Yesterday Google announced some big changes to Google Reader which will impact FeedDemon (and every other application that uses the unofficial Google Reader API).
In an effort to better integrate with Google+, Reader is retiring friending, following and shared link blogs. That means the social features in FeedDemon that rely on Google Reader will eventually stop working.
They won't stop working right away, though. Google will continue to support those features in its API even after they disappear from Reader's UI. But at some point (I don't know when yet) they will cease to function, and you'll be unable to share articles in FeedDemon or follow the shared articles of other users.
Before that happens, I'll release a new version of FeedDemon that removes those features. But I won't do that until the new Reader goes live and I have a chance to test against it, which will likely take a few weeks.
I am, of course, disappointed to see those features disappear. I know a lot of FeedDemon customers will miss them, and I'll personally mourn the loss of shared articles since that's something I use every day.
I will miss this a lot! It was so practical! I like feedDemon because it has a better interface, google reader is kinda messy. And the panic button is a very useful feature. The great amount of articles in google reader after a week without reading used to make me run from the page. And a cumulative growing of articles begun. But I feel a flaw in FeedDemon that sometimes make me nervous. The browser is heavy and delays to open the news page, and download the images. I live in Brazil, and the internet here is not so good, and better processors are just now being accessible (in cost terms). But, google chrome works fine here, and it's light. Sometimes I have to copy the URL to chrome, but it's boring to do this sometimes. Sorry for take advantage of your post to give an opinion about other issue.
Cheers!
Louise
Posted by: Louise | Friday, October 21, 2011 at 03:23 PM
Do you have any sense of what the feasibility of using G+ as the sharing vehicle might be (assuming they open up the API further anytime soon?) since that's where those features are being rolled into?
Posted by: critter42 | Friday, October 21, 2011 at 11:14 PM
When you fast switch from one feed to another the program usually freeze (not responding) for a while then unfreeze and continue working. It happens many times. Please, fix that too in new version!
Posted by: Wayne | Saturday, October 22, 2011 at 08:17 AM
@Wayne There a link in the FeedDemon Support Forum for a pre-release build that should fix the freezing problem you're seeing - you can find it at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/feeddemon
Posted by: Nick Bradbury | Saturday, October 22, 2011 at 02:50 PM
@critter I'm not sure yet whether using G+1 is feasible. There's a JavaScript API for it at https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/+1button/ but it's going to be tough to use that in a FD newspaper due to security restrictions (ie: I disallow script because it's the local zone).
Posted by: Nick Bradbury | Saturday, October 22, 2011 at 02:55 PM
Thank you Nick! I'm trying the prerelease as you suggest. I want to notify you that this works very better but the freeze problem is still present. It's not happening very often like before but it's still present.
Posted by: Wayne | Saturday, November 05, 2011 at 11:00 PM