Awasu 2.3.1 (beta)

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.

 

Installation

First, backup your existing Awasu installation! [?]

Then choose how you want to install this release:

Upgrade from Awasu 2.3.1.alpha3
Upgrade from Awasu 2.3.1.alpha2
Upgrade from Awasu 2.3.1.alpha1
Upgrade from Awasu 2.3
Upgrade from a version of Awasu prior to 2.3
Create a clean installation
Reinstall Awasu 2.3.1

 

Feed item filters

Feed item filters let you check your feed content for items of interest and highlight them using different colors or icons. As usual, these can be set globally (from the Display page of the Program Options) or for individual channels.

Specify what you want to look for and if it is a regular expression. If it's not, Awasu will match any word from what you type e.g. Tom Jones will match any feed item that contains the words Tom or Jones. Use double-quotes if you want to search for "Tom Jones" as a single phrase.

You must also specify where you want to search, either one of the locations in the dropdown list or you can enter the name of any metadata value. This latter feature is very powerful and lets you check for any metadata embedded in your feed items, even if doesn't appear in the title or description. For example, you can look for items authored by your boss and highlight them in red. Or if you are subscribed to corporate internal feeds that embed specialized metadata (e.g. Assigned-To or Priority), you can pick out this information and highlight it as well.

You can find out more about how item metadata works here.

This feature is not available in the Personal Edition.

 

Database optimizations

This release contains several database optimizations and runs much quicker than before. However, nothing comes for free and there is a very small chance of a database corruption if Windows crashes or the power goes off at just the wrong instant. If this is an issue for you, this optimization can be turned off by unchecking Fast database access in the Archive page of the Program Options.

 

New way of tracking read/unread items

Items are now tracked as read/unread via a unique ID instead of by their URL. This fixes two problems:

  • Marking an item as read would cause all other items with the same URL to also be marked as read.
  • If an item had been marked as read and a new item arrived with the same URL, the new item would not be flagged as new.

There is still the chance of ambiguity when doing a sync (unavoidably so) but a new algorithm is in place which seems to work well.

All your items will be reset back to being unread after installing this release.

 

Unlimited channel favorites, filters, reports, user tools and workpads

Pro Edition users can now have an unlimited number of each of these.

 

Minor changes and bug fixes

  • Fixed a problem that was stopping Awasu from starting if the user's account name had non-English characters.
  • Changed the way Awasu, Awasu Administration and Awasu Server detect if each other is running.
  • Correctly handle some types of HTTP redirects.
  • Fixed some issues that were stopping Awasu from shutting down properly.
  • Handle malformed INI files a bit better.
  • Show a better error message if a plugin fails because it didn't generate any output.
  • Don't show anything in the esync export options mini-dialog for the feed items interval if feed items are disabled.
  • Dropped support for legacy template parameters
  • Fixed a possible crash at startup.
  • Fixed a crash if a channel summary template is malformed.
  • Rejigged the menu/keyboard shortcut framework.
    This change fixes some issues in customizing your menus and keyboard shortcuts. In particular, Ctrl-W can now be assigned to something else (although you may need to reset your keyboard shortcuts before you can do this).
  • Only enable the back/forwards navbar buttons when applicable.