Feeder 4.0 Release Notes Archive
Version 4.0.10
Requirements
macOS 10.14 or later.
Released
February 25, 2021
Changes
- Fixed an issue where saving to iCloud could continue when everything has been deleted from iCloud in System Preferences or on another Mac.
- Fixed an issue where a validation error wouldn’t be shown for podcast artwork.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when fetching changes from iCloud.
- Fixed an issue handling items changed on one Mac and deleted on another.
Version 4.0.9
Requirements
macOS 10.14 or later.
Released
February 10, 2021
Changes
- The Podcast preview has been updated to handle the reduced number of tags now allowed by Apple Podcasts, improve the HTML conversion, and reflect how newlines in the HTML are displayed.
- When using Automatic Line Breaks in the editor, newlines are no longer preserved in the converted HTML to improve compatibility with Apple Podcasts. Existing items will be updated when v4.0.9 is first run.
- Fixed an issue where an autodetected blog title could be formatted incorrectly when it contains non-Latin characters.
- Fixed an issue where attempting to create a subfolder would not work.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when an enclosure file is modified.
Version 4.0.8
Requirements
macOS 10.14 or later.
Released
January 26, 2021
Changes
- Fixed a crash that could occur when processing changes from iCloud.
- Fixed an issue where some fields would not be shown automatically in editor windows when they are in error.
- Fixed an issue where validation may not always be performed immediately when fields change in editor windows.
- Fixed an issue where uploads could be lost when manually saving changes in editor windows.
- Fixed an issue where items could appear edited when they are not.
- Fixed issues editing item categories.
Version 4.0.7
Requirements
macOS 10.14 or later.
Released
January 19, 2021
Changes
- Fixed an issue where Feeder could lose its permission to access files while publishing or saving changes to iCloud.
- Fixed an issue where changes made to a template in one editing window wouldn’t be incorporated into other editor window until it was reopened.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when a podcast item that is being previewed is removed via an iCloud change.
- Fixed an issue where a long podcast preview could scroll to the bottom when its text is clicked.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when fetching changes from iCloud.
- An alert will now be shown to confirm before opening ten or more items for editing.
- A message will now be shown in the Activity window when iCloud is offline.
Version 4.0.6
Requirements
macOS 10.14 or later.
Released
January 7, 2021
Changes
- Fixed an issue publishing scheduled feeds when Feeder is not using iCloud.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when publishing a feed that contains a New Feed URL.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when processing changes from iCloud.
- Fixed issues where a validation warning could be shown when there are no validation errors.
- When using strict validation, the podcast preview no longer shows more characters than would be shown in Apple Podcasts for the Episode Note and Summary.
- Updated FTP support.
Version 4.0.5
Requirements
macOS 10.14 or later.
Released
December 29, 2020
Changes
- Fixed an issue publishing a scheduled item where the enclosure could not be uploaded.
- Fixed an issue where a feed with scheduled items may be published more than once.
- Fixed an issue where files could be uploaded in the wrong order when publishing to multiple servers.
Version 4.0.4
Requirements
macOS 10.14 or later.
Released
December 21, 2020
Changes
- Fixed an issue where changes could be lost when manually saving an item.
- Fixed an error that could occur when creating or saving an item while searching in the main window.
- Fixed an issue where Feeder could use excessive memory when setting it up to publish with password-less SFTP.
- The last-used private and public key files are now remembered for password-less SFTP and will be automatically completed when the “Use password-less SFTP” checkbox in the SFTP options panel is enabled.
- Improved the informational message shown when choosing a Standard RSS image for a podcast feed.
- Fixed an issue with the appearance of the preview when switching between feeds on macOS Big Sur.
- On macOS Big Sur, the color of feeds, podcasts and folders in the sidebar no longer change with the system accent color.
Version 4.0.3
Download: Feeder_4.0.3.dmg (11.3 MB)
Requirements
macOS 10.14 or later.
Released
December 15, 2020
Changes
- Fixed an issue where removing paragraphs and line breaks from HTML could result in too many newlines, and cause items to appear as edited when the editor format is Automatic Line Breaks.
- Fixed an issue where saving an item could cause its enclosure upload to be removed.
- Fixed an issue where zero-length enclosures wouldn’t be included in the published feed.
- Fixed an issue where the preview wouldn’t be updated when the last item in the feed is deleted.
Version 4.0.2
Requirements
macOS 10.14 or later.
Released
December 10, 2020
Changes
- Fixed a crash that could occur at startup when Feeder is using iCloud on macOS 10.15 and earlier.
- Fixed an issue that could occur when reloading a feed on macOS 10.15 and earlier.
Version 4.0.1
Requirements
macOS 10.14 or later.
Released
December 9, 2020
Changes
- Fixed an issue where you couldn’t save changes to an item without either tabbing to another field or closing the window.
- Fixed an issue where the window title wouldn’t update when the selected feed’s name changes.
- Fixed issues reloading items from the XML feed.
- Fixed an issue where items in the XML file could be in the incorrect order.
- Fixed an issue where it wouldn’t be possible to choose the Edit > Reorder Items menu for non-podcast feeds.
- Fixed an issue replacing HTML paragraph tags with newlines, which could cause unedited items to appear changed.
- Improved iCloud setup when upgrading from Feeder 3.
Version 4.0
Requirements
macOS 10.14 or later.
Released
December 2, 2020
Summary
- Manage your feeds on all your Macs with iCloud
- Collaborate on feeds with iCloud
- Preview podcast episodes and seasons
- Improved sidebar with site and podcast icons
- Improved editor with overscroll and margins in full screen
- Updated for macOS Big Sur and built for Apple silicon
iCloud
- Feeder can now store your feeds and settings in iCloud. Changes will be fetched and saved automatically.
- When you first use Feeder 4 it will ask if you want to store your feeds in iCloud.
- Unpublished enclosures can now be stored in iCloud to make them available on all your Macs — these will be removed from iCloud once published. This can be enabled when first storing your feeds in iCloud, and disabled or enabled on a per-feed basis in the Settings view, and that setting applied to all feeds if required.
- When you first open Feeder 4 on another Mac, and Feeder has already stored feeds and settings in iCloud, Feeder will download your feeds and settings automatically, unless that Mac already has Feeder data on it from an earlier version, in which case it will ask whether to merge or replace the data on your Mac with the iCloud data.
- Enable or disable iCloud in Feeder’s General preferences.
- When editing items, changes will not be saved to iCloud until you save the item either as a draft or to the feed to be published (see below for more information about changes to drafts). Changes are still autosaved on your Mac, and can be transferred to another Mac using Handoff.
- Scheduled feeds will be published by Feeder on the Mac specified in Publishing preferences.
- Passwords are stored in your Keychain, not iCloud, and so will only be available on other devices if iCloud Keychain is in use.
- Feeds published with file export will need to be set up on each Mac the first time they are published.
- Private and public key files for password-less SFTP servers will need to be chosen on each Mac the first time they are published.
- Feeder now supports Handoff of items being edited when using iCloud.
iCloud Sharing
- Collaborate on feeds with others by clicking the Add People button in the toolbar, or choosing File > Add People to [feed] from the menu. The owner's iCloud storage is always used for shared feeds.
- Choose File > Show Sharing Settings for [feed] from the menu to manage the sharing settings for a feed shared with you.
- Shared feeds can only be published automatically by Macs belonging to the owner of the feed (but they can still be published manually). Other people cannot change how future items are published, or whether unpublished enclosures are stored in iCloud.
- Passwords are not stored in iCloud and will not be shared with others.
Apple Podcasts
- Trailers, seasons, episodes and bonuses in the list are now ordered as they will appear in Apple Podcasts.
- Episodes now are now previewed as they will appear in the iPhone or iPad Podcasts app’s Details view, and can be played.
- Choose whether to show podcasts with colors matching the Podcasts app or the system Accent color in Podcasts preferences.
- It’s now possible to specify a Podcast Title that overrides the feed title for display in Apple Podcasts.
- To match Apple Podcasts, only one podcast category or subcategory is now supported.
- Artwork shown for episode enclosures is now based on the podcast’s image, not the artwork in the media file itself. Feeder no longer uses or updates artwork embedded in media files.
- Podcast images will be checked that their dimensions, colorspace, format, and resolution are all correct according to Apple’s requirements.
- Podcast duration can now be fetched from online media files.
- To see the episodes in a podcast feed listed as they may appear in a podcast app that doesn’t sort items the same as Apple Podcasts or support seasons, use the View > Sort Items By menu to choose an option other that “Podcast Order”.
- In the Web Page Links panel, choose whether or not the subscribe link should open the Podcasts app.
Sparkle Appcasts
- Added support for Sparkle 2.0 beta, which currently doesn’t require edDSA signatures. If your appcast is using the Sparkle 2.0 beta, change the framework version in the Sparkle section of the feed’s Settings.
- Feeder now validates where appcasts using the v 1.21 or later framework (but not the 2.0 beta) do not have edDSA signatures.
Previews
- The standard preview has been redesigned. Item titles are now shown in the system accent color, the URL preview (shown when hovering over a link) now floats above the content, and more emphasis has been put on additional information such as date, author, etc.
- When a feed can be viewed in different ways, switch between available preview types (e.g. standard and podcast) using the pop-up menu below the preview or the View > Preview Items As menu.
- Loading progress is shown for standard and appcast previews.
Sidebar
- On macOS Catalina 10.15 and later, Feeder can show site icons (favicons) for feeds in the sidebar. Enable or disable these by choosing View > Show Site Icons from the menu.
- Choose View > Show Podcast Icons from the menu to show podcast artwork as the icon in the sidebar — this will override site icons.
- The sidebar is shown full-height on macOS Big Sur.
- When using multicolor accent colors macOS Big Sur 11.0 and later, sidebar icons for feeds will be orange, podcasts purple, and folders blue unless Site Icons or Podcast icons are in use.
Items List
- The items list now shows up to four lines comprised of the title and a summary.
- When searching, a date, partial date, or day name (for the current week) entered into the search field will be automatically detected and matched against the items’ publication dates.
- A trash icon is now shown when swiping to delete items.
- The items list uses an inset style on macOS Big Sur.
Feed View
- Feed-level details for standard RSS and podcasts are now shown in one continuous view.
- Feed-level details that are not currently included in the feed are no longer shown. Click the + button in the Standard RSS header to add these. Move the mouse over the heading and click the trash icon to remove. Alternatively sections can be added or removed in the Editor menu.
- For podcast feeds, an informational warning is shown when using a Standard RSS tag that has an equivalent Apple Podcasts tag, such as the Feed Image. These warnings can be dismissed once read.
Item Editor
- All fields now scroll in the editor window.
- The Description text now over-scrolls, so that there is always at least half the window’s height available at the bottom of the screen while you are editing.
- Improved the conversion of HTML to automatic paragraphs and line breaks.
- Improved Markdown editing, and syntax colouring for Markdown links and images.
- Use a calendar to edit the Date on macOS 10.15.4 and later.
- When editor windows are made full screen, margins will be shown to constrain the maximum width of the content. The width can be adjusted by dragging the vertical borders. This can be disabled in Editor preferences.
- Manually show or hide margins in the edit window at any time using the Editor > Show Margins menu item or button in the window toolbar.
- Click and hold on the Insert Link toolbar button to choose from recent links. Hold on the option key to see the URL and insert the link without the original text. Feeder will show each recent link by its "title", if present, otherwise the text of the link.
- Click and hold on the Insert Image toolbar button to choose from recent images. These are named by their Alt Text — hold on the option key to see the image’s URL instead.
- Drafts are now only created for unpublished items (not edited items that have already been published) and will be shown in the main list. New and edited items are still autosaved automatically, but when iCloud is in use, those autosaves will not be available to other Macs or people until saved as a draft, or to the feed, ready to be published.
- Enclosure files that do not exist locally can now be downloaded.
- When a field has errors, it will always be shown in the editor, regardless of whether it is enabled in the template.
- To help resolve validation errors, appropriate actions may be shown when the corresponding warning triangle is clicked.
Templates
- Each feed now has its own template that is not shared with other feeds.
- The template editor now shows all fields in one continuous view, grouped by extension. Only enabled extensions are shown.
- For podcasts, a warning will be shown when enabling a Standard RSS field that has an equivalent Apple Podcasts tag to avoid confusion.
Publishing
- Servers and blogs are now unique to each feed.
- While feeds, images and enclosures can still all have their own server settings, It is no longer possible to override servers for individual images and enclosure uploads, they will always use the feed / images / enclosures server specified in the feed’s publishing settings. For the cases that would’ve been covered by this feature, upload the files with a file transfer app and enter the URL manually.
- Redirects will be applied to all enclosure URLs in the published feed regardless of whether Feeder uploads the file. You will no longer see the redirect in the editor, but it will be shown when hovering the mouse over the enclosure in the standard preview, or when copying or opening the enclosure via the standard preview.
- Scripts used in Feeder 3 to run after publishing a feed cannot be accessed in this version due to macOS security restrictions. Manually copy the scripts by clicking Settings, going to the Publishing section, and choosing Open Scripts Folder from the Run Script popup. Copy the script files from the com.reinvented.Feeder3 or com.reinvented.Feeder3.mac folder there to the com.reinvented.Feeder folder, and set them again with the Run Script popup.
- When publishing and a server or the network is unavailable, Feeder will now wait until it is.
Preferences
- The Editor, Markdown and Fonts & Colors preferences panes have been consolidated.
- Added an option to Editor preferences to choose whether Command+B inserts a bold or strong tag, and Command+I inserts an italic or emphasis tag.
- Added an option to Podcasts preferences that determines whether to use strict validation. When enabled, this checks the length of tag values against the maximum lengths specified by Apple, and ensures every enclosure has a non-zero length.
- Publishing preferences now includes two additional filename styles to either replace spaces with hyphens or underscores, preserving the case.
General
- The library toolbar is sectioned on macOS Big Sur, and the search icon will collapse to an icon if there is not enough space.
- Feeder’s library can no longer be moved from its default location. Use iCloud to share feeds and settings between Macs.
- XML files are no longer written to disk. If having a feed in a particular location is your method for publishing it, then set Feeder to publish using File Export instead.
- Reload a feed from an XML file by holding on Option and choosing File > Reload Feed from File from the menu.
- Removed support for uploading Media RSS Thumbnail files, although the URL can still be entered.
- Removed support for posting to Blogger.
- Support for the discontinued Flattr tags has been removed.
- Twitter sharing has been removed — use app extensions to share instead
- Feeder no longer crops or scales images — these are validated when chosen instead.
- Landscape view has been removed.
AppleScript
- It’s now possible to get lists of every feed, folder or item in Feeder, which removes the need to specify things hierarchically particularly when these have unique names.
- “selected item” has been replaced with “selected items”.
- “selected folder” has been removed, because folders can no longer be selected.
- Added a "reload" command for feeds to reload a feed from a file, because feeds no longer have corresponding files accessible in the Finder.
- “root folder” has been renamed to “top level folder”.
- “iTunes” attributes have been renamed to “podcast”. To match the current specification “keywords” and “episode note” have been removed, and duration should be specified in seconds.
Upgrading from Earlier Versions
- Feeder 3 libraries will be imported when the app is first opened. If the library is stored in a custom location, you will be prompted to give Feeder permission to access the library folder. Libraries from the Mac App Store version of Feeder 2 that are in their default location will also be imported automatically.
- Other Feeder 3 or Feeder 2 libraries can be imported at any time using the “Import Feeder Library” command in the Feeder > Library menu, or from the Import button on the new feed panel that is shown when the app is first run.
- When importing from an older version, you will need to give Feeder permission to access any feeds whose XML files were originally stored in locations outside of Feeder’s library, along with any enclosure and image files that still need to be uploaded.
- The Site Folders for File Export servers imported from Feeder 3 will need to be chosen again during the upgrade process.
- For feeds set to publish using password-less SFTP, the public and private key files will need to be chosen again when first publishing the feed.
- Sparkle appcasts set to generate DSA signatures will need to choose the DSA Private Key file the first time a signature is generated.
- Due to the differences in how drafts work in Feeder 4, drafts from Feeder 3 will not be imported.