Comments on: Leopard Feature #301

By: Jens Alfke

Jens Alfke — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 17:24:11 +0000

Omar: Sorry the change isn’t a good one for you … sometimes it’s impossible to please every user!

By: Omar

Omar — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 17:09:53 +0000

Sorry Jens, I just saw your answer to my issue.

I’m afraid clicking articles to mark them as read is not an option for me, the feeds I follow can have 300+ postings in one day, and clicking each one as read would not be convenient. It’s too bad the Tiger behavior has disappeared entirely, I’d be thrilled if it was available even in a hidden pref through the terminal defaults write command. As it is, Safari RSS is unusable for me. I have a folder with several news websites (NYT, BBC, Le Monde…), clicking through every article to mark it as read is tedious, loading all threads with no filtering is very slow, as I said those feeds have 300+ articles per day easily, and all threads being marked as read regardless of filter rules makes for a much less powerful RSS experience.

I’d be delighted if the previous behavior could come back, even hidden.

Thanks for clarifying though!

By: jolan

jolan — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 10:50:21 +0000

I’ve noticed a few weird things:
- Sometimes the unread count inexplicably goes to 20. Not sure if this is a server bug or a client bug. I’ve had this happen with different feeds, so I’m assuming it is a client bug. I’ve seen this manifest as 20 duplicates of the most recent article as well as marking old articles new again.
- Clicking “Update Now” when there are new articles causes the unread count to be unchangeable, even after clicking the article to mark it as read or clicking the website title on the bookmark bar. Quitting & restarting Safari fixes it.
- Missing articles. I believe this to be a server issue but it’s worth mentioning anyway. Sometimes when disconnected for awhile (i.e. check RSS in the morning, travel for 8 hours, check RSS in the evening) a block of articles is missing within the beginning of the 8 hour time range. I’m assuming it is the server software only listing the newest N articles.

By: Jens Alfke

Jens Alfke — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 23:21:46 +0000

Omar: That was an intentional change. We had too many reports of feeds whose unread count mysteriously wouldn’t go down to zero, which ended up being caused by someone viewing only a subset of articles (like today’s or this week’s). We decided the new approach — always marking all the entries as read no matter what filter is set — was less confusing overall.

If you want more control, try switching on the feature I described, where you click articles to mark them as read.

By: Omar

Omar — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 23:17:19 +0000

I’ve noticed a weird behavior in Safari on Leopard:

I have my RSS set to only show the feeds of day. If I have for instance 50 unread items in a particular feed, and clic on it, it will show only the news items of the day, let’s say 40 of them. This means there are 10 unread items from yesterday (or before). If I select “yesterday” on the right column, all items are marked as read, even though I didn’t actually view them.

Same for groups of feeds, viewing one of them marks them all as read.

Is this a bug with Leopard, or is this the expected behavior? I liked the Tiger behavior better.

By: Jens Alfke

Jens Alfke — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:00:43 +0000

Jesper: I’m not happy with those either, but unfortunately I’m not in a position to make such decisions. I don’t see either the name or the icon changing in the future, unless someone has an unexpected change of opinion.

By: Jesper

Jesper — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 19:24:24 +0000

Since you’re involved with these sorts of things, can you tell us if there’s been any movement to get away from the “RSS” term, or at least to start using the feed icon instead of an RSS badge?

By: Jens Alfke

Jens Alfke — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 16:47:41 +0000

Ack! Sorry, I keep making that mistake. It’s a sign of how old I am…

By: Jeff Johnson

Jeff Johnson — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 15:51:37 +0000

Judging from the documentation, the PubSub framework looks awesome. I haven’t had time to code with it yet, but I definitely will.

By: pauldwaite.co.uk

pauldwaite.co.uk — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 09:08:24 +0000

these tweaks… bring the Safari RSS experience more into line with the way we first prototyped it in 1994

Wh—1994? Was Apple was planning Safari longer than I thought?