news' style 'Latest News' view. I can understand why it would be useful in that view but I think that it is redundant in the standard 'News Items List' view. I also question whether the date should be listed underneath each article, since the view itself is already categorised by date. I can understand listing the time but I don't think that the date needs to be repeated.
So those are my thoughts after a few days of use! I really hope that you find this feedback useful.... I love the speed and performance of the new version and I would
love to switch back to using NNW as my regular RSS reader app. But, for me at least, there a couple of issues that are currently deal breakers (as outlined above). So I will be using the 'Feeds' iPhone app until some new features/user preferences are added to NNW.
I really hope you will be able to address some of the above suggestions/feature requests in future versions of the iPhone app.
Thanks again for all your hard work.
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| Posted 10/14/2009 3:56:57 PM |
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Forum Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 10/14/2009 3:46:04 PM
Posts: 4,
Visits: 10
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Speed - slow…
When I tap on the feed title, it opens really slow. Sometimes doesn't show feed content - all screen is pure white, I have to wait 2-10 seconds before NNW v.2 Premium decides to fetch data from Wi-Fi connection. I tap on the link in feed, no reaction. Tap again - no reaction. Tap third time after 10 seconds - hooray! link opens. Then I tap "Mark All as Read" button, return to the main window, but there I still see badge of so and so unread feeds. Opening feed again and returning to the main window solves this problem.
If there is any feed with 1000+ unread items, it takes forever to open it…
I tap on the triangle to close feed folder (or section in this case?) which has two feeds in it, but it only animates last feed moving up into the top feed and returning back, can't fold feed section. If I tap any other section's triangle to open it, it still animates feeds in the open section. Perfect joke…
Still many rough edges. Absolutely not was NNW v.1 used to be…
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"In a world without fences and walls, who needs Gates and Windows?"
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| Posted 10/14/2009 6:56:27 PM |
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NewsGator
Group: Administrators
Last Login: 10/23/2009 10:32:52 PM
Posts: 1,413,
Visits: 2,558
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NetNewsWire 2 is doing a *lot* more than NetNewsWire 1 did -- for one thing, it won't limit the unread count for a feed to 200. (It's 1,000 now.)
That said, if you have lots of unread items, it's slow. I know it, because I test it that way. It will improve. (If I could spend *all* of my time working on performance, I would, because it's my favorite thing to work on.)
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