There has been some discussion on Apple’s Syndication Dev mailing list lately about an update to the iTunes RSS specification, available in the mailing list archives and FAQ.

The specification includes some new tags, changes to the namespace location and clarification on other items, and while it still needs some improvement it’s another step in the right direction and a much bigger one than the last time. It also includes useful information on iTunes submission timescales, missing image problems and tips on how to get your podcast featured on the iTunes Music Store.

All this sounds great, but I wouldn’t have known about the updated spec to ask to see it, had I not heard Madge Weinstein ranting about it in an excerpt from her show played on the Daily Source Code. We’d been promised a look at this new spec on the mailing lists, and this spec, dated October 20th, didn’t appear until requested. Anyway, thanks Madge!

The spec has not yet officially replaced the one dated 7/7/2005 but the functionality is live in iTunes and Sam Ruby has updated FeedValidator accordingly, which is great because FeedValidator practically runs Feeder’s support “department”. The changes are hardly major or screaming urgent; Feeder will be updated in due course.

To update a previous post, NewsFire 1.2 (v44) is now available and includes Feeder in the list of weblog editor applications, so anyone out there who wants to send news items to Feeder from NewsFire can now do so.

NewsFire author David Watanabe was also very helpful when he found problems with Feeder’s support for the weblog editor interface, and I rectified those in Feeder 1.2.3 earlier this week. Thanks, David!

I released Feeder 1.2.2 yesterday. This version is more like the Feeder 1.2 I originally planned before iTunes 4.9 came charging in with its podcasting extensions. I’m really happy with this version.

One cool feature request that came quite late in the day was to support Ranchero’s External Weblog Editor interface so news items can be sent to Feeder using “Post to Weblog” in NetNewsWire. I thought I’d have to defer this until the next release but when I looked into it I could see it was so simple to do, I coded and tested it in all of 30 minutes.

Feeder isn’t a blog editor, but quite a few people have written in saying they want to use it to post RSS feeds on their sites with links to news on other sites that they’re interested in – actual syndication. Feeder already supported the RSS clipboard format for drag and drop / cut and paste, but this weblog editor interface is much more convenient – just choose “Post to Weblog” in NetNewsWire and the item is added to the selected feed in Feeder. You also get more information than the clipboard format.

Apart from NetNewsWire, I know that PulpFiction and Shrook support this interface and Feeder works well with them. NewsFire supports the interface too, but rather than let you choose a blog editor in an Open panel, it has a preset list and Feeder obviously isn’t on it.

I might do a Feeder tips post sometime soon. There is lots of stuff in there people probably don’t know about.

I mentioned the other day that I’d given Feeder a UI update. I don’t normally write about stuff before it happens because it’s like a kiss of death, but I’m hoping to release Feeder 1.2.2 tomorrow featuring (amongst lots of other cool stuff and some bug fixes) an updated user interface. Here’s a sneak peak, click the image to see a full-size version:

You can compare it with a screenshot of 1.2.1 here (the windows are the same size, so you could open them both in tabs to compare).

Fans of NetNewsWire will notice a very familiar gradient status bar with shiny buttons at the bottom of the window. I tried to make the whole status bar shiny, but it was a little overwhelming, Aqua stripes seemed out of place and a plain colour was too, er, plain. So I went with this. While all the buttons are original and the gradient drawn using CoreGraphics, Feeder was always designed to look like a newsreader application, which in turn, at least in NNW’s case, looks something like an email client.

Talking of NetNewsWire and UI updates, I agree with Brent’s analysis of UI trends, which he posted a couple of weeks ago, where he said:

1. Stripes are passé.
2. Margins are bad.
3. Brushed metal is yesterday’s news.
4. The unified title-and-toolbar look is the new platinum.
5. The two-tone glass thing is big. Big, I tell you. Big.

I admit that reading Brent’s post and seeing my own redesign of Feeder’s iTunes preview made it so I had to do this UI update now and not save it for a later version. I’ve been planning it for months but kept putting it on the backburner as time got squashed and things happened.

Feeder’s redesign is not only intended to be more pleasing on the eye: removing the margins makes more room for the actual content of the window and it paves the way for the inclusion of some new features in the near future. 😉

I thought I should show off the updated version of Feeder’s iTunes preview, which now matches iTunes version 5. This will appear in Feeder 1.2.2, due for release in a week or so. Like the rest of Feeder, this is all done by drawing gradients, stroking lines, etc – no stretchy Photoshopped images here! Click the image to see a full-size version.

I’ve also given Feeder’s UI a bit of a revamp, but that could still be in progress so I’ll save it for another day. 😀