MarcEdit 5.0 and RSS

I’ll be posting an update message shortly, but I thought I’d mention a new feature that I just added to MarcEdit 5.0. One of the things that I’ve been trying to do is figure out how to get more information to the MarcEdit users — particularly information regarding updates, tutorials, etc. Well, since I’ve started this blog, I’ve been putting this type of information online, but I’ve still got the same problem — users need to come to the blog to get information. Well, I figured, why not just build an RssReader into MarcEdit, so that’s what I’ve done. In the next build of MarcEdit 5.0, the default option will be for the application to query my blog and search for new information relating to MarcEdit. The new feature will look like the following:

If you look in the lower right-hand corner, you will see the Firefox icon noting RSS feeds. When this icon is present, it means that new information is available from my blog relating to MarcEdit. When this icon isn’t present, it means that no new information is present on my blog. The program will track two different types of elements in determining if the icon should be shown:
1) It tracks the pubDate of the item and compares it to the pubDate of the last session.
2) The program will show the icon until it has been pressed.

The RssReader is threaded and has (at least as far as I can tell) no adverse affect on the program running. I’m hoping that this feature will allow users to stay a bit more in the MarcEdit development loop — but only time will tell I guess.

Anyway have comments?

–Terry