For months now I’ve been one of many beta testers for the new version of NetNewsWire and at last the beta has gone public and we’re allowed to talk about this fabulous software.
NetNewsWire’s new features including searching, flagged items, persistence, per-feed refresh settings, new icons by Bryan Bell and Jon Hicks, embedded browser, smart lists, search engine subscriptions, script subscriptions—and more. The weblog editor was removed completely.
MarsEdit was more of a from-scratch application. We kept (but revised) some of the under-the-hood plumbing that was in NetNewsWire’s weblog editor, but then we completely re-designed the user interface to make it work more like email. There’s a main window that lists your weblog and recent posts, and you create and edit posts in separate windows—just like using an email program.
Brent has worked incredibly hard on these betas and I can say I’ve never seen a process like it. Other betas I’ve participated in have been interesting — there would be some development, some feedback, some more development — but this one has been totally interactive and generally based on consensus. Occasionally Brent has said: “it needs to be this way”, but most of the time he’s taken the general view and incorporated the features and feedback from the group.
There have been many, many builds to reach this point; he’s put things in that we’ve suggested and taken them out again when we said we didn’t like them. He’s tried different things this way and that way and the other way, until we all agreed what we wanted. The mailing list has been busy and active; the bug fixes frequent.
The new Mars Edit is brilliant. I’ve posted most of my blog entries for the past few months with it, and again Brent has welcomed the nit picks, the suggestions, the criticisms.
Most amazing of all is that there will be no charge to upgrade from NetNewsWire v1. This is a huge upgrade. From time to time I’ve tried out the competition, but nothing comes close. Can you tell I’m a fan? Go download this software now and use it; see for yourself.
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