Awasu Personal Edition v1.0.2 (beta)

UPDATE: This beta has expired. Please check the releases page for information about the latest releases.

IMPORTANT: This is a beta release. Some features may not be complete and the software may be unstable. Install at your own risk! You may need to do some basic computer maintenance tasks to get this release to run.

Please read these installation instructions carefully. It's not going to work properly if you don't!

  • You must have Awasu 1.0.1 already installed.
  • Backup your installation before proceeding e.g. C:\Program Files\Awasu.
  • Make sure that Awasu is not running. It may take a while for it to finish even after the main window has closed so use Task Manager to determine when it has really exited.
  • Unpack the following zip to the installation directory: Awasu-1.0.2.zip
  • Copy the file DefaultChannelReport.template from the Resources directory to your user's directory e.g. C:\Program Files\Awasu\Users\YOUR-NAME.
  • If you are running the Code Project plugin, unpack the following zip on top of your existing files: Awasu-1.0.2-CodeProject.zip
  • Restart Awasu.
  • If you cannot see any of the new menu options or keyboard accelerators, stop Awasu (making sure it has finished) and run the ResetUi.exe program in the installation directory. This simply deletes Awasu's registry key so if you're happy running regedit, you can do that instead.

New features

  • Channel hooks. This is an extremely significant feature and transforms Awasu from being just another RSS reader to something much more profound. Full details are here.

  • Support for using Awasu with a PDA. Thanks to Greg Boesel for suggesting these features.

  • By popular demand, MDI window tabs now have context menus. Right-click on the tabs to see a list of common channel operations.

  • The Channel Wizard now allows plugin parameters to be set before downloading the initial feed. This fixes a rather unfortunate design error: plugins will often need their parameters to be set correctly for them to work properly but the old Channel Wizard tried to download the initial feed before letting users set them. This always failed because the parameters were wrong and so you were never able to create the channel! :-(

  • By popular demand, notification balloons can now be turned off completely. They can be configured to be enabled, disabled or to show errors only.

  • Added an option to the main menu to mark all items as read for the currently open channel. A default keyboard shortcut has not been defined for this but you can set one up from the Tools, Customize dialog. Thanks to Greg Boesel for suggesting this feature.

  • The Channel Wizard provides details of exactly what happened if it can't download and parse the initial feed instead of just displaying the much hated "Not an RSS feed" message.

  • The Organize Favorites and Select Channel dialogs are now resizable. They also remember their positions on the screen.

Bug fixes and minor changes

  • New, very orange, icon (courtesy of Caroline Clarke).
  • The "play sound on error" controls in the Program Options dialog are no longer disabled if sound is turned off (a warning is shown instead).
  • Non-channel browser windows have their title set if the web page specifies one.
  • If a channel fails to download a feed successfully, the error message is stored in the feed file (accessible via the "view last feed" option).
  • Tidied up the My Channels context menu.
  • Changed the name of the "don't show in taskbar" option to "minimize to system tray" (for the benefit of our non-techie users).
  • Fixed occasional crash on startup.
  • Limited the number of results returned by Syndic8 queries. Previously, queries could run extremely slowly because too many results were being returned.
  • The item pane is auto-hidden correctly when links are clicked on in the browser pane.
  • Channel summary pages honor the "max feed items" setting correctly.
  • Item panes honor the "max feed items" setting correctly when resizing.
  • The system tray animation is not started if the channel that is causing it is the active window. Andreas: please let me know if you're still not happy :-)
  • Allow embedded ampersands in URL's being emailed from Awasu.
  • Fixed possible crash in the Channel Wizard if the download and parse of the initial feed fails.
  • Fixed possible crash during shutdown.
  • The correct item is selected in the item pane when a URL is clicked on in the browser pane.
  • The main window is brought to the front if an error notification balloon is clicked on.
  • Fixed the way Awasu decided which channel or application plugin properties dialog to show from the Edit, Properties menu (it could sometimes bring up the wrong thing).
  • Tidied up the layout of controls on the Display page of the Program Options dialog.
  • Added the "Update now" option to the item pane context menu.
  • Removed options to send me an email and replaced them with links to the forums :-)
  • Added the ResetUi.exe program to reset all UI configuration options. Awasu must not be running if you want to use this.
  • The channel properties no longer allows auto-update intervals of less than one hour (instead of accepting it but then ignoring it).
  • Fixed the keyboard interface for the Plugins window of the Control Center. It now responds to ALT-Enter, ALT-Space, CTRL-Enter and CTRL-Space, the same as the My Channels window.