Checking out NewsGator Widgets

NewsGator’s widgets business hasn’t overlapped with NetNewsWire, but I felt like learning more about it. (I take it as self-evident that it’s good to be curious about your own company’s products.)

Some other parts of NewsGator’s business, especially NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES), have overlapped with NetNewsWire. NetNewsWire and the other client apps work with NGES as well as with the online syncing system. (NGES is like the online system, but with a whole bunch of special features that businesses need.)

But I didn’t know that much about widgets, and I got curious. I got curious more about widgets-as-software than widgets-as-business, but I’ll talk about the business part first.

They’re web-page widgets, not Dashboard...
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NetNewsWire 1.0.8 should be on App Store

I just got word that NetNewsWire 1.0.8 should be hitting the App Store — if it’s not there yet, it should be soon. (I believe.)

Interesting Feeds feed

When I decided to remove the Sites Drawer from future versions of NetNewsWire, I replaced it with something else: a feed that lists interesting feeds that I find.

It’s called, simply, the Interesting Feeds feed. You can subscribe.

I thought about doing other things — loading OPML files written by other people into the Sites Drawer, for instance. But every idea like this meant a bunch of work for little benefit — and a big part of the reason to delete features is to be able to spend more time working on the features that matter most.

(Aside: people who don’t write software...
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NetNewsWire 1.0.8 uploaded, will appear on App Store later

I just uploaded NetNewsWire for iPhone 1.0.8 — I can’t say when it will appear on the App Store, of course, but it’s in the review process now.

Changes in 1.0.8 (since 1.0.7):

- Fixed a hang/crash at startup affecting some people.

- Fixed a bug restoring a feed or post at startup -- it now makes sure the feed and post still exist in the database.

- Removed the Feeds title and the horizontal stripes from the startup image, so it doesn't look like it's switching views at startup.

- Removed some logging code for when a download fails -- it shouldn't have been left in there.

Evan on categories

Evan DiBiase writes that “if you’re only using a method in once place, you have no idea how it’s going to generalize. Maybe you can reuse it, as-is, in many other places. Perhaps it will need to be decomposed.”

New tactic (for me): categories all in one file

Despite the previous post, I still do use categories. ;) They’re not banned-in-BrentLand.

For the iPhone version of NetNewsWire, I put them all in one file: NNWExtras.m. (“Extras” instead of Categories because there are also a few C functions and one macro defined in that file.)

What I like about this is the discipline it brings. I don’t want that one file to become big, so I’m more reluctant to add a category or category method.