Ranchero Software Releases Public Beta Of NetNewsWire 2.0

Ranchero Software has released NetNewsWire 2.0b3, the first public beta of the next version of the RSS news reader. The next version of NetNewsWire will feature flagged items, smart lists, search engine subscriptions, script subscriptions, external weblog editor support new icons, and more. From Ranchero Software:

Whatis New in NetNewsWire 2.0

The goal of NetNewsWire 2.0 was to add the most common feature requests--but at the same time not just let the program get bigger and bigger.

(The current NetNewsWire 2.0 beta is available via the beta download page.)

Streamlining

NetNewsWire is now more focused on reading news, with lots of new newsreading features and without the weblog editor.

MarsEdit is our new weblog editor: itis a complete overhaul, very different from the one that used to be in NetNewsWire.

In addition, the Notepad has been disabled, but provided as a plugin for anybody who relied on it. If you donit enable the Notepad it doesnit get loaded or appear in any way.

A good way to illustrate how we streamlined NetNewsWire is a screenshot comparing the menus of NetNewsWire 2.0 to NetNewsWire 1.0.8.

New features

We get so many feature requests for NetNewsWire that it was easy to figure out what people wanted most. Here are the main new features in NetNewsWire 2.0:

  • Flagged items. When you mark an item as flagged, NetNewsWire keeps it forever or until you unflag it. You can see all your flagged items in a special flagged-items subscription.
  • Searching. A search field in the toolbar works like Mail, iTunes, and similar applications.
  • Embedded browser. Read web pages directly inside NetNewsWireis tabbed browser.
  • External weblog editor support. NetNewsWire can send posts to MarsEdit--and also to XJournal, ecto, Blapp, and Cocoal.icio.us.
  • Persistence. Tell NetNewsWire how long to keep news items.
  • Smart lists. Like smart playlists in iTunes, smart lists display news items based on rules that you set up.
  • Search engine subscriptions. Subscribe to searches at Blogdigger, Daypop, and Feedster.
  • Script subscriptions. Write scripts that generate Atom and RSS feeds.
  • Built-in styles. A new Styles popup menu lets you choose from a list of style sheets--and you can create your own.
  • Enclosures. You can open RSS enclosures and access them via AppleScript.
  • Activity window. See the progress of the current download session and cancel the entire session or specific downloads.
  • Dinosaurs. Find feeds that havenit updated in a long time via the Dinosaurs window.
  • Subscription sharing. You can see the subscription lists of other people on your local network--and you can share your own subscriptions list.
  • Atom feeds. NetNewsWire reads Atom feeds and supports Atom feed auto-discovery.
  • Syncing. At this writing, syncing is still in progress. It will get finished before the final version of 2.0 ships. (Itis the last of the major features to finish, and we decided not to hold up the public beta for it, since there are so many other features people have been asking for.)

There are many smaller features not listed above, such as importing/exporting OPML with groups, per-feed refresh schedules, and new icons by Bryan Bell and Jon Hicks. For a more complete list of changes, see the NetNewsWire 2.0 change notes.

The NetNewsWire 2.0 Public Beta is available now from Ranchero Software. NetNewsWire is US$24.95 for new users, while users of NetNewsWire 1.x can upgrade for free.