Awasu 2.3.4.alpha2

IMPORTANT: This is an alpha release (what's this?). Some features may not be complete and there will probably be bugs!

You must be already running 2.3.4.alpha1.

To install:

• Read the release notes below first!
• Backup your Awasu installation directory and keep it, even if the alpha appears to work correctly.
• Unpack one (!) of the following zips on top of your existing installation:
  • Personal Edition
  • Advanced Edition
  • Professional Edition
• Run admin.exe to upgrade your database (this will be quick).

Feed services

Awasu now makes it easy to subscribe to feeds from the most popular online services. Just click on the new Services button in the Channel Wizard and provide the necessary information to subscribe.

But even better, this new feature is not just a dumb URL generator. If the online service changes the format of their URL's and breaks your channels, Awasu will automagically try to fix things up and get them going again!

Send-to

This release also allows feed items and other content to be sent to online services such as del.icio.us and Digg. This functionality has long been available in a limited form via the customizable Tools menu items but has been enhanced to be much more powerful and usable.

You can right-click on an item to send it to the clipboard, your email program, a workpad or any of the available online services.

You can also right-click on a window tab to send that page.

There is also a cool new popup menu that appears after each item in the channel summary pages.

Finally, there are new services in the Tools menu that work with text selected in a web page. Just highlight a word or phrase and use the Tools menu to look it up in Google, dictionary.com or any of the other available services.

Minor changes and bug fixes

• The "available offline" icon is now shown correctly for manually downloaded items.
• Feed items that were manually downloaded for offline reading now last longer than the current session.
• Manually requesting that a feed item be downloaded for offline reading causes Awasu to start fetching it ASAP.
• Fixed problems introduced in alpha1 in the auto-discovery dialog if the "Check all" function is used
• Fixed a problem introduced in alpha1 that was causing mini-dialogs to inexplicably pop up when using keyboard accelerators in certain dialogs.
• The new "Create now" button in the Channel Wizard now works correctly if a web page URL is provided (instead of a feed URL) and that web page contains a single auto-discoverable feed URL.
• Plugin, channel hook and esync parameter definitions now accept a IsRequired setting.
• Leading/trailing whitespace is now automatically removed from property list parameter values.
• Awasu now checks for a _PORTABLE file (as well as .PORTABLE) to turn on portable mode.
• The new "Pause/resume balloons" system tray menu item is now ticked/unticked instead of changing its text.
• Fixed a rare problem where enclosures could still be downloaded even after their parent item or channel has been deleted.
• Awasu no longer shows the Channel Packs dialog to new users if Windows is shutting down.
• Channels imported from an external source now have all their default settings configured correctly.
• Tweaked what gets shown in the caption bar when opening a web page directly by URL.
• Leading/trailing whitespace is removed from the clipboard contents when Awasu is checking it for a URL.
• Fixed a crash if Awasu fails to open an external browser window.

Known issues

• Clicking on an entry in the Send-to popup menu in the channel summary pages gives a spurious "app is not a registered protcol" message if you are using Mozilla as the embedded browser.
• The Send-to popup menu in the channel summary pages is tricky to use if Awasu is configured to show only one feed item at a time (i.e. River Of News is disabled).