February 21, 2004
@ 01:23 PM
Comments [9]
RSS Bandit Future Release Plans

Torsten and I have fixed about a dozen bugs since the v1.2.0.90 release and implemented one or two minor features. There are two major issues we'd like to tackle in the next few weeks then ship a minor release then work on the next major version of RSS Bandit. The issues are both performance related

  1. High Memory Consumption: We don't consume as much memory as the other free .NET Framework based aggregator, SharpReader, which I've seen consume over 100MB of memory but we do stay in the 30MB to 60MB range which is excessive. I'm pretty sure I have a good idea what the prime culprits are for the memory issues but currently can't think of a good way to reduce the memory consumption without removing or degrading some features. However our perf goals are to reduce those numbers by half in the next few weeks.

  2. Feeds with Lots of Posts Take too Long to Load: This is related to one of the culprits in the previous problem. If you are subscribed to a feed such as Weblogs @ ASP.NET which gets 50-100 posts a day which translates to about 1500-3000 posts a month then there is a perceptible slowdown in how long it takes to load the listview when you click on the feed. 

We'll be fixing bugs and implementing minor features along the way while getting the aforementioned performance issues under control. Once we are satisfied with the perf , we'll have a beta period and then ship a release. This should be within the next month.

After this there are a number of significant features we have slated such as NNTP support, subscription harmonization using SIAM, translations to multiple languages (German being the first) and better integration with IE (such as supporting the Favorites menu).  The release where these features show up will be in 2 or 3 months.

In the meantime, Torsten and I will be discussing RSS Bandit development in our blogs and on the RSS Bandit mailing list


 

Categories: RSS Bandit

« It's the Superficial Features that Make ... | Home | Microsoft XML Web Services Architect Joi... »
Saturday, 21 February 2004 15:09:41 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
With regard to issue #1, don't forget that the runtime atomatically assigns a certain amount of the free RAM in the user's system. When it detects RAM getting low, it'll actually reduce the amount of memory it consumes.

Also, since you're using the Internet Explorer web control in the software, it consumes quite a bit of ram all by itself.

Personally, I don't think RAM usage is as an important issue as might first be thought, and it's an issue that does tend to confuse programmers. I do agree #2 can be improved, though I don't think it's unacceptably slow...but then the only feed I look at that gets a lot of posts is the blogs.msdn.com.
Aaron A. Anderson
Saturday, 21 February 2004 20:00:46 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Hi Dare, I updated the RssBandit documentation with your suggestion and posted it here: http://haacked.europe.webmatrixhosting.net/archive/2004/02/22/204.aspx
nospamplease75@yahoo.com (haacked)
Saturday, 21 February 2004 20:35:34 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I'll take a look at doing this before the end of next week. One thing to note is that the final documentation should be in HTML format because I plan to upload it to the Documentation part of the SourceForge project.
Dare Obasanjo
Monday, 23 February 2004 12:54:11 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I'd like to be able to delete items from a feed (the cached older ones I mean). That way I can only keep the ones I liked and avoid the others cluttering/slowing the UI.
Daniel Cazzulino
Monday, 23 February 2004 19:34:35 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Daniel,
You can already control how long items are kept from both the feed propeties menu and the Options menu. Perhaps these features aren't called out explicitly?
Dare Obasanjo
Monday, 23 February 2004 21:14:20 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Paul Wilson has been posting some interesting finds about .NET and memory, would that help some? The post can be found here: http://weblogs.asp.net/pwilson/archive/2004/02/20/77422.aspx
Monsur
Tuesday, 24 February 2004 17:56:12 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Dare,
any chance you could get support for autoproxy scripts working? Or somehow levergae the actual proxy server that IE is using? Our corporate settings use an autoproxy script and when I select "use IE's setting" I am not able to get RSSBandit to find any feeds. When I insert the proxy that the autoscript resolves to and use "use this proxy" everything is fine. When I travel or login outside the corporate firewall, I have to go in and readjust that setting. Not a big deal but would be nice not to have to deal with it.
Mike Julier
Tuesday, 24 February 2004 17:56:58 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Dare,
any chance you could get support for autoproxy scripts working? Or somehow levergae the actual proxy server that IE is using? Our corporate settings use an autoproxy script and when I select "use IE's setting" I am not able to get RSSBandit to find any feeds. When I insert the proxy that the autoscript resolves to and use "use this proxy" everything is fine. When I travel or login outside the corporate firewall, I have to go in and readjust that setting. Not a big deal but would be nice not to have to deal with it.
Mike Julier
Wednesday, 25 February 2004 18:18:49 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
It would be cool if the tree remembered the state of which nodes were open, which were closed when the app is relaunched
James Clarke
Comments are closed.