Download
You can download the program here[^].
Most of it is pretty self-explanatory and you won't be missing much by not reading this page :-) The release is a self-extracting ZIP and does not touch the registry or register COM components or anything like that at all.
Please note that this is a beta release so some things are still not working properly. Please check the list of known issues below before reporting a bug.
I have only been able to run Awasu on XP Pro and 2000 Pro so any feedback from people running other operating systems would be much appreciated. General feedback would also be welcome and there is an option in the Help menu and in the About box to do this.
And yes, I know there are no scrollbars in some of the windows :-)
Introduction
RSS is a mechanism that allows a web site to publish a brief index of its content and is popular with news sites and blogs and the like. You can find more information here[^] Awasu is an RSS client, that is, a program that checks these web sites on a regular basis and lets you know when new content has been found. For example, these are some of the channels that I subscribe to:
- Code Project
- Ars Technica
- Kuro5hin
- BBC News Service
- International Herald Tribune
- Google News
- ZDNet
- Joel On Software
- Slashdot
- Wired
- ICANN Watch
- RISKS Digest
- I, Cringely
syndic8.com[^] is one of the major directories of RSS channels but you can also find more stuff here:
This release of Awasu comes with two plugins, one that allows you to search Syndic8 for channels (which can be slow so be patient) and one that will monitor Code Project.
Main Window
Here's a screenshot of the main window:
On the left, you can see the list of channels that I have subscribed to. The top-right pane contains the items for the currently selected channel and at the bottom-right is the integrated browser window.
Notification Ballons
Notification balloons can be displayed when Awasu finds new content:
This option can be turned on or off for individual channels. You can also control whether a single balloon is shown for a channel when new content is found, listing all new items (consolidation), or whether a separate balloon is shown for each new item.
System Tray
You can also add channels to the system tray menu:
Channel Properties
This is the channel properties dialog, showing the options you can configure for each channel:
The Details tab lets you change the basic channel details such as the description or home page.
Global Properties
And here's the global options dialog:
The Advanced tab contains a number of less-frequently used options:
- Most of the major RSS clients have a feature that allows a web page to contain a link that will automatically add that site to the subscription list (e.g. like this). Awasu provides the option to listen for these subscriptions itself. Obviously you don't want to have this turned on if you are also running the other applications in question!
If you change these settings, it is recommended that you restart Awasu. It should work regardless but it would be a good idea to do so anyway... :-)
- Port 2605 is used for communicating with the plugins. In the future it will be possible to change this from the Advanced tab but has been disabled for the moment. It is still possible to change this manually so contact me if you need this port for something else.
Known issues
- The My Channels pane and channel item pane (top-right) have no scrollbars.
- Clicking on a notification balloon doesn't update the main window title correctly.
- The app occasionally crashes, I suspect, when showing DHTML pages e.g. Code Project :-(
- Opening an item in a new browser window doesn't mark that item as having been read.
- Can't clear the channel or default sound filenames (to force them to revert back to the default sound).
- If you disable a "don't-show-me-this-again" dialog, there is no UI to turn it back on (FIX: edit CONFIG.INI).
- The My Channels pane is not sorted.
- Text in the My Channels sometimes gets truncated (FIX: restart).
- Trying to cancel a Syndic8 search by pressing ESCAPE can sometimes crash the app.
Upcoming changes
- Support for >1 user on the same machine.
- Ability to change the channel image.
- Better support for different code pages.
- Better error reporting. Errors are often returned by RSS channels as an HTML page which get fed into the RSS parser and end up being reported to the user as an RSS parsing error rather than the real error. The Code Project web service has been somewhat unstable of late so you may see this happening a bit.
- More efficient use of bandwidth through the use of HTTP headers.
- Bandwidth monitoring and statistics.
- The port used to communicate with the plugins will be changeable from the UI.
- Better UI support for keyboard navigation (I hate using the mouse!).
- Option to set the number of seconds an item is selected before it marked as having been read.
- Window position, toolbar states, etc. will be saved across sessions.
- Better browser window with back/prev buttons, the current URL, etc.
- Property sheets will show an Apply Now button.
- Channel items (in the top-right pane) show show a tooltip with the item description.
- The channel icon in the My Channels pane will animate when the channel is being updated.
- Channels that have un-read items will be highlighted.
- The My Channels context menu will have an option to enable/disable auto-update.
- It should be possible to change a channel's URL (for the RSS feed, not the home page).
- RSS supports other additional meta-data (e.g. email address) that should be supported.
- Recent changes are not always picked up when moving around between pages in the New Channel wizard.
- We should re-install our system tray icon if (sorry, when) Explorer crashes.
- Smarter tray menu generation that takes into account your clicking habits.
- Tooltips containing item descriptions for the system tray menu.
- Option to prioritize channels so that new items on more important channels get shown first.
- Option to repeatedly remind you about new items on a channel until they are read.
- Better protection against badly-written plugins (so that they don't take down the whole app if they crash).
- For consolidated notification balloons, make each individual item clickable.
- Error logs should be saved across sessions.
- Add a log window that traces channel activity e.g. updating a channel, found new items, etc. This is currently available but logs to a file.
- Add a monitor window that displays the current state of selected channels e.g. # new items, time of the next scheduled update, etc.
- Option to run at Windows startup. Option to start minimized.