Monday, August 31, 2009

ReaderScope 1.0

Now that ADC2 submissions are done, I am glad to release ReaderScope with its entire feature set as a 1.0 release.



The 1.0 release includes a bunch of new featuers. They include variety of new sharing options (SMS, Email, Digg, Del.icio.us, Twitter), deep caching, smart customizations that let you save on battery/network, more organized settings, pleasant color scheme, pretty icons, collapsible feed navigation on opening screen, friendly timestamps and many other tiny improvements.

Here is a detailed look at the new feature set.

Sharing

The control panel (that gets summoned by 'menu' button while on news page), now allows 9 different actions to perform on the news - Star, Share, Mark unread/read, Open link, Twitter, SMS, Email, Digg, Del.icio.us. At a time 7 of these are available on the panel. When you press email, your configured email program will be called and an email will be composed for you with contents of the news item. When you hit SMS, an SMS message will be composed with the title of the news and a shortened URL. With the Digg button, you can check if the news is available on Digg. If the news is found on digg, its digg count and a list of latest comments is shown. With the del.icio.us button, you can bookmark the news in your Del.icio.us account. (First time you will be asked to enter your credentials).

Due to the limit on the size of control panel, only 7 action buttons can be accomodated. You can choose them from the total 9, using the Settings->Action controls option.

Deep Caching


There are news channels which post only a brief part of the news in their RSS/Atom feed. To read rest of the news, reader has to visit their webpage. This is inconvinient when reading news offline. With the Deep Caching feature, you can tell ReaderScope to cache the news webpages with complete news for offline access. Just head to Settings->Periodic Downloads and push "Feeds for Deep Caching". From the list of feeds choose the ones you want to deep cache. Note that you need to have this feed also among your favorite feeds. Also you need to have checked "Cache Images" check box.

[Caveat: the deep cached webpage with the complete news item is only stored in text, and you won't see the embedded images while offline]

Smart savings


In the Settings->Smart savings you can tweak ReaderScope behavior to save resources. You can choose to automatically disable periodic downloads if battery is below certain level. You can also choose to not perform periodic downloads if the network is not suitable. In addition, you can selectively delete news items from the database to clean up some space. You can also cleanup the cached web content from this screen.

Organized Settings

As you have noticed thus far, the settings are now categorized into 5 kinds. They should be self-explanatory.

UI improvements

The opening page is now made of collapsible lists. Each tag now can be collapsed into a single line. This makes navigating through your feeds more convenient. This layout adapts to your choices of favorite feeds/tags. They are put on the top for quick access. Also check Settings->Miscellaneous for couple more ways you can tweak this layout. ... and I hope you like the new color scheme.

And yes.... did I mention the app is still entirely FREE?

ReaderScope is also a contestant in ADC2, so if you like the app, rate it in the ADC2 judging process.

The app is now available at two places - Android Market and Slideme.

Happy Reading!!!

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