Develop Bugs

News - mark all as read

Hey, I can't figure this out!
How can I mark more than one article read?

I've been grappling with this, too.
I don't think it can be done, bizarrely! I think it's the only RSS reader I've ever used that lacks this function.
I really like the widget for the HTC news app - looks better than anything else out there which is the only reason I've stuck with it so far...
What I've been doing it simply going into the top article, then repeatedly hitting the down button to pass through the remaining articles, which subsequently marks them as read - not ideal (especially when there are a lot of articles) but it kind of works.
What is also irritating is that each feed still displays the number of articles in brackets at the end even when read, whilst the "News" tab right at the bottom will have a green circle with the number of un-read available. You don't necessarily know which feed they're in.
I've been playing with BlueRss which seems to work well but unfortunately lacks a widget that is as nice to use as the HTC News app.
Anyone else with any ideas?

Thanks, too bad...
Anyone else have any ideas?

I just searched the forum looking for an answer to this very question, I guess it cant be done?

Unfortunately I haven't found a way. Such a shame, since the rest of the interface is nice - its widget is the best one I've used. Aside from the fact that the only way to import your Reader feeds is to export an OPML file from Reader, copy to the phone and import it's quite a nice program.
I'm flitting between BlueRSS the mobile version of Google Reader and NewsRob at the mo.
BlueRSS really is very nice to use - it's fast and nicely laid out and uses the Android browser automatically for full webpage article views but doesn't offer full offline browsing of the full HTML article (I don't think) - plus it doesn't sync with Google Reader Its other downside is the fact that its widget is extremely poor.
Google Reader Mobile is quite nice, and obviously uses the Android browser for everything, although i don't think there is any offline capability at all, so it becomes quite useless when away from an Internet connection.
I've tried NewsRob since it gets so much praise, and I really like the Reader-sync and offline browsing, and I'm leaning towards it being the best of the bunch so far, but the one thing that stops me from giving it total praise is the fact that it uses its own (quite frankly ****e) browser for navigating the basic articles rather than passing it to the excellent Android one automatically - you can choose to do this per article so that's not really a major problem, but it would be nice to have some multitouch support and do away with the poor zooming. If they offered this as an option, it would be great. It also has no widget to speak of

RSS Reader recommendations

I am looking for a mobile RSS Reader. Do not know much about them. am using pRSSreader and Viigo. Brand new to both but am really liking the feeds. Obviously free is nice, but would pay if it was a good reader. Want the full article, offline ability, ease of adding links, so new that I do not even know what i want - other than not to spend a lot of time entering links into a bad piece of software.
WM 6.1 Pro

Do a search for YomoMedia. Works great, looks nice, and you can manage your subscriptions from your PC as well as from the phone. And it's free.

i like that i can organize my feeds on the desktop. it has been difficult getting the feed urls entered into my device. with yomomedia, can you download the entire article and look at them offline?

thebrenda said:
i like that i can organize my feeds on the desktop. it has been difficult getting the feed urls entered into my device. with yomomedia, can you download the entire article and look at them offline?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm testing it right now (great find by the way, thanks Commdr64!!), and on the few feeds I've tested so far, the full version of the article has been included with the downloaded updates, available when you're offline.
It's a nice clean interface, runs smooth, and I like that you can manage your subscriptions from the desktop

Correction
Ok, I've found some feeds now that don't have the full article downloaded for offline viewing...they download in the app, but only when you click a link for the full article. I can't seem to find any settings that change that behavior, so I'm guessing it's dictated by the feed and not the app.

Right now I'm using the default RSS reader installed which works great, but Yomomedia sounds also very interesting.

I use SPB News (Full Text News Reader ) it's pretty good here's a link , and it has a Free Trial. I use alot of SPB products.
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/pocketpc-software/news/

BioTecK said:
Right now I'm using the default RSS reader installed which works great, but Yomomedia sounds also very interesting.
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Click to collapse
What default RSS Reader? My HTC TP2 does not have one.

sirphunkee said:
Ok, I've found some feeds now that don't have the full article downloaded for offline viewing...they download in the app, but only when you click a link for the full article. I can't seem to find any settings that change that behavior, so I'm guessing it's dictated by the feed and not the app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was thinking that some feeds would not want the article downloaded. I am new to it but why would they want to give you the full article? Would think that they would want you to go to the site. Anyway ... I will download tonight and play with it.

RSS reader
I spend almost an hour in a train on my way to work/home and need a reader that can retrieve articles for offline reading. So recently I spent my whole weekend testing about 13 rss readers and podcast catchers - all i could find on the web. thought i would share my experience. I actually installed all of them and compared one by one. In my opinion the best reader is Egress and it is far superior than any of the readers both by the number of features it has and also customizations you can do. The only feature that this reader does not have compared to all others is that it is not designed to sync with online/desktop readers. I do not need that because in the train i read specific feeds only and leave the rest for desktop reading. It has not been updated for some time (i think it went to android), but even now its touch interface and visual looks are very modern. It is not free... The second best is Yomomedia, though it installs few things on device even though you choose Storage card.

wondering if you tried pRSSreader? it is not verying finger friendly and it is pretty stripped down. but i am a stock WM person - no too interested in the flash. but so far i like thr pRSSreader. don't know enough to know all the features. i do like that i can flag and save the likes to delicious to look at later on my desktop.

thebrenda said:
wondering if you tried pRSSreader? it is not verying finger friendly and it is pretty stripped down. but i am a stock WM person - no too interested in the flash. but so far i like thr pRSSreader. don't know enough to know all the features. i do like that i can flag and save the likes to delicious to look at later on my desktop.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I tried pRSSreader as well and still have it on my device. However, I do not need an article to be saved for further reading in delicious (actually, i do not think such option is available in pRSSreader , as far as i can remember viigo has it).
egress is actually not flashy at all, just very convenient for use with fingers: scrolling up and down or left and right is well thought and produces intuitive results. The real winner is actually customizations available in its Options menu. For example, pRSSreader allows you define global setting on how to retrieve offline/webcontent. Egress allows both global and per feed customizations. You can organize your feeds, say, using Google reader and then export opml file to egress. I believe you can get 30-day trial version of egress, just try it.

how do you think egress compares with pRSSreader?
i save the feeds/urls in delicious because it is an easy way for me to flag them for later review on my desktop.

thebrenda said:
how do you think egress compares with pRSSreader?
i save the feeds/urls in delicious because it is an easy way for me to flag them for later review on my desktop.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe i have replied in my previous post. Also as I mentioned in my first post, there is a free excellent alternative - Yomomedia.

SpeedReader 1.5

My First App, Need Serious Help :/

Hey guys, like the title says, I'm attempting to create an app, but with little success at this point.
What I want to do, didn't sound all that complicated in my head. I want to make an episode guide for a TV show I like. Nothing too fancy, but I do want it to look WP7-authentic.
First off, I don't know or really understanding coding in the slightest. I was hoping to be able to design most of the app through the on-screen WP7 display, which it seems I can do a lot on.
From what I've gathered, here's what I'd like to do:
Use the "Pivots" as the different story arcs or "seasons"
Within each pivot, Episode # and Title
But I'd also like to go one further and have each episode be clickable, which would take the user to a page containing info about the respective episode. Synopsis, International Titles, Airdate, etc.
It's a big project, I just need a little help getting it going.
Thanks!
dbG33K

what you're describing can be done one of two ways.
1. just display images after images
2. input text into the program
from what im gathering, it should be fairly easy for you to do as this is the sort of beginner stuff in most windows phone 7 programming books. id suggest you look into programming because even the slightest pivots and transitions require code.
now if you were on android or webos, thats different. they have full on graphics based programming thats a simple matter of drag and drop and choose function.

Download Expression Blend. You can do pretty much everything without having to write any code. It includes a "Pivot" template which has a pivot all ready for you, then you just add PivotItems using your mouse. Then you can use the Sample Data feature to mock up how your episode data will look.
The only thing you would have to write code for would be to pull the episode information from a datasource. Bind it to your controls and Expression will have the rest done for you.
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/windowsphone/
Sample Data:
http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/ee426896.aspx

First thing you'll need before you even open Visual Studio or Blend is a data feed.
An rss feed is ideal, And I'm sure theres alot of them out there for TV listings. Without that, theres little you can do (other than screen scraping websites, but people don't look too kindly on that)
If you can find me a Url for the RSS feed you want to use, I'll be more than willing to help you out

xanderkaiber said:
First thing you'll need before you even open Visual Studio or Blend is a data feed.
An rss feed is ideal, And I'm sure theres alot of them out there for TV listings. Without that, theres little you can do (other than screen scraping websites, but people don't look too kindly on that)
If you can find me a Url for the RSS feed you want to use, I'll be more than willing to help you out
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What he said
I'd be willing to help you out as well. I'm in the process of writing a feed reader to help me make the move WP7 from WPF/Silverlight. The idea I have for the UI is similar to yours and the feed reader (at least in the basic form) will be open source so I've no problem sharing my code...

I appreciate your willingness to help me out, but it's actually a series that has been over for quite a while.

Hey guys, I've gotten much further on my app and have become a little more well-acquainted with coding in the form of using Expression Blend 4. That said, I do have a few questions:
1. After making a few pages, I decided to make a sort of Welcome page for my app. How do I tell it to show that page first instead of "MainPage.xaml"?
2. On that welcome page, I would like to make a button that pulls up the user's E-mail and have it have my e-mail as the recipient.
Thanks a bunch!

This is in the WMAppManifest.xml file within the Properties folder.
for the email look into the email compose task

barryallott said:
This is in the WMAppManifest.xml file within the Properties folder.
for the email look into the email compose task
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That doesn't really help me too much...
What am I supposed to do in the WMAppManifest.xml?
And where do I find the email compose task, and how do I implement it into the app?
EDIT: Nevermind, I figured out both of those questions. A new question, though: How do I take screen shots of the app? I need at least one to submit it to the marketplace, but I don't know how :/

dbG33K said:
That doesn't really help me too much...
What am I supposed to do in the WMAppManifest.xml?
And where do I find the email compose task, and how do I implement it into the app?
EDIT: Nevermind, I figured out both of those questions. A new question, though: How do I take screen shots of the app? I need at least one to submit it to the marketplace, but I don't know how :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Download this:
http://www.innovativetechguy.com/?p=13
Make sure your emulator is set to 100% size and uncheck the "Show Device" checkbox in the tool. That will give you the necessary 480x800 sized .png

There's a fair lot you can do using the designer panel, but you will definitely need C# code for what happens 'behind the curtains'. Things like pulling the episodes from the internet and such.
I definitely recommend these tutorials:
Windows Phone 7 Development for Absolute Beginners.
It builds up slowly, but definitely gives you the foundation you need to put together basic applications.

Hey guys I found this thread and after reading it I feel I have a lot in common with dbG33K's tasks & questions. I feel I have a lot to offer WP7 apps as I learn more! I started out in January learning and studying as an absolute beginner (even did the 5 day course online). After a lot of studying, I felt confident enough to write my first BIG app.
I'm pretty good at the xaml part and getting real familiar with c# as I go along. Also, I think I have all the pieces I need, just need help putting it all together. I'm using an API for the data source (i have all the dlls and resources in place even all the c# methods for the API).
I have the UI all put together, now working on the c#. I'm just unsure on the binding part. I know my listboxes and other controls should be binded to a method in c#, but what calls that method? When the page loads that listbox, textblock, etc? Also, what kind of coding is generally used inside the {} of the methods that pulls info from the datasource?
As I have learned a lot aver the past couple of months, I find that I've learned it from examples I've found online, but I'm drawing a blank on this one. Any help would be great!
Thanks!

Do any of you can tellme how can I save text from the text box??
Sent from my LG-C900 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App

Adobe acrobat reader alternative. [WORKAROUND]

Hate trying to read PDFs on your WP7??!!
Me too!
So after a long day of reformatting PDFs, attempts at reading already uploaded PDFs from GDOCs (mobile site and app,) I was nearly ready to give up and chalk up this experience to a wasted day... Then voila! I noticed the amazingly convenient (yet painfully under-stocked) app "media console" by Overdrive which I have used to read library books; has a great option to add your own sites where you can access EPUBs (electronic publications.)
I then discovered www.2epub.com where I could upload (or insert links) to my PDFs and convert them to EPUBs. Using some lovely JavaScripty upload and conversion, I was then able to copy my newly converted EPUBs download links to media console.
Presto change-o I can now read my PDFs (now EPUBs) from the convenience of my windows phone, nicely formatted and easy to read.
I hope this helps
Sent from my T7575 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App

I use Calibre for converting important PDFs to ePub and then upload those files to dropbox, from where I can pull it via Freda, an eBook reader that supports several formats.

Good to know, can you do all that from the phone? I am unfamiliar with Calibre and Freda.
Sent from my T7575 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App

For the Calibre solution that dkp mentions, you have to run Calibre on a desktop PC.
But I just checked out the www.2epub.com site, with Freda. And I can confirm that works too. The steps are:
1) Create a new 'website source' for www.2epub.com
2) Navigate to it, tap the 'URL' button and enter the URL you want to convert, and then follow the instructions ... the site's javascript runs quite slowly on WP7 but it gets there.
3) When the 2epub site displays the EPUB download link, tap on it.
4) The EPUB will open in Freda.
A neat site - thanks for pointing it out.

sounds neat, however I still do not understand how it seems impossible to get a good PDF reader on WP7 -.-
My problem with all the converters, besides extra work, is that they mostly cannot handle PDFs with lots of pictures/graphs/diagramm.... Sad but true =(

brokenflipside said:
Good to know, can you do all that from the phone? I am unfamiliar with Calibre and Freda.
Sent from my T7575 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope, Calibre is a desktop software. But it's convinient and fast.

dahlai said:
sounds neat, however I still do not understand how it seems impossible to get a good PDF reader on WP7 -.-
My problem with all the converters, besides extra work, is that they mostly cannot handle PDFs with lots of pictures/graphs/diagramm.... Sad but true =(
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ya its weird

Because of the file association issue, .pdfs can only be opened with one default program. Microsoft handed the honor to Adobe. Adobe apparently doesn't give a ...

dahlai said:
sounds neat, however I still do not understand how it seems impossible to get a good PDF reader on WP7 -.-
My problem with all the converters, besides extra work, is that they mostly cannot handle PDFs with lots of pictures/graphs/diagramm.... Sad but true =(
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have checked and where media console by overdrive has a better layout IMO and is easier to work with; Freda does allow you to press and hold onto images to view them in a picture viewer mode, I will have to look at a chart to see what happens in those instances.

brokenflipside said:
I will have to look at a chart to see what happens in those instances.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The version of Freda that's on the marketplace at the moment has an issue with GIF files (so you may find some charts don't work, as they are often stored in GIF format). The next release of Freda, now in public beta test, will fix this issue.

[Q] Best PDF annotator for university

I've found a few threads on this, but nothing related exactly to the nexus 7.
Just bought mine, mostly to use for university since I have to read dozens of pdfs and books each year, and wanted to save on printing.
I've had Ezpdf for some time, and while it works really well it has a tendency to crash when I'm highlighting... not fun... its slow to save so I lose a few pages of notation each time it crashes.
I have it hooked to dropbox, which is vital.
Anyone know of a better pdf annotator that works just as well and can sync with dropbox?
btw, I've used qpdf which I found real clunky and iAnnotate which is still taking baby steps.
Anyone else?

GuySmiles said:
I've found a few threads on this, but nothing related exactly to the nexus 7.
Just bought mine, mostly to use for university since I have to read dozens of pdfs and books each year, and wanted to save on printing.
I've had Ezpdf for some time, and while it works really well it has a tendency to crash when I'm highlighting... not fun... its slow to save so I lose a few pages of notation each time it crashes.
I have it hooked to dropbox, which is vital.
Anyone know of a better pdf annotator that works just as well and can sync with dropbox?
btw, I've used qpdf which I found real clunky and iAnnotate which is still taking baby steps.
Anyone else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you can use Mendeley for your academic purposes.
http://blog.mendeley.com/tipstricks/android-on-mendeley-an-app-guide/

_Sasan_ said:
I think you can use Mendeley for your academic purposes.
http://blog.mendeley.com/tipstricks/android-on-mendeley-an-app-guide/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sold! Thanks for the tip.

_Sasan_ said:
I think you can use Mendeley for your academic purposes.
http://blog.mendeley.com/tipstricks/android-on-mendeley-an-app-guide/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I spoke too soon. Just checked and there are only beta alternate apps for android. None of them allow for pdf note-taking.

I've used iAnnotate in the past and liked it. But now since Adobe Reader has annotating capabilities, I just use it.

imho Adobe Reader is just enough for everything. I have yet to find a better one...

I was trying to use Adobe reader, but its lack of cloud support make it much more difficult.
I just found Foxit pdf for android (have no idea how I missed it last time). Looks like the perfect match for studies. Never found foxit written down on any other forum site. Its an amazing app so far and looking forward to further development.

Buy EZPDF. Now.
That is all.
But seriously, it IS the best annotator out there. Underlining, strikethroughs, double-page viewing, TONS of options and settings, drawing, highlighting, custom colours for all of these writing tools, text boxes - the works. And it's pretty quick, too.
The crashes while highlighting, by the way, have JUST been introduced - Android 4.3 seemed to cause them. They're the biggest annoyance for me, too. The crash is directly tied to the length of time you hold your finger down. Around ~3 seconds seems to trigger it on my Nexus 10. They're quick to address bug reports, I'd suggest emailing them.

Repligo is the best. Sorry but nothing comes close...