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Any App Like Pulse?
- Thread starter perezr10
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@simmepi Still loving the Heartfeed app and use it daily. I did wonder though if you could check:
* why I can't see images for one of my favorite RSS feeds from Tweakers.net
* Can you still try to implement an option that the share feature with e.g. Twitter actually shows the title + image + link instead of the link only. I know that I've asked this already a few times.
* Could you maybe think of implementing a Notification Center widget?
* why I can't see images for one of my favorite RSS feeds from Tweakers.net
* Can you still try to implement an option that the share feature with e.g. Twitter actually shows the title + image + link instead of the link only. I know that I've asked this already a few times.
* Could you maybe think of implementing a Notification Center widget?
Glad you like the app, despite your issues!
So:
* tweakers.net: Will have a look but it might simply be that the feed does not supply images, unfortunately; if so, the only way would be to have server-side support for downloading feeds which could also parse the actual web page, and this is both complicated and expensive to do
* Twitter: Will try; honestly the Twitter (and FB) sharing code was written very quickly and could definitely be more polished
* Notification widget: Any suggestions what to show in such a widget? Background refreshing is iffy since apps are restricted to certain specified types of workloads when running in the background.
Thanks for your fast response!
As far as tweakers.net I'm not sure if the feed contains images. When I open up the same feed with the Feedly app it also only shows some images for only a few news items.
The issues are really very minor although the Twitter share feature does bugs me for quite a while though.
It's great to read that you will look into the share feature to get it more polished.
As far as the Notification Center I would like to see just a few 2/3 latest items (small picture + title and when you click on it it will go to the Heartfeed app to read the story. Per feed a maximum of 2/3 feeds as well. Although I would think that this should be left to the user how many to show. I can also think of difference per user and per type of iDevice and their screen size.
I like Feedly the most. But after I switch phone a few times, I actually got lazy to download the app and just view the Techmeme website
Thanks for the kind words
As for the request: You and me both, actually!
The problem is that there is a bug in iOS when using the Safari view together with such a swipe gesture in certain scenarios, and the way views are handled in Heartfeed is unfortunately one of those. There is a discussion of the bug here (SVC = Safari View Controller) and as you can see, all the workarounds mentioned there are ways to disable the swipe: https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/29048
However, as you can see this was reported in iOS 9. It is a bit problematical for me to test if this is still a bug in iOS 10 since it was not always reproducible and I myself could never reproduce it (it depends on timing of the swipe -> it depends on speed of gesture, speed of web page loading, speed of CPU, ...), but I do know disabling the swipe stopped the bug reports.
I will look into this again since as mentioned, I'd also like to be able to swipe back!
It seems that the bug should be solved by now because another app that I'm using seems to have no problem with that swipe gesture!
Other suggestions are:
- swipe down gesture in an article to go back to the feeds
- "a continue reading" link below the articles (this is not always visible on some feeds)
- Allow more feeds per group - I only can get 3 feeds per group (5 should be a minimum)
- The read articles should be only be visible when when we view the full article
- like the Pulse app, is it possible not to have the address bar but just the options (aA and =)
- widget!
Thanks!
Hi there, is there any update on the Feedmesh app for iOS ?
If you are looking for beta testers, please count me in!
Thank you,
Hey Simmepi, I've recently noticed a new issue on one of my feeds. Where it used to work just fine, showing the correct photo with the correct article, now it uses the same photo for 90% of the articles (some articles do still show the correct photo). I thought this might have been a change in the feed, but when I use other RSS readers, the photos still show correctly.
the feed I'm seeing this on is: http://bringatrailer.com/feed/
still my most used app, thanks for your hard work.
the feed I'm seeing this on is: http://bringatrailer.com/feed/
still my most used app, thanks for your hard work.
Hi sford56,
Thanks for the kind words!
I just checked the feed and there is indeed a problem: For some reason the site producing the feed is violating the RSS feed protocol. Every news item is supposed to have a unique ID, identifying the particular news item, but a feed might leave this out if it wants to. So in Heartfeed I use the identifier if it is set, and if it isn't I instead use the http address for the news story.
This normally works fine, and the only time I've seen a problem with this is for a few feeds where they don't supply an ID and they reuse the same http link for reoccurring news items (like e.g. The Verge which now and then posts a news item with good deals on tech items, and they always use the same web page for the current deal) -> the "new" news item is marked by Heartfeed as having already been read (since the "old" news item has been read), and in case the image for the old news item is still in the app's cache, this image is shown. So no big deal.
However, your feed is doing something much worse: The feed does set an identifier for all news items, but quite often the identifier is simply "http://", meaning a bunch of news items does have identifiers specified but they are not unique. Looking at those news items which actually do have a unique identifier and thus works fine, this identifier is always equal to the http link to the story (which is common to use as identifier, exactly like I do if identifiers are not set).
So to me it looks as if their feed configuration must have been changed, and when they did so they broke something so that certain items gets a faulty news item identifier. A quick glance at those news items with wrong identifier (i.e. identifier = "http://") seems to indicate that they are all news items corresponding to a listing of a car for sale have, and the news item link always start with "http://bringatrailer.com/listing/<something indicating the actual listing>". So if an item corresponds to a car being listed, the identifier is identical to all other listings -> the image shown will all be the same, and the image will simply be the image corresponding to the image corresponding to the first item with this same identifier (and read status of the items will all be the same when identifiers are the same).
Unfortunately it is not trivial to fix in the app. One way I see as possible would be to change Heartfeed to always ignore the identifiers specified by the feed and instead always use the http link to the story. I think this would almost always work, but I don't like this idea since it means if some feed has correctly configured unique identifiers while reusing web link addresses, this feed would work with the current Heartfeed but fail to work with one where I skip identifiers and instead use addresses. So in essence, I'd punish well-behaved feeds while being kind to misbehaving ones.
Another way would be to skip trying to be smart about finding images; I could simply always look for the image in the feed instead of trying to see if I already have an image for a given identifier, and also never caching found images. I suspect this is what other apps do. But this would have a cost in bandwidth usage which is why I'm hesitant about going in that direction.
Way too long answer I'm afraid
Anyhow, action possibilities:
- I'll think about it a bit more to see if I can come up with some harmless way of handling a misconfigured feed like this, but not sure if I'll get anywhere.
- We could also hope that the site notices the misconfiguration as well.
- Or if you feel lika taking action, you could send them a mail about their bug (if so, feel free to refer to this comment).
Hope at least this explains the issue and maybe helps somewhat!
Hey Simmepi, I emailed you awhile ago about a problem I am having with my iPad Pro running iOS 11; on launch HeartFeed will freeze. Your latest update now allows the feeds to load, but within a few seconds the app still freezes.
Is there anything I can do to try and fix the problem, or is this a bug that you still need to resolve before iOS 11 leaves beta?
Thanks again for all your hard work and astounded good app. I use it every single day on my iPhone (and iPad when it works), and I recommend to everyone that they should get your app.
Is there anything I can do to try and fix the problem, or is this a bug that you still need to resolve before iOS 11 leaves beta?
Thanks again for all your hard work and astounded good app. I use it every single day on my iPhone (and iPad when it works), and I recommend to everyone that they should get your app.
Hi sford56,
Thanks for the kind words!
I just checked the feed and there is indeed a problem: For some reason the site producing the feed is violating the RSS feed protocol. Every news item is supposed to have a unique ID, identifying the particular news item, but a feed might leave this out if it wants to. So in Heartfeed I use the identifier if it is set, and if it isn't I instead use the http address for the news story.
This normally works fine, and the only time I've seen a problem with this is for a few feeds where they don't supply an ID and they reuse the same http link for reoccurring news items (like e.g. The Verge which now and then posts a news item with good deals on tech items, and they always use the same web page for the current deal) -> the "new" news item is marked by Heartfeed as having already been read (since the "old" news item has been read), and in case the image for the old news item is still in the app's cache, this image is shown. So no big deal.
However, your feed is doing something much worse: The feed does set an identifier for all news items, but quite often the identifier is simply "http://", meaning a bunch of news items does have identifiers specified but they are not unique. Looking at those news items which actually do have a unique identifier and thus works fine, this identifier is always equal to the http link to the story (which is common to use as identifier, exactly like I do if identifiers are not set).
So to me it looks as if their feed configuration must have been changed, and when they did so they broke something so that certain items gets a faulty news item identifier. A quick glance at those news items with wrong identifier (i.e. identifier = "http://") seems to indicate that they are all news items corresponding to a listing of a car for sale have, and the news item link always start with "http://bringatrailer.com/listing/<something indicating the actual listing>". So if an item corresponds to a car being listed, the identifier is identical to all other listings -> the image shown will all be the same, and the image will simply be the image corresponding to the image corresponding to the first item with this same identifier (and read status of the items will all be the same when identifiers are the same).
Unfortunately it is not trivial to fix in the app. One way I see as possible would be to change Heartfeed to always ignore the identifiers specified by the feed and instead always use the http link to the story. I think this would almost always work, but I don't like this idea since it means if some feed has correctly configured unique identifiers while reusing web link addresses, this feed would work with the current Heartfeed but fail to work with one where I skip identifiers and instead use addresses. So in essence, I'd punish well-behaved feeds while being kind to misbehaving ones.
Another way would be to skip trying to be smart about finding images; I could simply always look for the image in the feed instead of trying to see if I already have an image for a given identifier, and also never caching found images. I suspect this is what other apps do. But this would have a cost in bandwidth usage which is why I'm hesitant about going in that direction.
Way too long answer I'm afraid
Anyhow, action possibilities:
- I'll think about it a bit more to see if I can come up with some harmless way of handling a misconfigured feed like this, but not sure if I'll get anywhere.
- We could also hope that the site notices the misconfiguration as well.
- Or if you feel lika taking action, you could send them a mail about their bug (if so, feel free to refer to this comment).
Hope at least this explains the issue and maybe helps somewhat!
Thanks for putting the time into this. After you posted, I looked more closely, and it is their BAT auctions that have the issue. Normal posts show up correctly. I'll definitely forward this info on to them...not sure if they'll do anything about it, but I'll try. Thanks again.
BTW...Just as a data point with regards to the post just above, I'm running iOS 11 PB 9 on an iPad Pro 12.9 and have not noticed any issues.
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I wonder why I am having so much trouble then? I updated to beta 9, and I’ve deleted the app and reinstalled it several times with always the same outcome: the app launches, the feeds load, I can scroll for maybe two second and then the app completely freezes.
I have tried, like I said, deleting the app and reinstalling it, and I’ve restarted my iPad multiple times. The only thing I have tried is a full restore, which I might try to do this upcoming weekend.
I wonder if there is something specific to one of your feeds that is causing a crash. Definitely not trying to diminish the issue, I just wanted to let Simmepi know that it's not something that necessarily affects iOs11 as a whole.
No, I understand. I appreciate you letting me know as well. It’s most likely something on my end then. I’ll try a restore and see if that works.
Thankfully, for the time being, everything still works really well on my iPhone 6S Plus on iOS 10.
Just an update: I did a restore on my iPad with iOS 11 and now HeartFeed is working perfectly again!
That’s good news.
An update on my feed issue: I contacted the feed owner, who got back to me with the response that “they tried two other readers, and they worked fine” so, it doesn’t seem that they are very interested in fixing the issue.
I've been away from my computer a couple of days so hadn't had the chance to reply; I was definitely worried that something was off with Heartfeed and iOS11. Me not having any problems might be because I'm running the developer betas, so I was afraid that for some reason that meant everything was OK for me but not for regular users.Just an update: I did a restore on my iPad with iOS 11 and now HeartFeed is working perfectly again!
So I'm glad everything seems to work for you as well now!
@sford56 : OK, understood. As mentioned, I'll have to think about this a bit to see if there's something I can do.
Thanks Semmepi.
One thought I had, and I know you don't like adding settings, but maybe in the feed setup page you could have a setting to "never cache images" on a feed by feed basis. Not sure how difficult this would be, but it would help with feeds that don't follow the rules, without making it an all or nothing setting.
Well, sorry for the false alarm. I just couldn't explain why it wasn't working; I deleted the app several times and reinstalled it, etc. In the end, though, it seems like something got mixed up in the software update to the overall OS.
Anyways, thanks again for always getting back to us and taking steps to help us.
Will fix this in the next release. To make sure no other feeds which correctly uses the identifiers for news items will break, once all items for a feed has been downloaded, I'll check if there are multiple identical identifiers. If so, and provided the items do have unique web links, I switch to using the links as identifiers for this specific feed. Seems to work fine now, for your feed, in my tests
The other stuff in the release are just 2 small fixes: A setting for entering the reader mode of Safari (if available) when you go to the web view for reading an item, and a link to the web view at the bottom of the news item view, for those cases where you'd otherwise had to scroll to the top to get to the web view link.
That sounds like a great solution. Thanks again for all your efforts Simmepi, I'll look forward to the update.
Good timing: I had already uploaded a version which improves the look on X (somewhat at least, it's tricky to find a perfect solution), and Apple okay'd it just a few hours after your post so just update and try it
The new version also has some initial data collection code (of course optional!) So that in the future I might be able to show a list of most commonly used feeds in Heartfeed.
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Just updated. Looks great. Such an awesome app. Thank you again for all your efforts.