This beta release will become version 0.8.2 after bug fixes. There are no new translation strings in this release.
The usual disclaimers apply: this is a beta release so use it with caution on a backup of your Newsfox folder.
I use it on my real Newsfox folder.
The new features (where to look for bugs to fix):
- Feed parser improvements
Mostly improvements in atom parsing, but also cleaned up to deal with FF3 issues. All links from the text view should now open in a new tab/window. Let me know if you find one that doesn't.
- Number of unread articles in search groups
This can be turned off in about:config: newsfox.override.showSearchUnread. The computations can be burdensome with many feeds/search folders. In 0.8.3, you will be able to set this preference group by group, and then this preference can be used to globally turn off # search unread.
- Tooltips in article pane
This can be turned off in about:config: newsfox.advanced.articleTooltip. There is overhead with this due to how Firefox 3 handles tooltips on trees, much worse than Firefox 2 does..., but I didn't think it onerous enough to put in FF2 specific code. The angle brackets will be used for article tags coming in 0.8.3. The body tooltip shows up when hovering over the right 60% of the title. The size is 450x275pixels. The Firefox tooltip/popup code is a little questionable.
- Source tag read in feeds
- User defined article sort
Set the about:config preferences newsfox.sorts.columnX and newsfox.sorts.directionX where X is 0, then 1, then 2, etc.. For example, the default is newsfox.sorts.column0="date" and newsfox.sorts.direction0="descending". To sort by date and then unread status (to put unread articles at the top), you can have
newsfox.sorts.column0="date"
newsfox.sorts.column1="read"
newsfox.sorts.direction0="descending"
newsfox.sorts.direction1="descending"
You do need to have newsfox.sorts.column0="none" in order to have no sorting, otherwise the default will happen. In fact, only the first letter of any of these preferences is ever looked at by NewsFox: newsfox.sorts.column0="d" is the same as "date". Helpful to know if you can't spell descending and ascending. The columns are "flag", "title", "read", and "date".
- Single refresh/cancel button
Why is this not the default button configuration in Firefox? Only one of refresh and stop is ever active.
- New deletion method
Articles are marked with strike-thru text until the next feed/group is selected at which time they are deleted. This allows the column sorting in the article pane to remain the same, while the code remains clean.
- OPML export of single groups
This is available on the context menu.
- About link on help menu
Will be translated in 0.8.3.
- FF3.0a8 support
There are still some bugs in FF3.0a8 affecting NewsFox: bookmark finding and window resizing among them.
- User icons
NewsFox checks for icons in the images subfolder of the user newsfox folder. For example, place a (16x16) png file in [your_prefix]/newsfox/images/check.png and it will be your refresh button in NewsFox. You can find the names of icons from the source code page of NewsFox, or by looking inside the newsfox.jar file inside your extensions folder: chrome > skin > classic > newsfox > images (or look below). Mail.png and encl-*.png are not included, someone knowledgeable about CSS might be able to change these in textview.css.
add.png -add feed
addFolder.png
brokenFeed.png
cancel.png -stop refresh
check.png -refresh feeds
del.png -delete feed
delFolder.png
delete.png -delete articles
feed.png -for unknown favicon
flag.png -article flagged
folderClosed.png
folderOpen.png
folderSearch.png
help.png -question mark
home.png
livemark.png
markAllAsRead.png
markAllAsUnread.png
options.png -cog wheel
read.png -article read, unflagged
unread.png -article unread
R Pruitt (wa84it AT gmail.com)
