New Features and Enhancements

• Master feed list and program update configuration files are now only downloaded from the Internet if they have changed since they were last downloaded. Because of this enhancement these files are now checked for freshness much more frequently.
• If there is a program crash, you will able to initiate a bug report and upload program log and setting files to customer support with just a few clicks.
• Better handling of situation where the program wants to present a list of feed updates or program updates at the same time (these checks are done in the background). The second popup will wait for the first to finish. If the program is exited before the second popup could be displayed, it will display when the program is restarted.
• You can now e-mail a selection from the compact browser. For example, you could highlight just the part of a story you want to send to a friend and then select "Send Selection as HTML" to mail it. Depending on the mail client you use, the URL of the full page will also be encluded in the e-mail.
• The system will beep when a popup for new feeds or a program update is shown.
• Better detection of when browser scrollbars should be shown when the built-in browser pops up a new window (such as to display a video clip).
• Clicking a streaming Windows or Real Media file from within the message window will normally launch the program directly instead of first opening up the built-in browser.
• If you clicked a mail hyperlink within either the message window or built-in browser, your mail preferences were being ignored. Fixed.

Bug Fixes

• If you logged off or shutdown your PC, your most recent changes to your message list were not always saved. Fixed.

New Features and Enhancements

• New Support Assistant tool.
• More complex error messages now provide a "Copy to Clipboard" feature so that you can send the error message to Customer Support if you need assistance.
• Fully supports compressed HTTP in all downloads, including download of the XML config files Desktop Dean uses. This speeds things up for dial-in users and reduces bandwidth use.

Bug Fixes

• On some Windows 98/Me systems, Desktop Dean would periodically crash on startup because it could not determine it's application folder correctly. You might have received an error along the lines of:

  System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path "C:\images\icontray\normal.ico".

  This has been fixed.

New Features and Enhancements

• If the "detail" link for two or more feeds reference the same Web page, only the first message encountered will be presented to you. For example, if Dean for America publishes a blog entry that Dean for New Hampshire later re-publishes, the NH version will be ignored and seen as a duplicate message. To get technical: this is only the case when the two messages have the same <Link> or permaLink.
• New option to never automatically look for new messages. If you select this mode Desktop Dean will only check for new blog messages when you click the button, change your subscriptions, or launch Desktop Dean.
• HTML markup is removed from feed title elements.
• Various behind the scenes improvements.
• Decreased memory/disk footprint of deleted messages.
• Decreased log file size further.

Bug Fixes

• Desktop Dean would sometimes sound a "beep" when it was done checking for new messages in the background. Fixed.
• If you applied an upgrade/patch while a feed update notification was being displayed, Desktop Dean did not quit correctly and caused problems when it re-launched after the upgrade was complete. Fixed.
• If the current message being viewed was updated it would sometimes not be refreshed to show the new version (the change would only be seen if you navigated forward/back then returned to the message). Fixed.

New Features and Enhancements

• None.

Bug Fixes

• You might have received duplicates of old, previously deleted messages for a few feeds. Fixed, although you may see duplicates appear the first time the feed sends a new message after you have applied this update.

New Features and Enhancements

• Improved DeanSpace event formatting.
• Updated user documentation to reflect recent enhancements. Also emphasizes alert navigation techniques more.

Bug Fixes

• If you switched from 99 to 999 maximum messages (or vice versa), the close and menu buttons were slightly off place until you restarted Desktop Dean. Fixed.

New Features and Enhancements

• None.

Bug Fixes

• If you changed your proxy prefs using the Proxy tab of the program options, the change was not picked up by the master feed list configuration file downloader until you restarted Desktop Dean. Fixed.
• Some users using certain ISPs might get the following error when downloading the master feed list or looking for a new version of the software:

  '-XXX' is not a valid value for 'value'. 'value' should be between 'minimum' and 'maximum'

  Fixed.

New Features and Enhancements

• Improved look and feel to "Display Your Feeds and Archives" feature. And if you select it from the icon tray menu, Desktop Dean will now popup.
• Added Print button to Startup Wizard and "Feature Tour & Help" documentation page.
• Improved the way in which feeds are processed when you have subscribed to a large number of feeds. Previously, if you had quit Desktop Dean and restarted it some time later, you might not have seen as many new messages as you might expect. You also might have noticed that, when subscribing to a feed for the first time and having 20 or more subscribed feeds, you would see less than the expected 5 latest feeds for the first time the feed is downloaded (Desktop Dean always limits the first download of a feed to the last 5 items published by the feed). This all probably makes little sense, but trust us it is improved if you subscribe to a large number of feeds.
• You can now set the maximum number of messages to 999. If you want to increase the limit, select "Options ..." from the menu, click the "Other" tab, and then select 999 from the pulldown. There is also special logic to automatically switch users to 999 max during the startup wizard and when the subscriptions are eddited.

Bug Fixes

• The stylesheet in the embedded documentation was not being loaded due to a Windows path error. Now you will see the docs in their glorious, CSSd-up magnificance as intended ;-)

Please select "Look for New Feeds" from the menu after you apply this update. This will ensure you receive all the new regional feeds immediately vs. waiting up to 24 hours.

New Features and Enhancements

• Added support for DeanSpace events. When a DeanSpace-based site syndicates an event on their front page, Desktop Dean will provide special features:
  1. The date and time of the event will be displayed at the bottom of the message.
  2. You can click the " event detail" link to view any additional event information in the browser. This might include RSVP instructions.
  3. You can click the " export event" link to create an appointment for this event in your calendaring program. Your calendaring program must support import of vCalendar .vcs files. Microsoft Outlook and Palm Desktop version 4.0 support this.
  Features #2 and #3 are only available on DeanSpace sites that are running recent versions of the software which export times with a timezone. Please contact your DeanSpace admin if this is not the case for your site.

  A good site to test this new feature on is the official Washington State for Dean blog.

• Added new menu function, "Display Your Feeds and Archives." When selected, a simple list of your subscribed feeds is displayed in the program window. Clicking on a feed will bring up the feed's homepage. Just click the "Done" link when you are finished to restore your previous message.
• Added new menu function, "Look for New Feeds." Normally Desktop Dean will look for new, modified, or deleted feeds once a day in the background. This forces an update in real-time. You might use this if you contacted us about a new feed and we added it. No more waiting for your feed to popup!
• Added DeanSites.Com and DeanPort.Com to the Websites menu.
• Added this text and link to the subscription forms:

  Don't see your blog here? Contact us and we'll take a look!

  Enough said.
• The first time you use the "Look for Application Update" or "Look for New Feeds" functions, you will be chastised that you really don't have to use these unless you know what you are doing. I'd just hate for you to bother using these when the application is doing all that hard work behind the scenes for you ;-).
• Provided work arounds for RSS feeds that are not well formed XML.
• Disabled JavaScript errors dialogue boxes in the main window.

Bug Fixes

• ET (short for Eastern Time) was being appended to the timestamp in the message window even though the time was being converted to your local timezone.

New Features and Enhancements

• Improvements to the Website shortcuts/links found in the program's menu:
  • Now all shortcuts are found under a sub-menu, "Websites"
  • Added additional Dean Websites such as Forums for America. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list by any means.
  • The Websites are now launched in your external browser instead of Desktop Dean's compact browser.
• Added vertical spacing between message subject and body when a feed does not transmit a date and author.

Bug Fixes

• There was a problem with feeds that do not include a publication date: the most recent blog messages were not always being displayed and were skipped. This has been fixed. Affected blogs were:
  • Scientists for Dean
  • Catholics for Dean
  • Daily Kos
  • Clark 2004
  • Edwards 2004
• For those feeds that do not include a "body" -- they only send a subject -- Desktop Dean would crash if you tried to copy the message or e-mail it using the program menu. Fixed.

New Features and Enhancements

• Additional improvements to Dean Nation (and a few other similar sites) compact browser caching.
• Throtled down debug messages in log file to conserve disk space, improve performance.
• Should be last update for awhile. Happy Holidays!

Bug Fixes

• None.

New Features and Enhancements

• Fixed issue where new Dean Nation posts would sometimes not load in the built-in, compact browser. Cause: Because Dean Nation uses a single Webpage to archive a week's worth of postings, clicking a the title or "more ..." link when the week's archive page was already loaded would sometimes yield the old, out-of-date cached version.

Bug Fixes

• None.

New Features and Enhancements

• None

Bug Fixes

• An options dialogue box checkmark was not being greyed out correctly.

New Features and Enhancements

• The tray icon will change to from to if Desktop Dean can not load 50% or more of your feeds. This would normally only occur if you are not connected to the Internet or your Internet connection goes down. Desktop Dean will keep trying to download your feeds in the background.
• The built-in, compact Web browser will launch much more quickly after first use because it's embedded browser is now cached and reused. This increases Desktop Dean's memory footprint a bit. If this is a problem on your PC you can disable this by unclicking "Keep browser alive when closed" under the Browser tab in the program options.

Bug Fixes

• In some situations the previous location and size of the Desktop Dean window would not be properly restored.

This release is aimed at users who use the built-in browser to follow links in Blog messages. If you use the built-in browser you should apply this patch ASAP.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed memory leak in built-in browser: in some situations luanching it multiple times in the same Desktop Dean session would cause memory use to grow and grow. The built-in browser is still a memory hog, but this is related to Internet Explorer for the most part.
• Grammar errors fixed courtesy of nathe4dean.

New Features and Enhancements

• The first time you launch Desktop Dean, it's window will be located in the lower-right corner of your monitor.

Bug Fixes

• None.

New Features and Enhancements

• New compact, built-in browser to speed up reading of blog entries as well as links from blog entries. By default this is enabled but can be disabled by selecting the Browser tab in the program options. When disabled your default browser will be launched when you click a link. For anyone upgrading to this release you must manually change your options to use the built-in browser.
• The user interface now supports two "sizes": small and large. Small is the default if your monitor is 1024 pixels wide or smaller. Large is the default if your monitor is larger than 1024 pixels wide (such as 1280). These modes affect the fonts used in the main window as well as some of the graphics used and positioning. You can override the default by going to the Misc tab in the program options.
• The blog comments link that was at the bottom of most messages has been moved to the sub-header. Click on . The comment links themselves have also been improved so that you placed at the top of the comments.
• Improved user documentation shown at wizard startup, through the Feature Tour and Help menu item, and at desktopdean.com.
• Lightened the color of the message window a bit to make the text easier to read.
• When you subscribe to a feed for the first time, only 5 most recent messages will be presented.

Bug Fixes

• You might get duplicate messages if a blog had not been updated in a long time and you had deleted messages from it. Fixed.
• Fancy single quote charcters were not being displayed correctly in some cases. They were being displayed as boxes.