Version 1.2 is now available

The newest version of LuckNews is now available.

This version adds some awesome new features as well as generally improving all areas of the application.  The two biggest new features with this release are Article Search and the ability to view real web pages in the application.

The previous post discussed the ability to view real web pages - check it out.  I've been using this new feature of LuckNews for several weeks now and really like it.  To give it a try, simply open up the Subscription Information window for a subscription and turn on the option.  To open the Subscription Information window, select a single subscription and then in the File menu, select 'Subscription Information…'

Article Search is easy to use and works much as you would expect.  To start a search, select the 'Find Article' item in the Edit menu.  Then simply type words into the search window that has appeared.  Many applications always show the search window, even when you don't need it.  I chose to have the search window appear and disappear so that you can focus on the articles and their content.  I want LuckNews to have a clean, minimal interface.

There is a feature in Article Search which is not obvious - you are able to both search for articles which contain keywords as well as articles which do not contain keywords.  For example, you can find all articles which mention "hilo hawaii" in their content. Or if you wanted to find all articles which mention hilo but not hawaii, you would type: "hilo !hawaii".  The ! character at the start of a word means to only match articles which do not contain the word.

Also new is the ability to have the application cache images which enhances the ability to read articles when you do not have a network connection.  If you plan to read articles when you are not connected to the network, for example when you are on a sailboat in a tropical paradise, or on a plane or train, you can use this option to download all the images so they are available when you need them.


I hope you enjoy this release.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please forward them to:

lucknews.app@gmail.com

If you are enjoying the application, please add a comment in the App Store to help others with their choice to purchase LuckNews.

Version 1.2 is on the way...

I submitted version 1.2 of LuckNews to the AppStore today.  Here is a small preview:

LuckNews is now able to display the actual web page for a news article, rather than the RSS content.  Scrolling down a little in the page above, you see the following:

The page continues with many more images and more text.  The image below is what you would see in a RSS news reader which only shows the RSS content.  This is what you would see in version 1.1 of LuckNews, and most other RSS news readers.

Same article as above.  This is the RSS content.

Notice that apart from the RSS feed not containing any images, it also has much less content.  Many news feeds only send out a short summary of the article, leaving you to click through to the real web page to see the content.

LuckNews is now able to automatically fetch the real web content for an article and present it instead of the RSS news feed content.  In the 'Subscription Information' window, there is now an option you can select to show the web page content rather than the RSS.  There are some other new options as well, more on those later.

I come across many news feeds where the RSS content is much less rich than the real article on the web, this example is not contrived or artificial.  If you read a lot of web news, I'm sure you will have come across this as well.


The new version of LuckNews should be available in around a week or so, expect it to be available by sometime after February 21st.  Customers of version 1.1 or earlier will receive the update for free of course.

I hope you enjoy this new feature.  I do!