Whenever my blog remains quiet for more than a few days, you can bet the reason is that I’m nose-down in development, working on something new. Which begs the question: what have I been working on since I last posted? I’ll answer that with a screenshot:
Now, I imagine those of you who are testing the FeedDemon 1.6 beta are more than a little surprised to see that FeedDemon 2.0 is in the works, so I’ll explain what’s going on.
A few months ago I posted about the possibility of changing FeedDemon to subscription-based software, and the reaction to the idea was…less than positive. As a result, we changed direction and decided not to make FeedDemon subscription-based. Instead, FeedDemon would require a NewsGator subscription in order to use features like synchronization, but you’d still be able to use FeedDemon – indefinitely – even after your subscription expires.
That sounds like a simple change, but given that NewsGator’s site (including our ordering system) is based around the idea of software by subscription, a significant overhaul of our site was required – and that process is still underway. That left us with a choice: either release FeedDemon 1.6 after the site redesign, or ship it now as subscription software. Given that we’d promised not to make FeedDemon subscription-based, the only decision we could make was to wait until after the redesign.
Rather than let FeedDemon stagnate, though, we decided to plow ahead with v2.0, and release it as a free upgrade from the current release. So while the downside is that you’ll have to wait longer for the new release, the upside is that you’ll get some pretty nice new features (including the oft-requested feed treeview) for free.
I’ll post more about specific features in FeedDemon 2.0 later on, but for now, I wanted to give a “heads-up” to what’s in store :)
PS: If you happen to be testing FeedDemon 1.6 right now, please don’t think your efforts are in vain. Even though FeedDemon 2.0 is dressed in a new UI, underneath it’s using the same “engine” that drives FeedDemon 1.6, so issues uncovered in 1.6 will still apply to 2.0 (a beta of which should be available in mid-January).