The Vienna development team is happy to announce the release of the first beta version of Vienna 2.3.0. Note that this is a test version and not a final release, so use it at your own risk. As always, please backup your files before installing new software, especially beta software.

Warning: Vienna 2.3 does not support Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. The 2.3.0 beta will not launch on Panther. Panther users can continue to use Vienna 2.2.2 indefinitely, and you should turn off the preference "Check for newer versions of Vienna on start up", because we won't be releasing any new versions of Vienna for Panther. We apologize to Panther users, but now that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has been released, it is difficult to support three OS versions at once.

The Vienna 2.3.0 beta is available for download at our SourceForge download page. We encourage beta testers to report any bugs you find. Please post a separate topic for each bug, to make it easier to track the bug. Tips for writing a good bug report can be read at http://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=9210. Thanks for testing!

Here are the change notes from Vienna 2.2.2:

- Drop Mac OS X 10.3 Panther support. Vienna 2.3 needs 10.4 or greater to launch.
- Add folder ordering option (manually or by name).
- Improvement to Send Link for multiple links and escaped characters. (Patch from Anmol Khirbat).
- Change standard product URLs to the new http://www.vienna-rss.org web site.
- Bug fix: Truncated Headings in LA Times Feeds
- Bug fix: Unescaped HTML in titles.
- Bug fix: Incorrect document URL shown after downloads.
- Bug fix: Option-clicking the close tab widget closed the main Articles tab.
- Add Kaku http://ppmweb.lolipop.jp/apps/kaku to the list of supported blog editors.

Thanks to Michael Ströck, we now have a new web site that better reflects the Vienna product name. The new URL is:

http://www.vienna-rss.org

The old Open Community links will stay active for a while but over time they will gradually move to the new address. If you're bookmarking the Vienna web site, please update your bookmark. The next maintenance release of Vienna 2.2 will incorporate updated links in the program itself.

Amongst all the positive feedback that we've had from Vienna 2.2, one of the common questions has been - where's the Mark All Read toolbar button gone?

It's still there - it's the second button on the default toolbar. It's just been renamed to "Skip Folder" to better reflect what it actually does which is to mark all remaining articles in the current folder read then skip ahead to the next folder containing unread articles. The functionality is identical to the same button in Vienna 2.1 - the name has just been changed.

The Vienna development team is pleased to announce the official release of the next major version of Vienna, the open-source, freeware, Mac OSX newsreader. Since 2.1 was released last year, we've been busy focusing on a few new major changes as well as a number of minor bug fixes. The chosen theme for 2.2 has been UI refresh and global searching.

When you upgrade from 2.1 to 2.2, you'll notice that the familiar three pane layout is still there but there is now the addition of a customisable toolbar. The search field has moved to the toolbar and has been upgraded to a global search field. You can now quickly retrieve articles that match a specified search string and Vienna will aggregate them all into a Search Results folder. However per-feed filtering has been retained with the addition of the new filter bar.

To the list of supported languages we have now added Euskara (Basque), Ukrainian and Russian.

Below is a list of the major changes between 2.1 and 2.2:

• Major UI improvements. Switched to polished metal style and cleaned up layout.


• Add global search bar for searching all feeds and showing the results in the new Search Results folder.


• Added more built-in display styles.


• Added toolbar and moved buttons to toolbar. (Thanks to David Kocher for the prototyping).


• Add filter bar to more easily filter the article list.


• Feed auto-discovery. Enter a web site in the New Subscription panel and Vienna will attempt to locate a newsfeed on the web site.


• Added the ability to subscribe to newsfeeds from the built-in browser.


• Added support for RSS/Atom enclosures and new Enclosure panel for articles that contain enclosures.


• Added ability to drop OPML files onto Vienna's dock icon.


• Added option to add Vienna to the system menu bar.


• Added Basque localization. (Thanks to Aitor Zubizarreta).


• Added Russian localization. (Thanks to Taras "sacrat" Brizitsky).


• Added Ukrainian localisation. (Thanks to Andrew Kachalo).


• If Vienna doesn't handle the URL scheme (e.g., itms), open the URL with the default application for its scheme.


• Allow refreshing of unsubscribed feeds if they are specifically selected. (Thanks to ytrewq1 for submitting a patch.)


• Updated to SQLite 3.3.17.


• Change exported file format to UTF8. (Thanks to Kiyu Horiuti).


• Added flagged article filter.


• Refresh all subscriptions now refreshes in the folder list sorted order.


• Add unsubscribe/resubscribe command to File menu.


• Add Growl events for file download success and failure.


• Add patch to pass selected text to blogging clients. (Contributed by Pukka author Justin R. Miller).

You can download Vienna 2.2 from the web site or choose Check for Updates from the Vienna menu.

Thanks to everybody who assisted with the beta testing and for the valuable and constructive feedback we've received over the months.

- The Vienna Dev Team

Build 2206 is our release candidate build for Vienna 2.2. All changes that we've planned to make in that version are in that build. All current users of 2.2 pre-release builds should get an update notification next time they restart Vienna, or just select the Check for Updates command on the Vienna menu and have the update automatically downloaded and applied.

Not all bugs are fixed. Some minor cosmetic issues and one-off bugs are punted to the next maintenance release or even to the next major version depending on their severity. Also, not all localisation is completed. Any remaining localisation updates will be done in future maintenance releases once the volunteers have been able to complete their work.

I'm not going to announce a specific release date as I want this build to bake in the community for a little while just to be sure there are no ship stoppers or other significant issues. However we're at the point where we will not be making any further changes unless they are critical, hence the 'release candidate' label.

Thanks to everybody who has been downloading, running and providing feedback on Vienna 2.2 so far. We appreciate your input in helping to make Vienna better!

-Steve

The Vienna team has created a new mailing list, vienna-rss-help. Information about the list, including the email address and subscription form, can be found at https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vienna-rss-help. The mailing list is open to the public: anyone can post to the list, subscribe, or read the archives.

You can get the same kind of help with Vienna through the mailing list that you get here in the discussion forum. The list is not intended to replace the forum, however. The main purpose of the mailing list is to provide an alternative method of getting Vienna support if the forum is down or unavailable.

A new pre-release build of Vienna 2.2 is now available on SourceForge.

This is an incremental release that includes a few more UI improvements, bug fixes and localisation updates. More work is expected before release.

This build also contains an experimental change to the folder list UI as suggested by Philipp Antoni. To enable this, run the following command from a console window:

defaults write uk.co.opencommunity.vienna2 NewFolderUI -boolean YES

To disable it, repeat the above command but substitute NO for YES. Feedback on this is welcome.

We also welcome contributions for improvement to the toolbar buttons or additional toolbar buttons.

Remember, Vienna 2.2 is a beta release, not a production release, and is definitely not finished or fully debugged. Use at your own risk. Back up your database beforehand.

Here is an extensive (though not comprehensive) list of changes:

- Updated all built-in styles to add enclosure field.
- Improved toolbar styles.
- Added Ukrainian localisation. (Thanks to Andrew Kachalo).
- Fixed toolbar UI corruption bug.
- Updated keyboard shortcuts in help file.
- Added Get Info and Style toolbar buttons.

As always, please post your feedback in the support forum.

For those of you who like to play with the latest and greatest, pre-release build 2201 of Vienna 2.2 is now available. You can grab it directly from SourceForge:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/vienna-rss/Vienna2.2.0.2201.zip

(Check for Updates won't work for going from 2200 to 2201 - sorry. We'll have that working for subsequent beta builds).

If you're using build 2200, please upgrade. This build fixes a potential database corruption in SQLite that the folks over there discovered. (We'll be releasing a fix for 2.1 very shortly just to be on the safe side).

Other changes:

Here is an extensive (though not comprehensive) list of changes:

• Fixed crash when creating new subscription. 
  
• Fixed crash when dragging Actions widget from toolbar. 
  
• Fixed (?) crash when opening new tab in Mac OS X 10.3.9. WARNING: This has not yet been tested. If any Panther users want to brave it, we would appreciate reports. 
  
• Updated SQLite to 3.4.0 to fix a potential database corruption issue. 
  
• UI improvements contributed by Philipp Antoni. 
  
• Switched to polished metal style. 
  
• Added Russian localization (Thanks to Taras "sacrat" Brizitsky). 
  
• Show refresh indicator in folder list next to feed currently being refreshed. 
  
• Hide progress spinner when not active. 
  
• Click progress indicator to toggle Activity Window. 
  
• Improved drag and drop of feeds to Safari. 
  
• Added extra refresh schedule options. 
  
• Added unsubscribe/resubscribe command to File menu. 
  
• Show enclosure pane below article for articles that contain enclosures. 
  

Remember, Vienna 2.2 is a beta release, not a production release, and is definitely not finished or fully debugged. Use at your own risk. Back up your database beforehand.

Enjoy!
- The Vienna dev team