1.6 adds annotations: text/ink tagging, and highlighting. Text annotations are indexed and can be searched using the "tag:" prefix. Handwriting recognition will be added for Ink annotations in a future release. Annotations can be added using some new icons at the bottom left of the two-pane reader. Text annotations can also be added by CTRL-T.

I uncovered a indexing problem where some items were not being removed from the index when deleted. 1.6 addresses this by rebuilding the entire index, so please be aware that this process can take several minutes on the first run.

Head over to the main RikReader page for download links.

Richard recently blogged that we should make bug reporting easy. I agree, so last night I released a new build of RikReader (1.4/2669) to make it so. There are three areas I've focused on.

1. Exception Reporting - In the past if RikReader raised an exception a handler dialog was displayed and the user had the option to "Copy" an exception report. I was occasionally sent these by blog comments, email, and IM. The next logical step was to enable a "Send Report" option that pushes the report directly to my server.

2. Feedback Reporting - Problems don't always raise exceptions. I wanted to make reporting general problems easy and to allow users to send feature requests. So the new build sports a brand new "Send Feedback" feature.

   "Send Feedback" pops up a dialog which lets the user annotate a screenshot of the application with ink, add some textual comments, and then push the report over to my server. Since we're dealing with a WPF app I can send vectors instead of pixels so these reports end up quite small (20-40kb).

   I first heard about the idea to attach annotated screenshots when Leon was interviewed about MicroISVs on Hanselminutes. I think a big problem with feature requests and problem reports is that even something simple can still require lots of back and forth communication with the user to find out what they really meant. With an annotated screenshot, if the user is feeling generous enough they can visually describe what they mean in a format which is much easier to convey.

3. Usage Reporting - I was greatly inspired by Joseph's efforts here. The current build has UI in place to enable and disable usage reporting. The implementation is just stubbed out but I'm looking forward to collecting lots of interesting metrics here.

Bumped up from 1.3: a few bug fixes, better exception handling, but most importantly RikReader now stores state in SQL Server Compact Edition.

• Click here to Install with Clickonce
• FireFox and other browsers: Click here then choose "Open" or "Run" to Install with Clickonce.
• Find out more about RikReader
• Subscribe to the RikReader RSS Feed
• View the Changelog

The consequence of using SQL CE is that the application can no longer run under x64. Although it's just a small matter of flipping a few settings in the build configuration, changing the target platform results in an incompatible Clickonce update. If you actually do the auto-upate, or run from the old deployment address you can see the pain I've had to go through here. I've written a small update that runs on AnyCpu to facilitate the manual uninstall of 1.3 and the new install of 1.4.

Update: I've uploaded the new build. Running RikReader twice or using the original install link should trigger the update.

Apparently it's been exactly one month since the 1.2 release. But, better late than never, RikReader 1.3 is here. This months new 'feature' is a completely rewritten¹ HTML parser.

• Install with Clickonce
• FireFox and other browsers: run this file to Install with Clickonce.
• Find out more about RikReader
• Subscribe to the RikReader RSS Feed
• View the Changelog

For end users this means feeds should look great. Finally no more distractions when people write in Comic Sans as RikReader now ignores all but the most important formatting. This certainly isn't to say that RikReader's HTML capability is limited; floats, quotes, tables and images should now render better than ever.

To ease publishing new versions, and to slightly simplify the codebase, I've decided to discontinue the zip based installation. If you have issues against using Clickonce please complain loudly.

¹ Actually this was replaced rather than rewritten, since I didn't write the original version. For interested WPF developers I'd recommend basing a HTML to XAML converter on the old but excellent SgmlReader sample on gotdotnet.com. The HTML to XAML converter on netfx3.com is a nice start, but due to it's complexity and size I was reluctant to extend it. Working with the SgmlReader I was able to produce a concise and in my opinion easily extensible converter. Given sufficient interest I could be persuaded to release it.

"Codename: RikReader" is an RSS Reader which complements the RSS Platform delivered by Microsoft in Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7. The RSS Platform makes it possible to share feed subscriptions and items between multiple applications.

"Codename: RikReader" provides only reading and searching capabilities. To manage your feed subscriptions, it's recommenced that you use Internet Explorer 7.

Standard View	Searching
Newspaper View

Where can I get RikReader?

Click here to install with Clickonce 

Clickonce will add a RikReader icon to your Start Menu and allow you to uninstall the application from "Add and Remove Programs." 

Using FireFox or another browser? Please click here then choose "Open" or "Run" to Install with Clickonce.

What are the Requirements?

Windows Vista

Or Windows XP and Internet Explorer 7 and the .NET Framework 3.0.

RikReader is Great! Can I pay you?

For now RikReader is free, but there's always my Amazon Wish List.

What does RikReader offer over Internet Explorer 7?

A unified view of all your feeds: See all your items in a single view. "Codename: RikReader" collapses the hierarchy of feeds and folders into a single list of items ordered by date.

A dynamic interface: Any new items or changes to the feed store will automatically show up in the current view.

Full-text, indexed searching: Perform advanced searchers over all of your items, instantly, in one go.

Tagging and Annotations: Add searchable notes with text and ink, label items with free-form tags.

How does tagging work?

Just select the item you want to tag, and press 't', type the tag and hit enter. You can add multiple tags, just add a comma in between.

To find tagged items, prefix the search term with tag:, for example if you marked an item with 'todo' search for tag:todo.

How do annotations work?

In two pane view, annotations are notes that you can add to an item. Select some text and you will find that the 'Add Annotation', 'Add Ink Annotation' and 'Highlight' buttons towards the bottom left become active.

Text annotations can be searched in the same manner as ordinary tags with the tag: prefix, Ink annotations are not yet indexed.

What are the shortcut keys?

Where possible, RikReader uses the same shortcut keys as Google Reader.

j/k	next/previous item
t	tag item
shift n/p	next/previous feed/folder
shift x	expand/collapse folder
s	search
v	view in browser
r	refresh view
1	two-pane mode
2	newspaper mode
space	next unread item

What has changed in the latest version?

View the Changelog to see the complete revision history.

How can I subscribe to a new Feed?

Use Internet Explorer 7. Navigate to a Feed, then click the link labeled "Subscribe to Feed".

Searching with RikReader

• Install with Clickonce
• FireFox and other browsers: run this file to Install with Clickonce.
• Find out more about RikReader
• Subscribe to the RikReader RSS Feed
• View the Changelog

Using Lucene.Net, RikReader can search your entire store in an instant. Any of the syntax described here¹ should be supported. Punctuation is given special consideration, so esoteric terms like C# and .NET can be found. By default, queries will run against the title or body fields, but it's also possible to explicitly search against any of the URLs an item links to using the link field (as shown in the screenshot above).

The first time you run RikReader 1.2 your entire store will be indexed. This happens in the background of the application, but may take a few minutes to complete. On subsequent sessions (assuming RikReader hasn't crashed!) only differential updates will be made to the index.

Please send any feedback to doug@11011

¹ Note that the default conjunction operator in RikReader is AND.

1.6 (Build 2857) - October 28, 2007

• Bugfix: Two Pane View lost item body after changing to Newspaper View and back.
• Bugfix: Sometimes Newspaper View stopped on a page which didn't exist.
• Request: Make Newspaper View respect the unread filter.
• Better async conversion and progress reporting in Newspaper View.
• Replaced "Change View" with a drop down "View" menu.

1.6 (Build 2807) - September 8, 2007

• New shortcut keys
• Tag item: t
• Next item: k
• Previous item: j
• Next feed/folder: shift + n
• Previous feed/folder: shift + p
• Expand/collapse folder: shift + x   
• Search: s
• View in browser: v 
• Refresh: r
• Two pane mode: 1
• Newspaper mode: 2
• Renamed the 'old' tags to annotations, added new 'whole item' tags.
• Allow multiple selection in the Feed Tree.
• Bugfix: Sometimes folders could not be expanded.
• Bugfix: Focus could be trapped in the toolbar.

1.6 (Build 2803r2) - September 4, 2007

• Better exception handling at startup and shutdown.
• Attempt to suppress exceptions during shutdown.
• Bugfix: Tree of folders and feeds stopped being dynamic.
• Bugfix: HTML conversion could fail when given invalid CSS style.

1.6 (Build 2803r1) - September 4, 2007

• Make startup even faster.
• Bugfix: Error Reporting.

1.6 (Build 2803) - September 4, 2007

• Try to stop the newspaper view from jumping around like crazy.
• Bugfix: switching folders or searching while the newspaper view was still being arranged could sometimes raise an exception.

1.6 (Build 2802) - September 3, 2007

• Streamline application startup.

1.6 (Build 2801) - September 2, 2007

• Bugfix: Error Reporting.

1.6 (Build 2775) - August 8, 2007

• Feature request: Indicate progress of background tasks.

1.6 (Build 2757) - July 20, 2007

• Bugfix: Ensure thread-safe DB access.

1.6 (Build 2756) - July 19, 2007

• Bugfix: Couldn't focus search box.
• Attempt to trap exceptions on shutdown. Add more extensive error reporting.

1.6 (Build 2755) - July 18, 2007

• Add annotations: text, ink tags; highlighting.
• Bugfix: JScript failed to compile in non-English locales.
• Bugfix: Some items were not removed from the index.

1.5 (Build 2728) - June 21, 2007

• Feature request: Support the HTML align tag on images.

1.5 (Build 2720) - June 13, 2007

• Feature request: Filtering. Choose to show items only from the last day, week, or only items which are unread.
• Feature request: Add a context menu to copy hyperlinks.
• Performance: Changing between feeds and folders is about 10 times faster.
• Performance: Newspaper view now loads item bodies asynchronously.

1.4 (Build 2708) - June 2, 2007

• Bugfix: Pre shouldn't be justified.
• Bugfix: Item author was being incorrectly compared to Feed name.
• Bugfix: Feed and folder structural changes from the RSS Platform were not being respected.

1.4 (Build 2690) - May 14, 2007

• Feature Request: Remove the Vertical Scrollbar from the Feed Tree.
• Bugfix: Some images were still being scaled according to their specified DPI.
• Better performance when changing between feeds.
• Better performance during indexing, the index is now only optimised at exit

1.4 (Build 2678) - May 2, 2007

• Bugfix: Newspaper view failed on load and when new items arrived.
• Added a more visible highlight color for the selected feed.

1.4 (Build 2670) - April 24, 2007

• Bugfix: Welcome dialog rendering glitch when RikReader was maximised.
• Bugfix: Reset scroll position when changing items in Two-Pane view.
• Changed feature reporting format.

1.4 (Build 2669) - April 23, 2007

• Moved more work into the background. Less effect from Index and Sync on the UI.
• Changes to the two-pane transition. Should be much faster now.
• Exception reporting now supports sending reports.
• Added a date for each item in Newspaper View.
• New feature to enable easy user feedback.

1.4 (Build 2664) - April 18, 2007

• Synchronisation data now stored in SQL CE.
• Bugfix: Feed items without a URL caused the Indexer to crash.
• Exception handling for exceptions raised by background threads.

1.3 (Build 2636) - March 21, 2007

• Background shading for nodes in the Feed Tree with unread items.
• Bugfix: Temporary workaround for Windows Live Spaces blogs.
• Bugfix: Security issue in the HTML translator for images with non HTTP URIs.

1.3 (Build 2625) - March 10, 2007

• Remember the expanded states and the selected node in the feed tree.

1.3 (Build 2618) - March 3, 2007

• More extensive error reporting (inner exceptions).

1.3 (Build 2569) - January 13, 2007

• Completely replaced HTML parser.
• Ignore the DPI specified by images and display at native pixel resolution.
• Synchronisation now runs smaller work items to avoid locking the UI. This was particularly visible when selecting an unread item in Standard View.
• The items list is now filled asynchronously.
• Items which have been updated are re-indexed.

1.2 (Build 2539) - December 13, 2006

• Bugfix: Next Unread Item should be faster.
• Bugfix: Don't crash where there are more folders than feed items.
• Bugfix: Items can have empty titles.

1.2 (Build 2537) - December 12, 2006

• Bugfix: Standard view feed list shouldn't steal focus.
• Bugfix: Standard view feed list should scroll to the current item.
• Bugfix: Newspaper view zoom level should be a seperate setting.
• Added Searching. Powered by Lucene.Net RikReader now indexes feed items to enable lightning fast search.
• Added a toolbar.
• Added animated status icons.
• Limited to single instance. You can now only start a single instance of RikReader per installation. If you need to run multiple instances, you will need to install RikReader to a different folder for each instance you need.

1.1 (Build 2522) - November 28, 2006

• Newspaper View.
• New hotkeys:
  • Press F2 to switch views
  • Press F5 to refresh the current view (Note: this is only necessary in Newspaper view to remove read items).
• Improved transition engine, this may give slightly better performance.
• Replaced style on the default-view list.
• Removed empty RSS Extension placeholders.
• Clickonce deployment offered.

1.0 (Build 2504) - November 9, 2006

• Bugfix: Resizing the document viewer in page mode and causing an image to flow to the next page caused a recursive error loop.
• Continued my abuse of the Standard Feed Icon: The main window will show an orange icon if there are any unread items, gray otherwise.
• Save settings on exit.
  • Window size, position and state.
  • Column widths.
  • Document viewer's mode and zoom factor.

1.0 (Build 2496) - November 1, 2006

• Initial preview release.
• Gold integration with the RSS Platform. Subscribe in IE7. Read in RikReader.
• Three Panes: Feed/Folder tree, Feed item list, Feed item details.
• Flattened hierarchal view: Select a Feed or Folder in the Tree to create a dynamic list of items contained within.
• Extensive shortcut keys: Press Space to select the oldest unread item in the current view.
• Terrible HTML conversion.
• Support for RSS Extensions.

• Deploy with Clickonce. (Recommended)
• or Download zip.

Newspaper View:

Pressing F2 will toggle between the two-pane Newspaper view and the three-pane Standard view. The Newspaper view shows unread items, oldest first, in a multi-column paged layout. Pressing Space will mark the current item as read and move to the next unread item. Pressing F5 will refresh the current view, any unread items will be removed.

Current Issues:

Apologies to Tablet users, I'm still thinking how best to expose these features without shortcut keys.

The Newspaper view is dynamic, this has the consequence that new items can sometimes be inserted before the current reading position, pushing the current item onto the next page. I'm still deciding how best to deal with this - ideally new items would only be added to the end of the document, but this has some architectural issues.

Here's a sneak preview.

No great new functionality in this release, just a few small changes to make things a bit more usable.

Download here.

If you want to keep track of RikReader updates but avoid my other blog posts you can subscribe to the RikReader Feed.

Changelog

1.0 (Build 2504) - November 9, 2006

• Bugfix: Resizing the document viewer in page mode and causing an image to flow to the next page caused a recursive error loop.
• Continued my abuse of the Standard Feed Icon: The main window will show an orange icon if there are any unread items, gray otherwise.
• Save settings on exit.
  • Window size, position and state.
  • Column widths.
  • Document viewer's mode and zoom factor.

1.0 (Build 2496) - November 1, 2006

• Initial preview release.
• Gold integration with the RSS Platform. Subscribe in IE7. Read in RikReader.
• Three Panes: Feed/Folder tree, Feed item list, Feed item details.
• Flattened hierarchal view: Select a Feed or Folder in the Tree to create a dynamic list of items contained within.
• Extensive shortcut keys: Press [Space] to select the oldest unread item in the current view.
• Terrible HTML conversion.
• Support for RSS Extensions.

Flow Document in Page Mode. Sample content from istartedsomething.com

Download

Here. Requires (Windows Vista RC1 or Higher) OR (Windows XP + .NET Framework 3.0 + Internet Explorer 7).

Features:

• Gold integration with the RSS Platform. Subscribe in IE7. Read in RikReader.
• Three Panes: Feed/Folder tree, Feed item list, Feed item details.
• Flattened hierarchal view: Select a Feed or Folder in the Tree to create a dynamic list of items contained within.
• Extensive shortcut keys: Press [Space] to select the oldest unread item in the current view.
• Terrible HTML conversion.
• Support for RSS Extensions. Only Slash, and Digg are wired to UI at present.

Known Issues:

• While RikReader is active, the first time you attempt to Subscribe, Move, or Remove a feed from IE7 you may receive an error, or nothing will happen. Repeat the action and it should succeed.
• Some embedded images will raise exceptions ("Cannot Read From Stream"), and often cause the render thread to die. I've noticed this in particular on feeds from Windows Live Spaces. [WPF Bug?]
• Images at locations which are redirected will not load. [WPF Bug?]

If When you run into other issues please let me know via a comment below or email to doug @ this domain.

License:

Please be aware the license does not allow redistribution. If you think someone else might be interested in RikReader please send them to this address. This version is time bombed to stop working in 3 months. There's no auto-update, sorry! Let's hope I have a new release by then.

What's coming next?

In the immediate future I foresee:

• Support for RSS Enclosures.
• Newspaper/"River of News" view. I hammered something out but the usability was terrible. Needs some work.
• "Smart Folders" like Microsoft Office Outlook. But, wouldn't it be nicer if there were even smarter  like callvirt.net?
• Full text indexing. It's unfortunate this isn't part of the RSS Platform.

To set expectations, V1 will provide at least:

• A managed Windows Presentation Foundation interface
• Simple, hierarchical, 3-pane reading
• Zero options
• One feature: marking items as read
• Numerous, difficult to reproduce bugs

If you were in the market for a new Feed Reader what would you be looking for?