Awasu Personal Edition v1.0.4 (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!

  • If you are running Awasu 1.0 (i.e. have not installed any of the subsequent betas), you must unpack this zip to the Awasu installation directory.
  • It is recommended that you clear your Workpad read-me list before installing this version. Things will probably work fine if you don't but you may see some slightly odd behaviour.
  • 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.
  • Backup your installation before proceeding e.g. C:\Program Files\Awasu.
  • Unpack the following zip to the installation directory: Awasu-1.0.4.zip

New features

NOTE: Some of the feature descriptions below explain how to change settings in CONFIG.INI. This file can be found in your user directory e.g. C:\Program Files\Awasu\Users\YOUR-NAME. Run the new version of Awasu, open the Program Options dialog and press OK (you only need to do this once). Exit Awasu and make sure it is not running, as described above. Open CONFIG.INI in Notepad and make the necessary changes. Then save the file and restart Awasu.

  • Internet Explorer's context menu now contains some Awasu-related items. You can right-click on a link or orange XML button and start the Channel Wizard or add a link to the read-me list. These options are also available in any IE window (not just those within Awasu) as long as they were opened after Awasu has started. Many thanks to Jignesh Patel for sending in the code for this way cool feature.

  • The "minimize to system tray" option has been renamed to "run as a system tray app". Enabling this option maintains the previous behaviour of hiding Awasu in the taskbar when it is minimized. However, it also disables the normal exit mechanism. If you choose File, Exit or press ALT-F4 or click on the close icon in the top-right corner, Awasu will minimize to the system tray instead of exiting. To really exit, right-click on the system tray icon and choose Exit from there. Thanks to 256greys for this one.

  • New items have been added to the Tools menu to run various tools. For all of them (except for "Translate page"), select some text in the current browser window and choose the tool you want to run e.g. search Google or look up the meaning of a word. If no text is selected, the contents of the clipboard will be used instead. Holding down SHIFT or CTRL while choosing the menu item will open that tool in an external browser window instead of within Awasu.

    More tools can be added or the current ones modified by editing CONFIG.INI (search for "User Tool").

  • A button has been added to the channel properties dialog to view the current feed. This is useful when creating new channel subscriptions since it lets you preview the feed before actually creating it.

  • Channel categories can now be set by the Channel Wizard when creating new subscriptions. Thanks to Earl Mardle for this one.

  • Reports can now be generated from the Workpad read-me list. Thanks to Earl Mardle for this one.

  • Added a close icon to notification balloons so that they can be closed quickly without having to wait for them to timeout. Thanks to 256greys for this one. This feature can be turned off by setting the ShowNotificationBalloonCloseIcon option in CONFIG.INI to 0.

  • The ImportOpml plugin can now download and import from an OPML file on the net, not just a local file. Thanks to Bill Kearney for this one.

  • The <SKIPDAYS> and <SKIPHOURS> RSS tags are now supported. These allow feed publishers to specify times when their channel should not be updated.

  • Channel updates are suspended if an internet connection is not present. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get this to work where the connection is provided over a LAN and therefore this feature is disabled by default. To enable it, change the value of EnableRasCheck in CONFIG.INI to be 1.

  • Channels with new content and newly-received feed items are now shown in bold. Thanks to 256greys for suggesting this. This can be turned on and off from the Display page in the Program Options dialog.

  • The speed of the fade in/fade out effect for notification balloons can now be changed via the NotificationBalloonAnimationTime setting in CONFIG.INI (specified in milliseconds).

  • All messages that appear in the activity and error logs are also stored in files in the Logs sub-directory (AwasuActivity.log and AwasuError.log).

  • The removal of items from the read-me list now need to be confirmed first.

  • Channels whose feed appear to have gone missing (i.e. receive 3 consecutive HTTP 404's) will have their automatic channel updates disabled.

  • HTTP 301 return codes (permanently moved) are now handled and the channel's feed URL updated accordingly.

  • Allow "integer" and "boolean" (in addition to "int" and "bool") as parameter types in plugin config files. Thanks to Allan Wilson for the suggestion.

Bug fixes

  • Don't show a channel's item pane (if it's hidden) when clicking on a notification balloon.
  • Don't open a channel's window (within Awasu) when opening a feed item in a new window from a notification balloon.
  • Include the "file://" protocol for local URL's when generating HTML pages.
  • The current directory is maintained correctly when browsing for report template files.
  • Fixed a crash if an invalid template file is supplied.
  • Handle special characters in feed URL's when importing OPML.
  • Don't require channel filters to have a name when applying them on the fly from the dialog.
  • Allow files to be downloaded from a web server via a port other than 80.