infoscape

Finally, It’s here, shipping a bunch of new features and bugfixes such as channel title auto-discovery for configuration window, completely redesigned desktop panel and online help.

Now stop reading and experience all the new features on your own… enjoy!.

This was mentioned in a very old post as a possible feature, but after latest architectural and usage improvements in infoscape 1.5 (currently in Beta testing), the application has become a reliable source of feed update notifications in which plugging a download manager would allow to be up-to-date not only with latest news, also with user’s favourite media.

Development in this area will start soon (I can’t wait to put my hands on it), increasing application feature set and making it attractive to even more people ;).

An initial approach to this feature requirements would be:

To be honest, the published review (titled “slick looking but limited”) doesn’t say too much about the application: it is acused of being very limited and dificult to use, although good in what it does.

There is also a WTF in the review: “and one cant click on the headlines to read more“. Obviously this person tried one-click but didn’t try double-clicking the window (or has no internet browser, and posted the review using telnet :P).

The last complain is about checking email… this person has “yet to figure out how to check his mail with it“. Well, obviously you need an email server providing headers via RSS (GMail is the only one with this feature, as far as I know) and your authentication date (username and password).

Well, I get it, infoscape is not easy to use for people not familiar to RSS feeds and content aggregation concepts. Now the challenge is to make it easier to use for everyone; first milestone: help tips on version 1.5.

Why did I start developing infoscape? Mainly because I love desktop notifications, but I hate Google Desktop. Also because I love being aware of podcast updates, but I hate iTunes. In summary, hate sometime leads to lovely things.

Looking backwards to the first releases of infoscape, I’ve found me asking myself “how the hell did I release this piece of crap?”. To be honest, I think I’ve made a mistake delivering such a bunch of versions lacking important or valuable functionalities (like authentication or the claimed desktop panel “close button”).

I’m wondering how many users identify now infoscape with poor versions ranging from 0.1 to 1.2, and are pretty sure that it still sucks. Okay, a lesson learned in software and life: be patient, hold your horses, give your reasoning a chance before acting (or shipping a product).

While planning the re-design of the infoscape’s desktop panel, I’ve realized that it is time to rewrite it entirely throwing away static images and unnecessary GDI+ dependecies. This will reduce program size and (I hope) memory usage.

My expectation is to improve the panel in the following aspects:

Dreaming about a software project that ships before schedule? go back to earth and enjoy version 1.4, first infoscape revision supporting live! and update web services. I hope that this opens the door to a rich and collaborative community around infoscape and RSS users around the world.

PS: Don’t you have already your infoscape|live! profile? be fast! capacity is limited…

This version will include, in addition to an increased version number, the following features:

Next step in development targets desktop panel, whose functionality, performance and look will be improved taking advantage of GDI+ libraries. Stay tunned for more news.