News Explorer 1.8: Improved iCloud sync and more
News Explorer 1.8 features a greatly improved iCloud synchronisation algorithm with semi realtime data exchange between active devices by using so called 'silent push notifications'. This should result in a more 'automatic' sync experience with less need to manual interventions.
Transparent display of read items
Read items are now displayed with 50% transparency, which makes it a lot easier to distinguish them from unread news items. The default transparency level can be changed in the Preferences (macOS) or Settings app (iOS). If you dislike, or even hate, this new feature, you can even completely disable it by setting the transparency to 0%.
External link support
The following changes are made to support external links in news articles:
- The article viewer will now show the external link of a news article, when available. Feeds like Daring Fireball (the JSON edition) and Drudge Report contain links to the original source article which are different from the link to the articles themselves. These external links are now displayed under the title of the article, unless you disable the visibility of external links in the settings.
- When an article contains an external link, it will be used to generate the Reader view. Unless this is disabled in the settings.
macOS specific changes
The following changes are made to the macOS edition of News Explorer:
- The news item list is now more dynamic and animated.
- New downloaded items are now immediately visible in the news item list.
- Most user settings are now saved in a different way, to prevent issues in especially macOS 10.13.
iOS specific changes
The following changes are made to the iOS edition of News Explorer:
- The swipe menu of the news articles list has been enhanced. You can now swipe from the left to the right to toggle the read status, or swipe from the right to the left for other actions.
- The default swipe action to left direction will now open the original source of the news article in Safari. This is especially handy when using News Explorer on the iPhone.
- The list views now support large title display in iOS 11, unless this is disabled in the Settings.
- The search interface in the news articles list view has been improved.
- Turning your iPad or iPhone to horizontal orientation will no longer result in a 'zooming effect', the font size will now remain the same.
- Some adjustments are made to prevent nasty issues on the brand new iPhone X.
Because of the large technical changes in this new version, it's not completely unthinkable that there will be some undetected issues or glitches. If you encounter any difficulties with this new update, then don't hesitate to contact us.
Ratings needed!
To enhance the visibility of News Explorer in the App Store and Mac App Store, we need far more ratings. About a month ago Apple decided to partly reset ratings for all recently updated apps, since then we are missing the much needed orange stars in search results and other views. So if you like News Explorer, spend a few moments to leave a rating or review. Thank you!